Modi’s latest campaign message to supporters: ‘God has sent me’

CNN —

India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi has a new message for supporters on the campaign trail: God has chosen him.

“I’m convinced that God has sent me for a purpose, and when that purpose is finished, my work will be done,” he told local news channel NDTV in an interview last week. “This is why I have dedicated myself to God.”

Modi continued: “God doesn’t reveal his cards. He just keeps making me do things.”

Since assuming power in 2014, Modi and his Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) have promoted a strident brand of Hindu nationalism in a country where about 80% of the population are followers of the polytheistic faith.

And while he has used such language in the past, his message of being a leader chosen by God has become much more apparent as attempts to win a third consecutive five-year term in power.

Throughout India’s mammoth weeks-long national election, which declares results on June 4, Modi has given multiple media interviews and speeches that echo the comments made to NDTV.

He has taken on the persona of an openly devout Hindu, said Subir Sinha, Director of the South Asia Institute at SOAS University of London. This, he added has “rallied his base who feel pride in such religiosity.”

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India is a deeply religious country. But historically its post-Independence leaders have remained publicly secular, in part to avoid being seen to pander to any one side in a nation with a long history of inter-religious violence.

“(He is) the first prime minister, they say, to be unashamed about this faith,” Sinha said.

When he first contested elections a decade ago, Modi chose India’s spiritual capital Varanasi as