Transfiguring India | The Indian Express

Transfiguring India | The Indian Express

Written by Ashutosh Varshney |Updated: May 27, 2019 9:56:53 am

The writer is Sol Goldman Professor of International Studies and the Social Sciences at Brown University, where he also directs the Center for Contemporary South Asia at the Watson Institute. He is a contributing editor for The Indian Express.

Transfiguring India

Are we on the path to a Hindu Rashtra? Much will depend on how the electoral verdict is read by the victor

One could suggest that the election verdict was about the electorate’s comparative assessment of Rahul Gandhi and Narendra Modi as leaders, and people chose Modi over Rahul. (Express photo)

Every election outcome has two aspects: the statistical and the interpretative. Once the results are out, the purely statistical side has few mysteries to offer, unless we enter the complicated terrain of statistical inference. Basically, data show who won and who lost, revealing also the scale of victories and defeats. The interpretative side, however, is another matter. It is, among other things, about meanings. What does the victory signify? Here we enter an analytically — and politically — embattled domain.