Why India’s South rejects Modi — and Why it matters

livemint.com:

Narendra Modi’s hypnotic sway on the landlocked, impoverished north. The south’s rejection of the leader and his Bharatiya Janata Party, or BJP, will be brushed aside because it may not change the overall outcome. That is a mistake.

The north hogs the limelight because of its numbers. Whoever controls Uttar Pradesh, a state more populous than Brazil and poorer than sub-Saharan Africa, has superior odds of capturing the reins of federal administration. And there’s a near-consensus that UP and its neighboring states are ready to give the strongman a third term.

The opposition alliance, which accuses him of preparing to sweep the election by jailing its leaders and choking its funds, fears that India’s secular constitution will be upended in Modi 3.0. Although the prime minister has denied any such plan, a Hindu rashtra, or nation-state, will play well in the north. The very prospect of such an outcome fills the south with dread.

The 675-mile-long mountain range that cuts through central India is no longer just a geographical divide. Ten years of Modi’s polarizing rule have caused a yawning gulf, not only in what voters are getting from their government but what they even want from it. Economic prosperity and social progress, the top concerns in the south, have no place left in the north.

Modi didn’t create the vacuum of hope. He just filled the hole in people’s material lives with religious fervor. It’s a passion that finds its release in tormenting people of non-Hindu faiths, particularly Muslims who account for 14% of the population.