Modi's Failure

Why India is losing faith in its strongman leader

- Robert F. Worth

On a winter afternoon in January 2024, Prime Minister Narendra Modi stood before a podium, gazing out at a handpicked audience of the Indian elite: billionaires, Bollywood actors, cricket stars, nationalist politicians.

Modi had come to the north-central city of Ayodhya, in the state of Uttar Pradesh, to consecrate the still-unfinished temple behind him, with its seven shrines, 160-foot-high dome, and baby-faced statue of the Hindu god Ram, carved in black stone and covered in jewels. He did not mention the fact that the temple was being built on a contested site where Hindu radicals had torn down a 16th-century mosque three decades earlier, setting off years of protests and legal struggle.

Instead, Modi described the temple as an emblem of India's present and future greatness-its rising economic might, its growing navy, its moon missions, and, most of all, its immense human energy and potential. The temple signified India's historic triumph over the "mentality of slavery," he said. This nation of nearly 1.5 billion was shedding its old secular creed and, despite the fact that 200 million of its citizens are Muslim, being reborn as a land of Hindunationalist ideals. "The generations after a thousand years will remember our nation-building efforts today," he told the crowd.

Among the tens of millions of Indians who watched that speech on TV was 42-year-old Luv Shukla, who lives on the edge of a small town about a three-hour drive from Ayodhya. I met him on a hot day in June, and we chatted while sitting in plastic chairs outside the tiny electronics shop he has run since he was 16.