Instead of gaining a parliamentary majority large enough to amend the Indian constitution, Modi’s BJP is now slated to lose its absolute majority, and Modi must face forming a coalition to keep his job. There are enough right wing/Hindu Nationalists aligned with Modi to form what should be a stable coalition, but it is still a massive electoral failure when most were expecting a landslide, especially given exit polling numbers. What appeared to be an unchallenged Hindu-Nationalist agenda just weeks ago has come crashing back to reality, hemorrhaging support across the board to a very different view of India’s future.
The NDA (Hindu Nationalist coalition) has faced immense, grassroots resistance to its mandate across the country from a rival coalition, I.N.D.I.A (Indian National Developmental Inclusive Alliance). I.N.D.I.A is broad coalition ranging from Communists to SocDems to Regionalists and even right wing nationalists, all united by a common vision that Modi and his Hindu Nationalist agenda can not be the future of the country. In addition, this strong showing from I.N.D.I.A has been consistent across the board, and coalition members have performed well in both seat sharing and non-seat sharing arrangements. This is vital for long-term resistance to a party like BJP, which employs the strategy of being comparatively well organized, thus allowing it to field vast quantities of mid candidates and still win elections because the opposition to BJP was too divided or even more mid.
My personal thoughts, if you happen to be interested.
Though this is great news, Modi and his potential coalition still have won the election. So where do we go from here and what does the future look like? Personally, I believe we may be looking something close to the peak performance of what the I.N.D.I.A coalition is capable of as it is currently structured and in opposition to BJP. Though this election performance was a pleasant surprise given the circumstances, the main reason BJP was able to come to such a powerful position in the first place was its organization, promises regarding a future vision of India (though BJP has not actually accomplished much), and lack of serious inspiring competition. The fact of the matter is that in the long term, to challenge BJP with a leader like Modi, you need a widely popular vision that people believe in and a leader the people believe can guide the country towards this vision. The I.N.D.I.A coalition, as it is currently structured, is purely an anti-NDA alliance. This is not a vision that can result in a stable governing coalition long enough to be effective, and being anti-something is not an effective, inspiring long term unifier (coughcough USA coughcough Democratic Party). In my opinion there are three possible futures of India: One very terrible future would be seeing our present day India continue along its current path where it slides ever deeper into right wing politics and religious extremism while the people of India suffer under intensifying capitalist exploitation. Potentially even more dangerous than the first future would be the balkanization of India along the many ethnic, tribal, religious, and ideological divisions within the country, which could result in absolutely unprecedented human suffering and exploitation. Lastly, there remains the only prosperous potential future of India I can envision, which is one where it is united under a common vision of liberation via socialism.
You’ll have to be getting into some complex Indian state level politics to get the full picture, but I’ll do my best to make it as clear as possible.
You already provided the exact answer. These right wing nationalists, known as SS(UBT), who are in the anti-Modi I.N.D.I.A coalition are in it for that exact reason. They are strictly motivated by the larger goal of the coalition, which is to be anti-NDA (which is to be anti-Modi).
The reason why they are anti-Modi, in short: at the time they were a unified political party known as SHS, which is also Hindu Nationalist in nature (more so than BJP), ran jointly in the Maharashtra legislative assembly. There was a huge falling out over power sharing agreements, which resulted in both parties failing to form a coalition government together. Since BJP had won the most seats but failed to form a government in the allotted time, the job went to the second best performing party, which was SHS. Eventually, a government was reluctantly formed by SHS with the INC and NCP (state level, secular, regionalist party), and SHS would hold the chief minister position.
But the story gets crazy here. A request was formally filed by a prominent member of SHS who wanted to break the fragile alliance and rejoin a coalition with the BJP. The chief minister repeatedly ignored these requests. Then, immediately after the elections in 2022, the member who filed to rejoin the BJP coalition, along with 2/3 of the SHS members of the legislature literally RAN AWAY. Like, they straight up fled the state and ran away to a BJP controlled state and nobody could contact them at all. Accusations of huge bribes came into play and all that you’d expect out of a situation like this. All kinds of crazy shit happens with no-confidence votes and Supreme Court cases over who is the real party leader, and eventually the Supreme Court rules that the breakaway faction which supports BJP is the official SHS party.
So now the party has officially split into SHS which is pro-BJP and got to keep the kids in the divorce (logos, elected officials, offices, etc), and SS(UBT) which is anti-BJP.
Anyway if you thought this was crazy or interesting, I highly suggest reading more about these events, because it took place over 4 years and is a truly wild read.