Exactly! People seem to conflate anti authoritarianism with being pro democracy. It absolutely doesn't have to be the case and India is a great example of it.
Yes. So? You can have a democratically-elected authoritarian. The authoritarian part is about how they govern, not how they get to power. (And, perhaps, how they stay in power. Venezuela is a good example of authoritarians, once in power, stacking the deck so that the next election keeps them in power. And as they become more unpopular, they continue to stack the deck farther and farther. I don't know if Modi and BJP are doing that.)
The problem is that most of your understanding about Modi government is coming from western media which has repeatedly shown to be inherently bias against India [0] becoming strong. Part of the reason could be that India didn't join western club after Independence contrary to their expectations and chose to remain non-align (though it gravitated more toward USSR).
You wouldn't hear that though Modi has won federal elections twice, his party has lost many state elections during the same time. But he hasn't really done anything nefarious that could stop such losses.
People has chosen Modi because at this stage, there's no alternative strong figure that can solve many India's problem.
YOu'd hear about MOdi removing article 370 from Kashmir, the Citizen bill, but you won't get the details about the real reason of why those are needed to solve the problem India has been facing since independence but no prior gov attempted to implement them (despite agreeing in principles on multiple occasions) just because of vote-politics.
> YOu'd hear about MOdi removing article 370 from Kashmir, the Citizen bill, but you won't get the details about the real reason of why those are needed to solve the problem India has been facing since independence but no prior gov attempted to implement them (despite agreeing in principles on multiple occasions) just because of vote-politics.
So what is the real reason then to solve the problem India has been facing since independence?