On April 15, 2025, the Clough Center hosted Dr. Chandra Mallampalli, who delivered a talk about the results of India’s general elections in 2024. This talk was a part of the Center’s 2025 Spring Seminars, in which speakers discuss elections held across the world. Chandra Mallampalli is a historian of modern South Asia interested in religious pluralism, nationalism, and the secular state. At the Clough Center, his research examines challenges facing India’s multi-religious democracy, the rise of Hindu nationalism and violence against religious minorities.

Mallampalli structured his presentation in two parts. First, he addressed the results of the elections and the implications for the future of democracy in India. Then, he discussed the concept of liberalism in entanglement with British imperialism, with a focus on Indian politics. He raised questions about whether liberalism has a time span and what the paradoxes of liberalism are.

India’s general election was held from April to June 2024, in which the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) won most of the seats, but it did not manage to achieve an absolute majority. For an absolute majority, the winning party needs to gain 272 seats out of 543 seats of the parliament, while the BJP could take only 240 seats. BJP’s failure to win the absolute majority was a surprise and a positive sign to the opposition, which has been under pressure from the BJP. Narendra Modi, the current prime minister of India, is the leader of the BJP, which advocates a Hindu nationalism. This was the third consecutive term that the BJP won most of the seats in elections. It received a large support from the Hindu classes, some castes like Dalits, and even from underprivileged classes such as some poor Muslims.

The BJP utilized four main strategies in its campaign: evading election regulations to receive money from supporters, discrediting the opposition, suppressing academics, and taking over the media. The BJP’s campaign gained a huge amount of money from its donors. Due to the regulations against donating money directly to the election campaigns, the BJP devised strategies such as election bond schemes to evade legal obstacles. Dr. Mallampalli described the BJP-led government as a threat to democratic institutions of India, which tries to take over with money and crack down on the opposition. The BJP has taken hold of widely used social media in India, like WhatsApp groups, to promote rhetoric against minorities such as Muslims. The BJP has gone after the opposition press that were not supportive during the elections, and made accusations against the opposition figures, including Rahul Gandhi. The BJP-led government cut the funds of state universities and deployed forces to university campuses to repress students who opposed the government.

Relying on a Hindu nationalist ideology, the BJP has discriminated against minorities from the Muslim and Christian communities, portrayed as foreigners. This is a part of their discourse that holds that India should be a Hindu state just as Pakistan is a Muslim state. However, this would be in contrast with the long-standing history of pluralism and democracy in India. The animosity toward Muslims and Christians is not new, though, and dates back to British colonialism in the 19th century.

Mallampalli closed by voicing concerns about the sustainability of liberal democracy. There is a debate between the proponents and the opponents of liberal democracy. On the one hand, the proponents believe that liberal democratic institutions are not just enough and do not include all people. On the other hand, opponents contend that liberal democratic institutions give too much to minorities and neglect the majority. Mallapali mentioned the limitations of liberal democracy according to the discussions in the context of the U.S. that Aziz Rana addresses in his book, The Constitutional Bind.