The line from the Guardian/BBC axis is that Narendra Modi is a dangerous blood-thirsty right-wing nationalist, a sectarian Hindu who oversaw the massacre of Muslims in his home state of Gujurat. For added measure he was associated with the RSS, a uniformed Hindu-fascist organisation. Despite all this disapproval from the left-wing media establishment he has just won more votes in a free election than anyone on the planet…

The reality is he has risen from being a lower caste, poor chai-wallah, a boy selling tea at a train station, to successfully running Gujarat – a state with a population of 60 million – which has outperformed the rest of chronically corrupt India on all economic indicators. The Indian supreme court found there was no evidence that Modi allowed or even encouraged the mob violence in 2002 in Gujarat that led to some thousand deaths. The RSS is closer to Baden Powell’s boy scouts than Hitler’s brownshirts. Modi is a vegetarian, technocrat who believes that India’s Hindus and India’s Hindu culture should command more respect. In that it is fair to say he is a conservative nationalist.

The born-to-rule Congress Party has been swept from power, the once great idealistic party of Gandhi that brought Fabian socialism to India had degenerated into an arrogant, corrupt, nepotistic kleptocracy. Modi offers his fellow members of India’s lower castes the prospect of social mobility, competent government and a high growth economy based on free market reforms, accelerated privatisations and technological progress. Modi’s campaign emphasises optimistically that India can become the largest market in the world and in a way reminiscent of Ronald Reagan, Modi promises to make India proud of its future. His campaign anthem commercial rocks too:

India has won! भारत की विजय। अच्छे दिन आने वाले हैं।