It is both because of ideology as well as Modi's own persona. A lot of his detractors might have been shell-shocked with the mandate but there was no chance that they would not mount an attack at some point in time. Modi seemed very unprepared for this, no idea what he was thinking when he thought he could get a lot of contentious bills through parliament. It is where I blame guys like Jaitley & Venkaiah Naidu the most, they should have seen this coming. Modi's failure to have guys like Arun Shourie in, has caused some damage. The ministry looks woefully untalented & certainly, inarticulate. Have you ever seen anyone best Arun Shourie in a debate? He is the guy that the leftists most fear, Jaitley is good but he is no scholar like Shourie - quite frankly the only real scholar of some standing in the right wing side.
The next part where things went wrong was with the HRD ministry. Regardless of whether Ms. Irani is competent or not, Modi played into a widely held belief that the RSS & the like want to interfere in education. It did Modi no good when he appointed someone like her, almost like he didn't think that the ministry was an important one. Imagine a Shourie or Jaitley in that ministry & you can understand what I mean. Once the environment was built up & Modi must share some of the blame, the platform was there for this type of an attack to be mounted. The Kalburgi case was something Modi should have criticised. Unlike the Dadri incident, this was not just something that could go uncommented. It was a deadly attack on a man, who whatever his views, was a respected scholar. It would have done Modi a great deal of good to have condemned that murder. That was a mistake, a big one. Also should have dealt with the motor mouths more firmly. There has been a misreading of the Modi mandate by a section of his supporters as being one for their cultural outlook. This was & is a mistake & one that could cost Modi dearly if not dealt with.
Having said all this, the primary reason for this type of an attack happening is that Modi has lost some control of the narrative on the economic front. If there was a feeling that this government was pushing serious reform instead of incremental that few can see, a lot of this carping would have got no traction. While Modi remains very popular, there is a tinge of disappointment in those of his supporters who expected more on the economic front. There is no hiding that fact. The spokespersons for the government & the BJP have done a poor job, most of them are not up to the task of handling this sort of an attack. Maybe okay ordinarily but not in this environment where they only do more damage to the image. Not all those who voted for Modi are core BJP supporters. Nor are they interested in the wider agenda of ideologies. Unless you keep them on board, this is only getting progressively messier.
...grim from the first word to the last word. should have expected it
Unless there is a miracle, Modi is NOT getting the same single majority it got in 2014.
