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'Modi is the man for this moment'

Penn's Aseem Shukla on the Prime Minister's visit to New York

Leaders in the Indian community of Philadelphia were among those in attendance at India prime minister Narendra Modi's events in New York on his first visit to the U.S. last night. "My wife and I attended the dinner last night at the Pierre Hotel," Kris Singh PhD., founder and chief executive at Holtec, the Marlton power plant parts maker, told me. "The Prime Minister gave a short speech -- more like a homily -- and then graciously stood for hours greeting every guest with an Indian 'namaste'' or a Western handshake.

"I found him to be a gifted and charismatic speaker. His line on making India better understood by the rest of the world through increased tourism -- 'Terrorism divides peoples, tourism unites them' -- drew rapturous applause. He spoke in Hindi. I was impressed with his command of Hindi which is not his native language. I, like many others present, believe that Mr. Modi will be transformative force for making India into a more perfect liberal democracy and the country's economy will be re-energized by his no-nonsense approach to governance."

"It was really quite an event -- a frenzied, chaotic, but happy occasion. 20,000 people were screaming in the stands for a rock star, you would have thought," adds Dr. Aseem Shukla, associate professor of surgery at the University of Pennsylvania and cofounder of the the Hindu American Foundation (www.hafsite.org) (corrected). (More about Dr. Shukla and his history with Modi before he was elected Prime Minister earlier this year, here.)

Before the visit, Shukla wrote this piece at FirstPost on the significance of the New York event. Highlights:

"If the Modi moment is prone to hyperbole and tired metaphors, it is because the moment is ripe with emotions not ascribed to a political leader in over sixty years...

"More than forty-thousand Indian Americans went through a ponderous online process clamoring for twenty-thousand tickets to hear the prime minister speak... What explains the rock star welcome?... No one expects the dapper Modi to don a Karzai-esque cape when he swoops into Gotham City, but if Modi actually delivers on many of the promises of his campaign, be prepared for more mythmaking...

"Modinomics: Indian Americans wrestle with the guilt that they left India in search of a prosperity that eluded them at home. The India they left was clear in its socialist messaging: individual prosperity necessarily deprives another of limited resources. Resources were to be allocated, not created; economic structures militated against wealth creation. To that narrative, another already existed--renunciation. Capitalism was the converse not of socialism, but of the real aim in life of shedding the bonds of materialism and maya.

"The diaspora finds many ways to deal with the duality--continue earning while giving more to building temples, seeking spiritual solace and learning at sundry ashrams, churches and mosques. But the Modi archetype resolves the conflict. Modi is the renunciate who does not repudiate prosperity. Modi may be a sadhu in his personal life--no kanchan or kamini, though accepting some kirti--but he is a sadhu who preaches that wealth creation is good, as long as one is not enslaved by it and is able to lift all boats with it.

"He scraps the Planning Commission and speaks of decentralizing power and a state's rights mantra that is more than familiar to Indian Americans. Modi is allowing Indian Americans to believe that investing in India is not only good business, but that it is a patriotic duty....

"Schools in the U.S. teach that the Age of Enlightenment of the 17th and 18th centuries ushered in a period of liberalism and rationality that was grounded in science. A slumbering India, Americans are taught, was hamstrung by a "Hindu rate of growth", caste system and idol worship seen in contrast to the rational, progressive themes underlying modern Western civilization.

"But Modi upends this accounting. He reclaims Sanskrit even as he privileges Hindi as his means of communication. His Hindi phraseology is infused with powerful Sanskrit terms: vistaar vaad, vikaas vaad, rajniti, vistrut dhrishti, and the like. As Rajiv Malhotra argues, Indic Civilization - through the Western study of Sanskrit scripture and literature - actually shaped the Western Enlightenment movements.

"And in making Sanskrit relevant again, Modi changes the discourse for the diaspora and implies that an Indian Enlightenment is simply a rediscovery of an Indic heritage - one free from superstition and casteism, but suffused with innovation, science and vikaas that is not in conflict with Indic religions.

"Even the Bhagavad Gita gifted to Prime Minister Abe in Japan and the Emperor changes in its symbolism from Modi's hands. The book becomes not just a holy book for Hindus, but tantamount to gifting the Aphorisms of Confucius. Modi's gift says that for Hindus, the Gita may be the song of God, but for all Indians, it is the song of their civilization.

"Calling out India: India is saddled by the revolting realities of terrible sanitation, pollution and filth in Indian streets. For Indian Americans growing comfortable in the comparatively sterile West, this one issue animates any discussion of a visit to India. In Modi, they see a leader that won't demur on the topic and offer tired justifications of why the nation must lead the world in outdoor defecation. Instead, even on arguably the most significant speech to date, on India's Independence Day, Modi did not shy away from calling out the lack of sanitation, the crying shame of rape, and launched the Clean India campaign....

"Modi does not appeal to Indians in America so viscerally because he speaks to them or curries their favor. It is simply that the India he seeks happens to resonate with their sensibilities. While the aspirations of Indian Americans, and their stories of emigration may be irrelevant to 800 million Indian voters, the election of Modi fuels imagination because those voters actually expect their leader to deliver...

"Cynicism has no expiration date--there will be much time for that. But one must not be accused of hagiographic excess to hope that perhaps, just perhaps, like 20,000 cheering fans at Madison Square Garden, Modi is the man for this moment."

Some of those cynics respond: from Pankaj Mishra at Bloomberg here, The Economist here.