NEW DELHI -- Narendra Modi, India's prime minister, powered his way Thursday toward the nation's biggest re-election win in decades.
His brand of Hindu nationalism and pro-business policies seem to have played well, despite concerns that he had not delivered on promises to create jobs.
With most of the votes counted, Modi was on track to be the first Indian prime minister to lead his party to majorities in Parliament in back-to-back elections in nearly 50 years.
Many Indians see Modi, 68, as a nationalist icon. He has confronted China, nearly gone to war with Pakistan and brought India closer to the United States. He calls himself India's chowkidar -- watchman -- and his success mirrors the rise of right-leaning populist figures around the world.
His detractors say his policies are pulling India's delicate social fabric apart. His commitment to giving more power to the country's Hindu majority has struck fear in the Muslim minority and left the country increasingly polarized.
Under him, mob lynchings have shot up, Muslim representation in Parliament has dropped to its lowest level in decades and right-wing Hindus have felt emboldened to push an extreme agenda, including lionizing the man who shot to death the independence hero Mahatma Gandhi.
Modi's Bharatiya Janata Party has built what critics call a personality cult around him, and in speeches, he routinely refers to himself in the third person.
"Are you happy that Modi kills by entering homes?" he said at a recent rally, recalling the airstrike he ordered on Pakistan in February. "Doesn't your chest puff out with pride?"
The crowd cheered.
Political analysts call him "larger than life," "a cinematic character," and someone who displays an innate sense for "what people are looking for."
"Modi has embedded himself in every Indian's consciousness," said Arati Jerath, a newspaper columnist.
In contrast, Rahul Gandhi, the leader of the opposition Congress Party, is widely perceived, even by some supporters, as cultivating too gentle an image. And though his party cast itself as a unifying force, the results indicated that Congress, once dominant, had suffered a second-consecutive disastrous loss.
India's election was the largest democratic exercise ever. In seven phases over 39 days, more than 600 million Indians cast ballots at 1 million polling stations, spread across densely populated megacities and far-flung villages, from high in the Himalayan mountains to tropical islands in the Andaman Sea.
Experts say the force of Modi's personality, with many Indians intensely for him or against him, drove turnout to 67%, the highest the nation has ever seen.
Even some voters who are worried about the economy or don't like the way Modi has stirred up communal divisions say they still see him as the best leader for India now.
"Farmers are in trouble," said Vinay Tyagi, a wheat and sugar cane farmer in the swing state of Uttar Pradesh. "But we still voted for the [Bharatiya Janata Party] because there was no alternative for us. The other candidates weren't good."
To keep his job, Modi campaigned relentlessly, holding 142 rallies and covering 65,000 miles. On the last night before voting ended, he meditated in a Himalayan cave in the same area where he had wandered more than 50 years earlier as a young man searching for purpose.
Modi will be the first two-time prime minister ever to come from a lower caste. He grew up in a small town north of Ahmadabad, in the state of Gujarat. He calls himself a lowly chaiwalla, a tea-seller, a clear jab at India's elite.
A Section on 05/24/2019