NEW DELHI: Eight months from today, Narendra Modi was revered as India’s most popular leader in a long time. His Hindu nationalist party, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) swept the general election and gained victory.

However, now Narendra Modi has met with a huge challenge to his political authority. Since December, protesters in India have taken to the streets to rebel against a new citizenship law that discriminates against Muslims.

Demonstrations are ongoing amidst official restrictions on public gatherings and the risk of violence that has already taken the lives of more than a dozen protesters.

Neither Modi nor the protesters are showing any signs of surrender. During a rally in New Delhi in December, he said that the controversial Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) had “nothing to do with the Muslims of the soil of India.”

The CAA is said to be the most recent move Modi has taken as part of his plan to advance Hindu nationalism in secular India. The BJP still has popular support, some news sources say that these moves could cost him greatly in the long run.

According to a news source, the Prime Minister’s fate will evidently depend on how his rivals prepare themselves.

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