He was born the son of a tea seller. He’s used yoga workouts to gain influence at home and abroad. The U.S. once revoked his visa on the grounds that he was a Hindu nationalist leader guilty of violating religious freedom during riots in the Indian state of Gujarat that killed more than 1,000 people, most of them Muslims.
India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi is on a four-day visit to the United States. He’ll meet with business and technology leaders. He will stop by the United Nations on international yoga day (an annual event he persuaded the U.N. to adopt), have the red carpet rolled out for him at the White House as part of a state visit and talk with President Joe Biden. Modi will also address, for the second time in his career, a joint session of Congress, on Thursday.
Brahma Chellaney, a professor of strategic studies at the New Delhi-based Center for Policy Research, a think tank, wrote in a recent opinion piece that the U.S. and India are united by shared interests ranging from weapons exports to challenging China. But he cautioned that India has a longstanding policy of being “non-aligned”; that it has a commitment to “strategic independence” as well. Modi’s critics claim he’s changed India in toxic ways from cracking down on media dissent to fostering a political personality cult, from actively causing divisions in India’s disparate communities to outright social media censorship.
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“India doesn’t claim to be the conscience-keeper of the world,” retired Indian diplomat Nirupama Rao, who served as India’s foreign secretary and ambassador to the United States, said in a call with reporters Tuesday.
“I know there’s been criticism. But the mood in India is not to accept that criticism. We feel − the majority feels − that we won’t be lectured to about our democracy or internal situation.”
So who is Narendra Modi, the man?
Modi, 72, comes from a family of “humble origins and modest means,” according to an Indian government website about the prime minister that says his entire family lived in a single-story house “which was approximately 40 feet by 12 feet.” He was born and raised in Vadnagar, in western India, where his parents sold cooking oil and ran a tea shop. As a child, Modi was said to be fond of reading and swimming.
He studied political science at college, obtaining a master’s degree, before joining Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, or RSS, a vast network of staunchly right-wing Hindu nationalists and paramilitaries in the late 1960s.
RSS seeks to preserve Hindu religion and culture but some scholars say the organization also at least partially draws inspiration from Italian fascism. It blames India’s Muslim minority for many of Indian society’s ills. Modi joined India’s Bharatiya Janata Party, or BJP, after his talents were recognized as a RSS community organizer. He served as the chief minister of the western state of Gujarat before becoming prime minister in 2014.
A political career haunted by Gujarat. What happened?
At least 1,044 people were killed in 2002 in Gujarat when communal violence erupted after a fire broke out on a train carrying Hindu pilgrims. Some 60 pilgrims died in the fire.
But over the course of the following week, hundreds of Muslims were slaughtered as Hindu nationalists went on a rampage that included rapes, looting and murder. Thousands of homes were destroyed.
Modi was the most senior official in Gujarat at the time.
Three years afterward, in 2005, American authorities denied Modi a visa to enter the U.S. stemming from allegations from witnesses and human rights groups that he tacitly supported the riots in his home state. He was banned from entering the U.S. until he became prime minister nine years later.
Still, India’s Supreme Court later cleared Modi over claims he and his BJP party were complicit in the violence by ignoring the killings. Yet the incident continues to taint Modi nearly a decade after he came to power.
“America likes to view itself as a force for good in the world that allies with partners who respect liberal norms,” said Max Abrahms, a political scientist at Northeastern University, in Boston.
“Of course, in practice that’s often untrue,” he said. “I suspect that India’s human rights record will not be a big factor in U.S. relations given the importance of countering China. Modi’s record has not changed. What has changed is India’s perceived strategic value as concerns mount over China’s rise.”
India’s yogi-in-chief: the political value of a good stretch
On Wednesday, Modi is expected to lead an estimated 2,000 people including diplomats, policymakers and members of the Indian American community in a yoga session on lawns outside the U.N. in New York.
It will be broadcast to millions of Indians around the world.
“He will curl into a lotus, stretch like a hare or close his eyes and portend as a thunderbolt in an hour-long session organized by India’s Permanent Mission to the UN,” the London-based news and opinion website Middle East Eye wrote. The website expressed alarm, citing Anusha Kedhar, a scholar at the University of California who specializes in Indian dance, over how Modi would use the practice to “choreograph an image of himself, and by extension the Hindu state, as flexible (read accommodating) yet strong, peaceful yet powerful.”
Middle East Eye wrote that as Modi continues to promote “peace and understanding” through yoga, “his government has only found longer, more thoughtful and deliberate ways to inflict harm.”
Indian American voters have historically tended to support the Democratic Party in U.S. presidential elections, according to the Atlantic Council think tank. However, there is evidence that in recent years Hindu nationalist lobby groups on Capitol Hill have made inroads, at least in terms of dampening criticism of Modi in Washington.
The practice appears to have reached a zenith when Donald Trump was president.
In 2019 Modi and Trump took the stage together in Houston at a “Howdy, Modi” event that drew 50,000 people. It featured scores of American and Indians flags and rang out with chants of “Modi” and “USA.” Modi introduced Trump as “my friend, a friend of India” and as someone who “has left a deep and lasting impact everywhere.”
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Trump returned the compliment during his remarks, lavishing praise on Modi and calling him “a great man and a great leader.”
The left-wing website The Intercept reported the event was organized by lobby group Texas India Forum. The media outlet reported that its members have links to U.S.-based Hindu nationalist groups affiliated with RSS, the paramilitary organization joined by Modi when he was a young man and that espouses the notion that India’s minorities are second-class citizens.
