The southern eclipse

WHO WOULD have thought it would turn out this way. In the summer of 2008, the BJP was bang in the middle of its impossible and wrenching generational change, from the Vajpayee-Advani era to the next one. Factionalism was intense; inner-party warfare was acquiring the dimensions of an existential crisis. In this gloomy atmosphere, Karnataka gave the party the best gift it had got since its election to office in New Delhi in 1998. A near-outright victory in a southern Indian state was, after all, about as momentous for the BJP as coming to power in the national capital.

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