A seminal moment in Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s unsuccessful campaign to retain his parliamentary majority occurred days before India’s marathon election began in April.
Speaking in the constituency that includes the Hindu temple town of Ayodhya, lawmaker Lallu Singh said that his and Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party was seeking a supermajority in parliament’s lower chamber to make material changes to the constitution.
Opposition parties latched onto Singh’s remark to assert, without evidence, that the BJP would amend modern India’s founding document to strip Hindus at the bottom of the caste hierarchy of access to affirmative action policies.