The ruling party won a sweeping victory yesterday in state elections in western India, a victory that could give Hindu supremacists a boost in national politics and alter the nation's secular traditions.
With at least 96 seats, the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party will control the 182-seat legislature in Gujarat and return Chief Minister Narendra Modi as the leader of the state, which earlier this year suffered Hindu-Muslim rioting that was India's worst communal violence in a decade.
The opposition Congress party, which had won 44 seats in ballot counting by midday, accepted defeat.
"People have responded to the BJP's strident Hindu-nationalist campaign," said Shankersinh Vaghela, head of the Congress party in Gujarat. "If the Congress has been defeated, we accept the verdict."
Television projections tracking counted votes in all constituencies showed the ruling party exceeding the 117 seats it held in the last assembly. They also predicted the BJP would win more than 121, a two-thirds majority that would give it the right to claim the solid support of most Gujaratis and to easily pass finance bills or change the state Constitution.
The sweeping win is a great boost to Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee, leader of the BJP and head of the 19-party coalition government that governs India.
Elections in 10 states are due next year, and national elections must be held before 2004. The Gujarat BJP victory will be an asset in those elections, after the party's defeat in four state elections this year.
The BJP has governed Gujarat since 1998. Critics have accused the pro-Hindu party of exploiting differences with minority Muslims to garner support in the troubled western state.
The party's success in a campaign during which its leaders told Hindus they had to be protected against the minority Muslims could be seen by hardline Hindu supremacists as proof that playing the religion card wins elections.
Some of the BJP's allies have said publicly that Gujarat was "a political experiment" that they would like to use in other elections.
Many regard the poll as a challenge to India's secular Constitution and the tradition of religious tolerance preached by independence leader Mohandas Gandhi.
Mahesh Rangarajan, a leading political analyst, said: "The scale of the BJP's victory ... means that the voices that are for more assertive Hindutva [Hindu-ness] will be more strident in the coming period."
"For the Congress, it is a period of deep introspection," he said. "This is the eighth state where they have lost twice in a row."
Chief Minister Modi won his state assembly seat in Maninagar yesterday. He has been criticized for saying that Hindu revenge attacks against Muslims during the rioting this year, which killed mostly Muslims, were understandable. The rioting, which claimed 1,000 lives, began after a Muslim mob set fire to a train car in the Gujarati town of Godhra, killing 60 Hindus in February.
BJP supporters began celebrating by exploding firecrackers at party headquarters in Ahmadabad, shouting, "Long live the BJP." Police were concerned that victory parades might lead to new clashes.
RSS