Suddenly, the aura of invincibility surrounding Narendra Modi was shattered.
Although India's election slogans had promised a landslide victory and Prime Minister Modi had repeatedly portrayed himself as sent by God, the results announced on Tuesday were unexpectedly grim.
The 73-year-old Modi is expected to secure a third consecutive term as India's prime minister – a feat only achieved by one other Indian leader – and his Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) won far more parliamentary seats than any other party.
But far from winning by a landslide, the BJP lost dozens of seats and found itself at the mercy of its coalition partners (including some politicians notorious for switching parties frequently) to stay in power, a stark about-face in the 10th year of Modi's transformative government.
India's stock market plummeted as the results became clear. A newly united opposition party rejoiced in defense of the country's democracy. And while Mr. Modi's hold on power was extended, India learned that even a man who typically campaigns for himself seat by seat has limits to his political influence.
Modi struck a more positive note in his statement on X, declaring his coalition government had won a third term. “This is a great achievement in the history of India,” he said.
For Modi, the generous interpretation of this result could be that only through his own push has his party managed to overcome its unpopularity at the local level and weather it all, or that his carefully cultivated brand has now peaked and is no longer immune to the anti-incumbency sentiment that eventually catches up with most politicians.
It is unclear how Mr. Modi will respond: Will he intensify his efforts to reject any challenges to his power, or will he be chastised by the voters' verdict and find himself forced to work with coalition partners who do not share his Hindu nationalist ideals.
“Modi is not known as a consensus builder, but he is very pragmatic,” said Arati Jerath, a New Delhi-based political analyst. “He will need to soften his hardline Hindu nationalist approach to issues. Perhaps we can expect a more moderate tone from him.”
But few doubt that over the next five years, Prime Minister Modi will seek to deepen the enormous impact he has already had on the country.
Under his leadership, the world's most populous country has emerged with a new presence on the international stage, an overhaul of its infrastructure to meet the needs of its 1.4 billion people and new ambitions to shake off a long colonial legacy.
At the same time, Modi has sought to transform a highly diverse country held together by a secular democratic system into an overtly Hindu-first nation, alienating the country's large Muslim minority.
Critics say Mr. Mohammed's increasingly authoritarian stance has created a frightening environment of self-censorship by cracking down on dissent, pushing India's vocal democracy closer to a one-party state, and while the country's economy is growing rapidly, its wealth remains concentrated mainly in the hands of the wealthy at the top.
Born into poverty as the son of a tea seller, Modi has built a cult of personality, spent billions on infrastructure and welfare and tilted the country's democratic institutions in his favour to become India's most powerful and popular leader in decades.
His ultimate goal was to consolidate his position as one of the most important prime ministers in India's nearly 75 years as a republic and to make the BJP the only credible national governing force in the country.
But Tuesday's results signaled a sharp turnaround for India's embattled main opposition party, the Indian National Congress, which was seen by many as irretrievably weakened after heavy defeats in the past two elections.
Once the dominant party at the center of Indian politics, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has struggled for years to find its direction and offer an ideological alternative to the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). But the BJP and its coalition government gained momentum in this election by attacking Modi's government on issues such as unemployment, social justice and the prime minister's ties to India's richest men.
When Rahul Gandhi, the face of the Indian National Congress, tried to boost his own profile by leading long-distance marches across India last year, the Bharatiya Janata Party embroiled him in court and expelled him from Parliament. He was later reinstated by India's Supreme Court and faces re-election on Tuesday.
As the early vote results came in, Gandhi, 53, said his fight was not just against the BJP, but also against all government institutions that have sided with Modi in trying to cripple the opposition through arrests and other punitive measures.
“This was about protecting the Constitution,” he said, holding up a small copy of the Constitution that he carried and showed during campaign speeches.
More than six weeks after voting began in the world's largest democratic election, exit polls released on Saturday showed Mr Modi's party on track to win comfortably, but there were signs throughout the campaign that he was concerned about the outcome.
He crisscrossed the country for more than 200 rallies over nearly two months and gave dozens of interviews, using his charisma to mask the party's weaknesses. In his speeches, he frequently veered away from the party's “Rising India” message to counter accusations that he favors business and caste elites. He also dropped his once-subtle dog whistles aimed at India's 200 million Muslims, directly demonizing them by name instead.
As things stand, Modi needs to win at least 33 seats from his allies by nightfall to surpass the 272-seat minimum needed to form a government.
Two regional parties in particular will be kingmakers: the Telugu Desam Party, which will have 16 seats in the southern state of Andhra Pradesh, and the Janata Dal (United) Party, which will have 12 seats in the eastern state of Bihar.
Both parties are avowedly secular, raising hopes among Modi's opponents that their influence could slow his efforts to transform Indian democracy into a Hindu-first state.
Modi's hardest defeat came in Uttar Pradesh, India's most populous northern state with a population of about 240 million, where his party leads the state government and won 62 of the state's 80 lower house seats in the last election in 2019.
As vote counting entered its final stages on Tuesday evening, the BJP was leading by just 33 seats in the state. In Varanasi, Mr. Modi's own constituency, its lead of 500,000 seats last time had narrowed to about 150,000.
The defeat in Faizabad constituency in particular illustrates how some of the prime minister's biggest policies have struggled to connect with voters.
The constituency is home to the ornate Ram temple of Ayodhya, built on disputed land between Hindus and Muslims. The temple's construction was a cornerstone of the nearly century-old Hindu nationalist movement that brought Modi to power. Modi hoped that a grand opening for the temple just before the election start would unite his Hindu base and win new supporters.
Some BJP insiders say the party's flaunting of the temple may have offended many Hindus who are at the bottom of the rigid caste hierarchy. Opposition parties have criticized Modi for pursuing a pro-caste agenda that denies disadvantaged Hindus a chance to reverse centuries of oppression.
“Too much emphasis has been put on the Ram temple issue and the opposition has banded together,” said Subhash Punia, 62, a farmer from Rajasthan who supports Prime Minister Modi and was waiting outside the BJP headquarters in Delhi on Tuesday.
Modi had set himself lofty goals in this election of gaining a foothold in the wealthier south to make up for potential losses in his Hindi-speaking stronghold in the north.
He broke new ground in Kerala, a Left-dominated state that has long been hostile to his ideology, but across the south his party struggled to surpass the 29 of 129 seats it won in the last election.
Perhaps the biggest disappointment for the BJP in south India is that it once again appears to have failed to win a single seat out of the 40 in Tamil Nadu, a state with its own strong cultural and linguistic identity.
Modi campaigned heavily on the ground and visited the coastal town for two days of meditation as the polls drew to a close.
“Modi and his BJP's antics will not win my Tamil heart,” said S Ganesan, a waiter at a hotel in Kanniyakumari, a town visited by Modi.
Mujib Mashal, Alex Traveli, Hari Kumar and Samir Yasir Reporting from New Delhi, Suhasini Raj From Varanasi, India Pragati KB Originally from Bangalore, India.
