Vote Tally Suggests That Stalemate and Instability Lie Ahead for India

Hindu nationalists surged but fell short of a majority Tuesday in ballot-counting after India’s parliamentary elections, all but ensuring a future of weak, unstable governments for this country of 970 million people.

The Bharatiya Janata Party, whose pro-Hindu agenda threatened to ignite ancient communal tensions, is certain to emerge as the largest party in Parliament by the time all 300 million-plus votes are tallied.

Yet it was unclear Tuesday whether BJP leaders will be able to find enough partners to capture a majority in the 545-seat lower house, or Lok Sabha--and whether they will be able to enact the more controversial elements of their sectarian agenda.

The Congress Party, which has ruled India for all but a few years in the five decades since independence, trailed, as did a third group, the United Front.

But together, they threatened to challenge the BJP with a coalition government of their own.

The BJP will probably get the first chance. Even if it can form a government, the fractured verdict delivered by Indian voters seems likely to blunt the most divisive aspects of the party’s plans, political analysts said. That’s because many of the parties the BJP needs to form a government oppose key elements of its pro-Hindu agenda.

The drama will play out over the next 10 days, as the remaining votes are counted and the political horse-trading begins.

As leaders of the major parties spent Tuesday predicting bright futures for themselves, many neutral observers said India is headed for months more of stalemate and political chaos. The country, the world’s most populous democracy, has already had four governments in less than two years.

“We are entering a period of considerable uncertainty,” said Rajni Kothari, director of the Center for the Study of Developing Societies in New Delhi. “Whatever party takes power is likely to be weak, opportunistic and short-lived.”

By late Tuesday, the BJP and its allies had won or were leading in 249 parliamentary districts, 24 shy of a majority; the Congress Party and allies had won or were leading in 166 districts; the United Front and other small parties had captured or were ahead in the remainder of the seats being contested.

Tuesday’s results brought to a close an extraordinary campaign that propelled Hindu nationalists of the BJP as close as they have ever come to capturing a majority in Parliament. A political party rooted in the religion shared by 85% of Indians, the BJP rode to prominence on a promise of clean government untainted by the corruption and failure of its predecessors. The party and its popular leader--the donnish Atal Bihari Vajpayee--also pledged to scale back the country’s 7-year-old economic liberalization, which has alienated many Indians.

But the BJP’s most committed members also pushed an aggressive agenda designed to challenge the secular tradition of Indian politics and enshrine Hinduism as a virtual state religion. Many of their proposals seemed aimed directly at India’s 100 million Muslims, and critics said the policies could reignite the communal violence that has plagued this country for centuries.

Their more controversial proposals included a ban on the slaughter of cows, which are considered holy by Hindus; the destruction of Muslim mosques allegedly built atop Hindu temples centuries ago; and abolition of a separate code of family law for Muslims. The BJP slogan: “One nation, one people, one culture.”

Just as the party seemed on the verge of capturing a majority, it was stopped by the astonishing entry of Sonia Gandhi into the campaign. Gandhi, the Italian-born widow of slain Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi, crisscrossed India, warning vast crowds in her accented Hindi that the BJP was a dark, divisive force.

“Sonia checkmated the BJP,” said Rajesh Pilot, a Congress Party member of Parliament and a Cabinet minister in Rajiv Gandhi’s government. “She saved the Congress Party.”

BJP leaders said Tuesday that they still hoped they could cobble together a majority by wooing smaller parties. They conceded, though, that they will probably be constrained from enacting all their proposals. “We will have to reach a consensus before we can act,” said K. L. Sharma, a lawmaker and BJP spokesman.

Gulam Nabi Azad, Congress’ general secretary, predicted Tuesday that smaller parties will reject the BJP and that his party will have a chance to head the next government. “For 50 years, India has had a tradition of keeping religion and politics separate,” Azad said. “What the BJP has been trying to do is bring the two together.”

The failure of any party to capture a majority Tuesday underscored the political vacuum left by the Congress Party, which dominated Indian politics from independence in 1947 until the mid-1990s, when it was consumed by corruption scandals. As the Congress Party has imploded, no party has risen to take its place.

Political analysts said Tuesday that instability is likely to be the lingering leitmotif of Indian politics. “This is unfortunate,” said C. P. Bhambri, a political science professor at Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi. “But I think India will need to go through another election to sort this out.”