The year 2014 was a consequential one for the Bharatiya Janata Party and India. Will 2024 also be so?

Is this election about stopping the rise of Narendra Modi and his alleged distortion of the ‘idea of India’ as conceived by its founders, or the beginning of a dharma-inspired ‘second republic?’

In 2014, the BJP, under the leadership of Modi, won a clear majority in the Lok Sabha elections. The National Democratic Alliance’s triumph ended a nearly two-and-a-half-decade run of mostly messy coalition governments. In 2019, the BJP further improved its tally, cementing its parliamentary majority and its ability to ring in transformational laws and policies. Most of the initiatives taken by the Modi-led NDA have been aimed at positioning Bharat as a ‘Vishwa Guru’—an exemplar of moral righteousness, a pluralistic democracy led by dharma and drawing sustenance from the wellspring of an eternal Hindu universalism.

But this shift towards India’s Hindu ethos has prompted the Opposition and many allied commentators to fear the rise of a second republic—a ‘Hindu Rashtra’—moored to an implacable ultra-nationalist and majoritarian dogma. The INDIA bloc has declared the 2024 election as the last opportunity to stop the rise of Modi and his idea of India.

Evocative, anecdotal, argumentative, and deeply researched, Modi and India: 2024 and the Battle for Bharat chronicles the emergence of, and the battle for, a new republic in the making.