{"id":52951,"date":"2024-06-01T18:50:58","date_gmt":"2024-06-01T08:50:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/abnews.com.au\/?p=52951"},"modified":"2024-06-01T18:50:58","modified_gmt":"2024-06-01T08:50:58","slug":"hindu-holy-city-votes-as-indias-six-week-election-ends","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/aglowmedia.com.au\/?p=52951","title":{"rendered":"Hindu holy city votes as India&#8217;s six-week election ends"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>India&#8217;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.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>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&#8217;s majority faith.<\/p>\n<p>The 73-year-old&#8217;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.<\/p>\n<p>It is one of the final cities to vote in India&#8217;s gruelling election and where public support for Modi&#8217;s ever-closer alignment of religion and politics burns brightest.<br \/>\n&#8220;Modi is obviously winning,&#8221; Vijayendra Kumar Singh, who works in one of the popular pilgrimage destination&#8217;s many hotels, told AFP.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;There&#8217;s a sense of pride with everything he does, and that&#8217;s why people vote for him.&#8221;<br \/>\nModi 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.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>India&#8217;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 [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":52952,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[1651],"class_list":["post-52951","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-english","tag-hindu-holy-city-votes-as-indias-six-week-election-ends"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/aglowmedia.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52951","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/aglowmedia.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/aglowmedia.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aglowmedia.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aglowmedia.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=52951"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/aglowmedia.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52951\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aglowmedia.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/aglowmedia.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=52951"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aglowmedia.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=52951"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aglowmedia.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=52951"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}