AP Photo

MUMBAI — India can be a depressing country, with its grinding poverty, festering slums, imploring — often deformed — beggars, and maddening bureaucracy. But there are times when, to the world’s astonishment, the curtain of gloom and despair lifts and the light shines through — and one feels proud to be an Indian.

Last Saturday was one such time, as the results of India’s 15th general election poured in.

Some 400 million Indians, 60 percent of all the eligible voters, had cast their ballots in the biggest electoral exercise in the history of the democratic world. Six million officials and security personnel had protected the voters and close to one-and-a-half million electronic voting machines were used in the exercise.

The pollsters had predicted...