In May 2019, Narendra Modi won the world’s largest election. Defying expectations, he led his Bharatiya Janata Party to a resounding victory, with the highest vote share for any party in thirty years, and was re-elected as India’s Prime Minister.

What accounts for the scale of Modi’s win? Why, despite economic hardship and social strife, did Indians vote so overwhelmingly for him and the BJP? This book explains the economic, social and cultural processes that shaped political passions in India during the spring and summer of 2019. It takes an interdisciplinary approach, bringing together a stellar team of economists, political scientists, sociologists, historians and geographers to explain Modi’s win. Together, the contributors compel us to take seriously the ‘structures of feeling’ in politics.

Love him or hate him, Modi secured for himself a decisive re-election as India’s Prime Minister. Passionate politics is essential reading for anyone who wants to understand how that happened.

Indrajit Roy is Professor of Global Development Politics at the University of York

‘Departing from the conventional scholarship on elections, dominated by psephology and discussions of the real, imagined or mistaken interests of sociological groups, this innovative collection of essays focuses instead on the role of feeling, play and aspiration in political life. The result is a stimulating analysis of citizenship and nationalism in contemporary India.’
Faisal Devji, Professor of Indian History, University of Oxford

‘At a time when politics in many national contexts is marked by heightened emotions of anger, outrage, paranoia, hatred and adoration, it has become imperative to give emotion due analytic value. This volume is an excellent example of what such a study could look like. Contributors from a variety of disciplines show how the outcome of the 2019 national elections in India cannot be explained by conventional metrics alone and require a recognition of the role that emotions play in determining political outcomes. This volume will be of huge interest for anyone interested in passionate politics!’
Mukulika Banerjee, Associate Professor of Anthropology, London School of Economics and Political Science

‘India's 2019 national elections have challenged the core assumptions of its post-1947 polity. We need a proper understanding of what exactly happened, how and why. A volume like this is hugely necessary. It is remarkable in its breadth of coverage and notable in its range of insights. It will advance our understanding in very significant ways.’
Ashutosh Varshney, Sol Goldman Professor of International Studies and the Social Sciences, Brown University

‘An engaging exploration of the passions and emotions – fear, awe, love, hate, anger, aspiration, anxiety, protection, care, trust – that suffuse politics. The unusual lens of the 2019 general election in India provokes an interrogation of standard assumptions about the rational voter, as well as reflections on the mutual imbrication of emotion and reason in shaping how political choices are made.’
Niraja Gopal Jayal, Avantha Chair in King’s India Institute, King’s College London

‘The emphatic, expanded support of India’s electorate for the incumbent Modi government in the general elections of 2019 has puzzled observers. Indrajit Roy gathers a diverse range of scholars to view these elections through the prism of emotions. The result is an engaging, vibrant, sometimes provocative, sometimes perplexing portrait of an electorate driven by an overwhelming but contradictory panorama of emotions, ranging from fear, hate and anger at one end to adoration and hope at the other. This is a valuable addition to our understanding of a time of tumultuous upheaval and change in India’s political landscape.’
Harsh Mander, author and human rights activist