To justify the state terror, Modi turned to Islamophobia with disastrous consequences across society. Mobs marched into private residences in search of young people in inter-faith relationships. These self-styled "anti-Romeo" squads terrorized Muslim and Dalit youth for befriending Hindu girls and detained hundreds of young men from minority groups. In June, a mob in Kashmir beat a police officer to death after an altercation said Ruchira Gupta adding:
"Vigilantes raped Dalit, Muslim, and Adivasi girls with impunity. The lawyer representing the family of an 8-year-old Muslim girl, who was allegedly raped by the caretaker of a Hindu temple, was forced to withdraw after repeated threats and intimidation by BJP leaders. The father of a 17-year-old Dalit girl who says a BJP leader raped her was arrested on false charges and died mysteriously in a police station."
About the growing extremism under Modi, Ruchira Gupta writes:
"One candidate for Parliament in particular illustrates the growing extremism of the BJP. In Bhopal, a city of 1.8 million people, Modi personally endorsed Pragya Singh Thakur, who is out on bail after almost nine years in jail for alleged involvement in a terrorist bombing that killed six Muslims."
Pragya Thakur's main election plank appears to be revenge against Indian Muslims for 400-year-old humiliations. At her campaign launch, she boasted that 27 years ago she helped demolish a 16th-century (Babri) mosque in northern India:
"I climbed atop the structure and broke it, and I feel extremely proud that God gave me this opportunity."
Thakur, like Modi, is a proponent of a far-right militant ideology called Hindutva, which was invented in the 1920s by an all-male vigilante group called the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS). Its founders corresponded with Adolf Hitler and met with Benito Mussolini in 1929 to model their party along fascist lines. A member of the group assassinated Mahatma Gandhi in 1948.
On the campaign trail, Thakur said Gandhi's assassin "was a patriot, is a patriot, and will remain a patriot."
By nominating an alleged terrorist as a lawmaker, Modi has made his party's agenda clear. He's shifted his rhetoric from fighting corruption to generating hate.
Thakur defeated her opponent, Digvijaya Singh, a two-term chief minister of Madhya Pradesh state and a senior member of the main opposition Congress party.
Polarizing campaign
Modi and other party leaders frequently portrayed the political opposition as being in league with Muslim majority Pakistan, and called on voters to honor soldiers who died in the February attack by supporting the BJP, the Los Angeles Times said.
"Modi and Amit Shah (BJP President) ran perhaps the most polarizing campaign in Indian history, an acknowledgement that they didn't think their policy record was adequate," said Irfan Nooruddin, director of the Georgetown India Initiative at Georgetown University.
Their tactics "showed a willingness to pander to the most extreme elements of the Hindu right wing," Nooruddin said. "A big win this week will be interpreted as vindication of this strategy, and, minimally, that there was no cost to the polarization caused over the past five years."
Academic Manindra Nath Thakur, who teaches at New Delhi's Jawaharlal Nehru University, told Al Jazeera that Modi will face virtually no opposition in his second straight term as prime minister. He also said that Modi's win means that the discourse of forming a Hindu state will remain very dominant.
Al Jazeera reported that as results suggesting a massive BJP win began to emerge, India's Muslims said they were worried about the future of secularism in the country.
"This election shows that the BJP's anti Muslim campaign has succeeded," shopkeeper Faizan Zafar, 25, told Al Jazeera in New Delhi. "This time it looks like Muslims will be finished and they will declare a 'Hindu Rashtra' (theocratic Hindu state)."
According to AFP, the campaign, estimated to have cost more than $7 billion, was awash with insults -- Modi was likened to Hitler and a "gutter insect" -- as well as fake news in Facebook and WhatsApp's biggest markets. BJP outspent Congress by six times on Facebook and Google advertising, data showed, and by as much as 20 times overall, according to Reuters.
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