Crushing victory at the polls boosts prospect of peace with Pakistan

Narendra Modi may have railed against Pakistan, taking India to the brink of war as he sabrerattled his Hindu nationalist party to election victory.

But ironically, his increased majority could bring the prospect of peace talks closer than at any point since the 2008 Mumbai attacks.

A stronger, more electorally safe

Modi – so the theory goes – no longer needs the spectre of conflict with an archenemy to rouse his base. What’s more, the global acclaim he would receive for a successful resolution to Kashmir may serve to balance the damage from his party’s erosion of rights for religious minorities at home.

The Bharatiya Janata Party’s election campaign centred on its vision of India as a Hindu country and minorities, particularly Muslims, face five years of deepening anxiety about their place in the nation. But Modi’s populist message that he was creating a “strong” India won the election in the end – despite the fact the Indian prime minister broke key campaign pledges, most notably on the economy.

That said, while he undoubtedly failed to meet many of his promises from 2014, voters may have believed that any alternative would have been even worse.

The BJP seem to have replaced Congress – the party that dominated Indian politics for decades after independence – as India’s natural ruling party. Its vision of India has proved so popular, opposition parties will need to reflect deeply on their purpose or they are likely to wane away. For Rahul Gandhi’s Congress Party, it may already be too late.

The challenge now for the BJP will

A more electorally safe Modi no longer needs the spectre of conflict with an archenemy to rouse his base

be to navigate its contradictory impulses. It craves development but aspires to the past. If followed through, steps it has taken to invigorate its base – notably moves to remove Indian citizenship from potentially millions of alleged illegal immigrants from Bangladesh – may result in the political headache of four million stateless people. The coming years will see an attempt to remould India from a land of contrasts to a more monolithic, and stronger, Hindu state.

Once used as a tool to fashion national identity and patriotism, the lingering possibility of war with Pakistan may now be surplus to requirement for Modi after such a strong showing at the polls.

The observation from Imran Khan, the Pakistani prime minister, that a BJP victory increases the prospects for peace between the two neighbours may well be correct.

Gareth Price is senior research fellow, Asia-pacific Programme, Chatham House