WorthyNews: Indian Premier’s BJP Wins Election, Exit Polls Suggest; Christians Concerned (Worthy News In-Depth)

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By Stefan J. Bos, Chief International Correspondent Worthy News

NEW DELHI (Worthy News) – Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led alliance was projected to win a majority in the six-week-long national election after the last of the country’s hundreds of millions of voters went to the polls.

Local media and other independent agencies were releasing exit polls as voting ended Saturday, revealing an outcome that minority Christians and Muslims had feared.

The polls were a referendum on Hindu Nationalist Prime Minister Modi’s decade in power. Official results are expected on Tuesday.

The marathon, multi-phase election was considered one of the most consequential in India’s history. Candidates crossed the country, poll workers hiked to remote villages, and voters waited for hours in sweltering heat.

Nearly 970 million voters — more than 10 percent of the world’s population, could cast their ballots for the over 8,300 candidates running for five-year terms in parliament.

If the 73-year-old Modi wins as expected, he’ll be the second Indian leader to retain power for a third term after Jawaharlal Nehru, the country’s first prime minister.

His BJP-led alliance was leading over the broad opposition alliance, which was challenging them, led by the Congress party.

ECONOMIC PROGRESS?

Modi came to power vowing to uplift the poor and turn India into a developed nation by 2047, though that remains a distant dream for millions.

His policies turned increasingly divisive as the prime minister had “polarizing rhetoric” with speeches that impacted the plight of the devoted Christian and Muslim minorities, observers said.

While Christians comprise 2.3 percent of India’s population, with 22.31 million voters, their presence will remain limited in the new Parliament of this nation of 1.4 billion people.

“Many call [limited representation] a pity at a time when Christian relief and outreach are sought to be criminalized, and [Christian] education institutions are under threat of total emasculation,” said John Dayal, a leading Christian rights activist.

The Christian community “sees overwhelming problems, ranging from physical persecution to curbs on institutional structures, some with a 150-year-old history,” Dayal wrote in The Wire, a leading India-based independent news website.

Dayal is secretary general of the All India Christian Council, an alliance of Christian denominations, mission agencies, institutions, federations, and Christian lay leaders.

INTEGRATION COUNCIL

He was also invited to join India’s National Integration Council, a prime minister-led group of senior politicians and public figures that looks for ways to address “communalism,” the word used for ethnic and religious strife.

However, he views this kind of initiative as window dressing by the prime minister to reach out to influential ‘Christian’ leaders, while in reality, nothing changes for Bible-believing Christians across India.

Dayal fears that the election outcome underscores that minorities, including Christians, will face more tensions.

“Recent years have seen a change in the body politic and the religious and demographic landscape which inflicts great stress on religious minorities,” he wrote in The Wire, a leading India-based news site. “It has rapidly eroded constitutional rights and disrupted the democratic and development of the Christians [and Muslims].”

Twelve states in India have anti-conversion laws, which are often used to harass and target Christians, Dayal explained. “Many fear that the election results could see more states adopt these laws or even the implementation of a nationwide law. Tribal Christians face attacks and threats from activists of the BJP’s non-state gangs.”

The Christian “ethnic group of the Kuki Zho in the state of Manipur have for the past year seen terrifying violence, including rape and killings, with most churches totaling over 320 destroyed in the Imphal valley, he added.

RELIGIOUS CONVERSION

Christian nongovernmental organizations “are being labeled agencies of religious conversion and having their licenses canceled,” Dayal noted.

He suggested that election manifestos and campaigns showed that the BJP was banking more on a Hindu ‘god’ and religion than Christ.

The 2024 General Elections, the 18th since the Indian Republic was declared, will divide the 543 seats in the Lok Sabha, the Lower House of the Parliament.

Some 970 million people were eligible to cast their ballots, including 18 million who reached 18 years of age this year.

In 12 states, there were more women voters than men, and among the registered voters, over 48,000 “transgender people” were identified for the first time in such an exercise in the strictly Hindu nation

Yet, “Christians are irrelevant in India’s electoral landscape, more so in the last 10 years when they have been totally invisibilized,” Dayal said.

HINDU MAJORITY

However, Modi has enjoyed immense popularity among the Hindu majority since coming to power in 2014.

His supporters view him as a self-made, strong leader who has improved India’s standing and credited his pro-business policies with making the world’s fifth-largest economy.

At the same time, Modi’s Hindu rhetoric has encouraged attacks and hate speech against minorities, impacting Christians and Muslims, critics say.

His critics say India’s democracy is faltering and his party faced stiff resistance from the opposition alliance and its main face, Rahul Gandhi of the Congress party.

They have attacked Modi over his Hindu nationalist politics and are hoping to benefit from growing economic discontent.

Yet, while the opposition managed to put issues like unemployment and social strife on local agendas, the BJP was due to remain India’s most prominent political force.

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