India’s six-week election reaches its final day of voting Saturday, including in the holy city Prime Minister Narendra Modi has used as a staging post for his Hindu nationalist agenda.

Modi is widely expected to win a third term in office after results are announced Tuesday, in large part due to the cultivation of his image as an aggressive champion of India’s majority faith.

The 73-year-old’s constituency of Varanasi is the spiritual capital of Hinduism, where devotees from around India come to cremate deceased loved ones by the Ganges river.

It is one of the final cities to vote in India’s gruelling election and where public support for Modi’s ever-closer alignment of religion and politics burns brightest.
“Modi is obviously winning,” Vijayendra Kumar Singh, who works in one of the popular pilgrimage destination’s many hotels, told AFP.

“There’s a sense of pride with everything he does, and that’s why people vote for him.”
Modi has already led the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) to two landslide victories in 2014 and 2019, forged in large part by his appeal to the Hindu faithful.