Moreover, the party's majority obscured the carefully worked out caste and regional alliances inside it. These strategic alliances with segments within lower and formerly "untouchable" castes or Dalits, as well as "tribal" populations, extended the social bases of the party beyond its core of urban upper castes in northern and western India, roughly a fifth of the Indian electorate. [...]
In 2014, Hindu nationalism essentially tied together disparate allies and agendas in a "Make India Great Again" moment. Muslims and Christians were vilified as non-Hindu "others," and attacked verbally and physically after the elections. But Hindu nationalists have always faced a fundamental obstacle: caste. [...]
Since 2014, Modi's overtures to historically subordinated castes has ended up angering the party's upper-caste votebank even as Dalits are shifting loyaltiesaway from the BJP after recent incidents of caste-based violence against them. [...]
But, after some initial successes, the reality of India as a federal union of states rather than a monolithic nation has become apparent. Indian states are divided linguistically and along borders of historical regions that long predate Hindu nationalism or the modern idea of India. [...]
With 93 percent earning less than the minimum taxable income and 98.5 percent not paying any income tax, the Modi government sought to raise revenues through indirect taxes. For the sake of the Hindu nation-in-the-making, buyers had to pay more for their consumption and sellers had to part with more of their earnings. The hasty introduction of the GST and the onerous new reporting standards hurt small business owners in the form of lower sales and earnings.
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