NEW DELHI: Prime Minister Narendra Modi had asked one question repeatedly at the massive rallies he addressed in the Indian capital in the run-up to the Delhi elections: did his audience trust him. He thought he heard them say ‘yes’, but on Tuesday an unparalleled rout faced him as he heard the loudest ‘no’ ever in the annals of Indian democracy.

Indira Gandhi was almost similarly routed in 1977 albeit at a national level, but she had the entire southern belt backing her. On Tuesday Mr Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) collapsed on its face taking a pathetic tally of three seats out of 70 that make up the Delhi assembly. The three were the only ones that Arvind Kejriwal’s Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) could not win.

No exit poll had predicted 67 seats for AAP, the highest prediction stopping at 48. The BJP had refused to accept even that lowly exit poll offer, preferring to claim victory till the bitter end than concede a theoretical defeat. There was palpable apprehension though, because moves had begun to shield Mr Modi and his ‘Chanakya’, BJP president Amit Shah.

Throughout his extended honeymoon since winning the general elections in May last year the Modi-Shah duo claimed credit for all the victories, including the fabulous ones in Maharashtra and Haryana. Now their supporters were trying to palm it off on the poor loser Kiran Bedi, the BJP chief ministerial candidate.

An overwhelmed Kejriwal called for humility and dedication from his energised cadre. He said the election verdict in which his party got more than 54 per cent votes was scary in some ways.

What will the verdict do anyway? For starters, it must have come as oxygen for the old guard in the BJP who had been feeling left out, humiliated or forgotten. Particularly sidelined were party stalwarts from the prized state of Uttar Pradesh where murmurs against the duo from Gujarat have been getting louder. “India is not Gujarat,” said a slogan on the social media.

Mr Kejriwal would not get involved in any such angry outburst. His agenda is clear. Make water and electricity available and affordable for the ordinary people who voted for him. Muslims voted for him too, and even rejoiced that he had rejected the offer of the Shahi Imam of Jama Masjid to support him. Mr Kejriwal had accused the cleric of lacking in patriotic grace because he invited the Pakistan prime minister to the Moghul-era mosque but refused to entertain the Indian counterpart.

The new chief minister will have another priority. On Monday, a day before the results were out, newspapers that usually kill or bury stories that cast blemish on business captains came out with a list of Swiss bank account hol­ders. They included the powerful Ambani brothers and several other big-ticket tycoons.

Mr Kejriwal started this campaign in 2012, and he is not likely to lose focus on it.

The minorities will breathe easier. In his first innings he had set up a special investigating team to probe the anti-Sikh riots in Delhi in 1984. This time he will set up probes in anti-Muslim and anti-Christian violence that surfaced in Delhi since he left office in a huff last year. The fact that no religious polarisation could take place despite provocations by Hindutva groups goes to the credit of alert NGOs that backed Mr Kejriwal.

Could he become the rallying point for the opposition now? West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee thinks so. So does Lalu Yadav and several others. Even the Shiv Sena, an ally of Mr Modi, found occasion to twist the knife: “It was bigger than the Modi wave: it was a tsunami,” said its leader Udhav Thackeray.

It is too early to say if Mr Kejriwal’s victory will herald respect for reason and nudge the government of Mr Modi to resume peace talks with Pakistan, not the least because a large swathe of Delhi voters would want precisely that. Mr Modi is unlikely to heed the advice if it suits him to distract from his defeat by lobbing a few extra shells across the border. On the other hand he might begin to read the writing on the wall, which he refused for three days after the February 7 polls.

Published in Dawn, February 11th, 2015

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