Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi held an event in New York on Sunday for thousands of Indians living in the United States.
Modi praised India as a “land of opportunities” and asked members of the Indian diaspora to serve as “brand ambassadors” for their ambitious nation.
Modi spoke at the Nassau Veterans Memorial Coliseum in Long Island on the first day of a three-day visit to the United States that also included the Quad Leaders Summit on Sunday and will culminate at the United Nations General Assembly meeting in New York.
Indian media observers of Modi’s event on Long Island, which had about 13,000 attendees, noted that much of his speech sounded like a victory lap for winning reelection to a rare third term in June. The speech, and Modi’s calendar of activities on Sunday and Monday, included a great deal of upbeat talk about India’s rise as a technological and industrial power under Modi’s leadership.
“After going through this tough election process, this long election system, something unprecedented happened in India,” Modi said at his Long Island event.
What happened, he said, was “Abki Baar Modi Sarkaar,” a slogan the prime minister has used since his first election campaign. It means, in essence, “The time for Modi is now,” but it has a certain poetry to native Urdu speakers and is considered very catchy among Modi supporters.
“For the first time in 60 years, the people of India have given a mandate which has great significance. During my third term, I have very ambitious goals to achieve. We have to move forward with three times the strength,” Modi said, obliquely referring to the only other prime minister who won a third term: Jawaharlal Nehru, the first leader of independent India.
Modi actually led the crowd in a little call-and-response celebration of his election victory, asking them questions such as “What happened?” and “What next?” to which the crowd would reply, “Modi won!”
“Every Indian has confidence in India and its achievements. India today is a land of opportunities. It’s no longer waiting for opportunities. It is now creating opportunities,” Modi boasted on Sunday.
Modi said India has become a major global power, but not a hegemonic power – a rhetorical tack he takes when explaining why India is trying to maintain good relations with both the United States and Russia despite the latter’s invasion of Ukraine.
Modi took a similar stance during the Quad meeting on Sunday. The Quad is a four-member security cooperative for the Indo-Pacific region that includes India, Australia, Japan, and the United States.
“We are not against anybody. All of us support rules-based international order, respect for sovereignty and territorial integrity, and peaceful resolution of all disputes,” Modi said at the Quad meeting. The “somebody” the Quad would seem to be against is China, which is threatening the region with increasingly aggressive territorial claims.
Modi also made it clear at his Long Island event that India feels it has done enough for climate change and expects other nations to make whatever sacrifices in energy, industrial capacity, and lifestyle are necessary. He pointed to China and the United States as bigger emitters of carbon than his own country.
“India represents about 17 per cent of the world’s population, and despite that, our contribution to emission is about only four per cent,” he said.
This was one of the few moments during Modi’s visit to the United States when he has been critical of his hosts, unless one counts a little jibe in his speech when he suggested India’s gigantic June election was more orderly than the American election currently underway.
“While the elections in India are over, it’s under process in the United States. The elections that were just held in India were the biggest so far in human history. When we see the scale of India’s democracy, we are even more proud,” Modi said.
Modi said India and America are “together in this celebration of democracy,” providing an encouraging example of peaceful elections at a time when “there are conflicts raging between several countries in the world.”
The Indian prime minister spent some time extolling the progress Indian women have made under his administration, noting that hundreds of thousands of female entrepreneurs have prospered, female home ownership is becoming more common, and women have been important players in revolutionary industries such as drone piloting.
Modi is actually managing a political and cultural crisis about the abuse of women back home, spurred by the rape and murder of a young trainee doctor in Kolkata. Massive protests and a doctor’s strike ensued as simmering anger about the mistreatment of women in much of Indian society erupted. Modi’s opponents have sought to blame the prime minister and his Hindu-nationalist BJP party for some of this abusive atmosphere.