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      India-Pakistan Cricket World Cup Match Brings 34,000 Fans to Long Island

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      Normally at this time of year, the grassy southeastern corner of Eisenhower Park in East Meadow, N.Y., is a place for softball games, family picnics and a few cricket players enjoying a warm weekend afternoon. On Sunday, that space was transformed into a stage for one of the most-watched global sporting events of the year.More than 34,000 fans and cricket dignitaries squeezed into a temporary stadium built in the last three months in the Long Island park to watch the most anticipated match of the T20 Cricket World Cup: India versus Pakistan.For about three hours, fans in blue and orange India shirts mingled with their (vastly outnumbered) rivals in the dark green of Pakistan, producing a festive and vibrant atmosphere.A vast majority of the fans in attendance were decked out in blue and orange to support India.Yuvraj Khanna for The New York TimesA matchup between India and Pakistan, two of the great cricketing nations, is always a closely watched event.Yuvraj Khanna for The New York TimesThey roared at every big play, shouting and waving signs and flags. They ate South Asian food sold at the concession stands, jumped, chanted, high-fived with fellow supporters and — after a bit of rain — soaked up the sunshine on a historic day at the usually quiet park.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Narendra Modi Fell to Earth After Making It All About Himself

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      The Indian leader used his singular persona to lift his party to new heights. Then the opposition found a way to use his cult of personality against him.When everything became about Prime Minister Narendra Modi of India, his party and its century-old Hindu-nationalist network were propelled to unimagined heights.On the back of his singular charisma and political skill, a onetime-fringe religious ideology was pulled to the center of Indian life. Landslide election victories remade India’s politics, once dominated by diverse coalitions representing a nation that had shaped its independence on secular principles.But there were always risks in wrapping a party’s fortunes so completely in the image of one man, in inundating a country of many religions, castes and cultures with that leader’s name, face and voice. Voters could start to think that everything was about him, not them. They could even revolt.On Tuesday, Mr. Modi and his Bharatiya Janata Party, or B.J.P., fell back to earth. After having promised their biggest election romp yet, they lost more than 60 seats. Mr. Modi will remain in office for a third term, but only with the help of a contentious coalition of parties, some of which are opposed to his core beliefs and want power of their own.With the result, India’s strained democracy appeared to roar back to life, its beaten-down political opposition reinvigorated. And after a decade in which Mr. Modi’s success in entrenching Hindu supremacy had often felt like the new common sense, India is seeing its leader and itself in a new light, and trying to understand this unexpected turn.Most fundamentally, the opposition, newly coalesced for what it called a do-or-die moment as Mr. Modi increasingly tilted the playing field, found a way to use the cult of personality around him to its advantage.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      In India’s Election, Democracy Lives On

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      Back in January, when Prime Minister Narendra Modi of India looked all but unstoppable, he visited the small city of Ayodhya for the unofficial start of his campaign to win a third term. The location was freighted with symbolism. For decades, Hindu nationalists had sought to build a temple in Ayodhya, at a spot they believe to be the birthplace of the Hindu god Ram. The only problem was that there was already a house of worship on the spot, a mosque built by a Mughal emperor in 1528. A Hindu mob had dismantled the mosque in 1992, setting off riots that killed 2,000 people, most of them Muslims. The ruins were a flashpoint of religious tensions in India for decades.Modi and his Bharatiya Janata Party promised to build the temple, and the lavish event at which Modi officially opened it was a showcase for that achievement. At the time it seemed like strong election-year messaging for a politician who built his career on the twin planks of Hindu nationalism and building a muscular new India. Unlike other politicians, the event implied, Modi made promises and kept them.“It is the beginning of a new era,” he declared.Feeling supremely confident, Modi had boldly asked the Indian electorate for something akin to a blank check to remake the country — control of 400 seats in Parliament in elections that began in April and concluded on June 1. And why shouldn’t he have been confident? India’s economy was the fastest-growing in the world. India had overtaken China as the world’s most-populous country. World leaders sought Modi’s support on issues ranging from the war in Ukraine to the climate crisis, cementing India’s ascent in global affairs.But the ever unpredictable electorate of the world’s largest democracy responded to Modi’s demand for still more power resolutely: No thanks.In a stunning rebuke, election results released on Tuesday showed that India’s voters have reduced the parliamentary share of Modi’s party by more than 60 seats, not enough for an outright majority, never mind the supermajority he had sought.It struck me as particularly apt that despite all the fanfare about the glorious new temple in Ayodhya, Modi’s party lost the city’s parliamentary seat to a political opposition that had been all but left for dead.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      The Climate Challenges That India’s Next Government Will Face

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      India, the world’s most populous country, is also among the most vulnerable to climate hazards. That’s not only because of the heat and floods that global warming has exacerbated, but also because so many of the country’s 1.4 billion people are vulnerable to begin with. Most people are poor, by global standards, and they have no safety net.Early election results Tuesday signaled that the party led by Narendra Modi, the two-term Hindu nationalist Indian prime minister, is poised to win the largest number of seats in the Indian Parliament but may have to join with smaller parties to form a coalition government.That government will face major challenges brought on by climate change.Heat is now an election issue, literally.The six-week process of voting took place amid a scorching heat wave in several parts of the country. In the northern states of Bihar and Uttar Pradesh, at least 33 people, including poll workers, died of complications from the heat last week, according to government authorities cited by Reuters.Rohit Magotra, deputy director of Integrated Research and Action for Development, called on national election officials to reschedule elections in the future to avoid such calamities. He pointed out that workers from every political party suffer in the heat, and so do voters, who often have to line up under the sun.“I definitely see the momentum building up, and elections are unlikely to be scheduled in peak summer in future,” said Mr. Magotra, whose organization has advocated heat solutions in Indian cities.The Election Commission this year did set up a task force to monitor weather conditions, but only after voting got underway amid abnormally high temperatures. It also sent election workers a list of heat precautions prepared by the National Disaster Management Agency. However, according to a report published in Scroll, an Indian news site, political-party campaigners were not told to do anything differently because of the heat.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      As Voting Ends in India, Modi Awaits a Verdict on His 10 Years in Power

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      While a newly united opposition seemed to gain some traction, it faced an uphill task in unseating a deeply entrenched prime minister.Voting in India’s general election, a six-week-long referendum on Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s decade in power, came to a close on Saturday as much of the country’s populous north was gripped by a deadly heat wave.Results will be tallied and announced on Tuesday.Mr. Modi, his power deeply entrenched, is seen as likely to win a third consecutive term as prime minister, which would make him only the second leader in India’s nearly 75 years as a republic to achieve that feat.But a newly united opposition has put up a fight, rallying against Mr. Modi’s divisive politics and management of India’s deeply unequal economic growth. The country will now wait to see whether the opposition was able to accomplish its goal of significantly cutting into the sizable majority in Parliament held by Mr. Modi’s Hindu-nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party, or B.J.P.The election, held in phases over a month and a half, is the largest democratic exercise in the world, with more than 950 million eligible voters. The last stretch of the campaigning drew large rallies even as northern India baked under an intense heat wave, with temperatures frequently exceeding 110 degrees Fahrenheit, or more than 43 degrees Celsius.At least 19 poll workers have died from heat strokes or other health complications resulting from the heat in recent days.Elections in a parliamentary system like India’s are usually fought seat by seat, with a candidate’s fate determined by local economic and social factors. But the B.J.P. made its campaign for the 543-seat Parliament into a presidential-style referendum, putting the focus almost entirely on Mr. Modi and his leadership. The party hoped that Mr. Modi’s deep popularity would help it overcome a growing anti-incumbent sentiment 10 years into the B.J.P.’s rule.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Overlooked No More: Hansa Mehta, Who Fought for Women’s Equality in India and Beyond

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      This article is part of Overlooked, a series of obituaries about remarkable people whose deaths, beginning in 1851, went unreported in The Times.Human rights has long been considered a Western concept, but recent scholarship has been uncovering the influence of women from the global south. Women like Hansa Mehta.Mehta stood up against the British government during India’s struggle for independence. She campaigned for women’s social and political equality and their right to an education. And she fought for her ideals during the framing of the constitution for a newly independent India.Mehta with Eleanor Roosevelt in 1949, when they were the only two women named as delegate to the U.N. Commission on Human Rights.Marvin Bolotsky/United NationsFor Mehta, women’s rights were human rights. This conviction was best exemplified at a 1947 meeting of the United Nations Commission on Human Rights, to which she had been appointed as one of just two women delegates, alongside Eleanor Roosevelt. Mehta boldly objected to the wording of Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which the commission was tasked with framing.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Deadly Fires Highlight India’s Safety Shortfall

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      Disasters over the weekend that claimed at least 34 lives prompted condolences, arrests and finger-pointing. But systemic change remains elusive, analysts say.Seven newborn babies lost their lives after their New Delhi neonatal clinic was engulfed in flames. What remained of the two-story building on Sunday morning was its burned facade, a charred spiral staircase and oxygen cylinders covered in soot.Hours earlier, in the western Indian city of Rajkot, an amusement park of trampolines and bowling lanes had turned to an inferno. The families of people who had come to enjoy a discounted offer of all-you-can-play to celebrate the start of summer vacation were left trying to identify bodies among the at least 27 dead, many of them children too charred to be recognizable.As after every such deadly episode, political leaders were quick with messages of condolence, announcements of arrests, creations of inquiries — and finger-pointing. But to analysts and experts who had warned for years about India’s abysmal fire preparedness, the back-to-back disasters on Saturday were the latest reminder that systemic change to make the country safer was still missing.Building safety compliance remains abysmal across India, the world’s most populous nation. The fire services have long faced huge gaps in the numbers of stations, personnel and equipment. Government audits after mass-casualty disasters unearth glaring shortcomings, with little follow-up.Though the number has gone down over the past decade, more than 20 fire-related deaths occur every day in India, according to government statistics. Many of the fires — particularly in crowded urban centers — are caused by short circuits, an alarming prospect as India faces an intense period of heat waves that strains electrical wires.R.C. Sharma, a former fire service chief in Delhi, said that one major problem is that fire regulations go unenforced. Another is that fire-response resources have failed to keep up with urbanization that is happening rapidly and often without regard to safety.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More