Kapil Komireddi in The New York Times:
For more than three decades, Prime Minister Narendra Modi of India has cultivated a political mystique sustained by fear, awe and reverence, giving rise to one of the most formidable cults of personality in the democratic world.
That image has disintegrated.
What began as a scattered outcry by students over the leaking of questions on medical school entrance exams morphed over several weeks into the most politically consequential mutiny against the prime minister of his 12 years in power.
A broad coalition of students, recent graduates, unemployed workers, farmers and a handful of celebrities rallied behind the movement. In an unmatched display of public ridicule, they mocked the most powerful Indian leader in two generations on the streets and across social media before marching on Parliament in New Delhi. Police officers, armed with batons and tear gas, descended on protesters. But last weekend Mr. Modi, forced into a corner, ultimately acquiesced to the resignation of his education minister — the unlikeliest of concessions from a man whose defining political trait has been his unwillingness to yield.
This summer’s uprising was about far more than leaked examinations. It was a test of Indian democracy’s capacity to correct itself.
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