NEW DELHI (AP) – When India’s prime minister visits the United States this week, he’ll see a welcome normally reserved for rock stars – a sold-out appearance at Madison Square Garden. It’s a stunning rise for a former tea seller who rose to the country’s top job and was once denied a U.S. visa.
More than 18,000 people, most of them Indian-Americans, are expected to pack the New York City arena and thousands more watch on giant screens in Times Square as Narendra Modi makes a speech during his first visit to the U.S.
The trip comes on the back of a spectacular electoral victory that has catapulted Modi, once an international pariah for his alleged complicity in sectarian violence in his home state of Gujarat, to a leader the world is eagerly courting.
President Barack Obama was among the first Western leaders to call and congratulate Modi when his Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party swept into power in May.
Modi’s acceptance of Obama’s invitation also signifies that he has moved beyond the resentment of being denied a visa in 2005, three year after religious riots killed more than 1,000 Muslims in the western state where he was the top elected official.