The World's Biggest Deepfake Election Just Gave Us a Glimpse Into November's Chaos

If India's most recent elections proved anything, it's that the "world's largest democracy" may yet still be worthy of that name. The results of the six-week cycle, which saw more than 640 million voters turn out across the subcontinent, dealt a steep blow to the demagogic Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party, which lost its single-party hold over the majority of seats in India's lower house of Parliament, the Lok Sabha. The Hindu nationalist BJP still snapped up most of the electorate's votes, and Modi is bound to continue as head of state, but he and his cronies will no longer enjoy the untrammeled federal power they have held for the past half-decade (forget the 400 seats they'd aimed to nab in this election). The INDIA Alliance, a multiparty coalition of opposition candidates, has flipped dozens of seats, and the BJP will have to rely on parliamentary allies--who already desire some significant changes to Modi's Hindu supremacist governing style--for a majority. In light of the clean sweep Modi and Co. achieved in 2019, the increasingly authoritarian grip they brought to India's institutions, the economic depression that has afflicted Indians in the Modi years, the protest movements that resultantly flared up, and the formerly BJP-supporting constituencies the party lost this round, it's hard to view this outcome as anything but a popular rebuke of Modi's antidemocratic excesses.