First encounter with Narendra Modi

Prime Minister of India, Narendra Modi, is scheduled to visit Guyana for two days, after attending the Nov 18/19 G-20 Summit in neighbouring Brazil. There is great anticipation in the air for a host of reasons, not least being the cultural affinities between his country and ours, occasioned by over two-thirds of the 239,000 Indian indentured labourers shipped in from undivided India between 1838 and 1917 deciding to make this land their home. Those relations were broadened and deepened in the post-WWII era as India trailblazed the movement for independence from the British Empire that ruled over us.

It was not an accident that Jagan and Burnham flew to India after Winston Churchill ousted their party from government in 1953 after only 133 days in office; they expected a sympathetic hearing from the first colony to gain independence from Britain. While no Indian Guyanese political leader has echoed the analogous sentiment expressed by Mia Mottley of Barbados and Keith Rowley of T&T after the first Africa/CARICOM Summit (“I am not African because I was born in Africa, but because Africa was born in me”), ancestral emotions remain strong.
Sri Modi’s imminent visit, however, brings back memories of my first meeting with him over 31 years ago. In New York City, the Vishwa Hindu Parishad America-VHPA (World Hindu Council-America), which was founded by Indians from the subcontinent, had organized an International Hindu Conference in 1984 at Madison Square Garden. With the Indians from Guyana and Trinidad struggling to establish their institutions — mandirs and masjids, and some of us had launched the Indo-Caribbean Federation that year – the scale of the event was staggering. Contacts between the two communities were initiated, and we collaborated with the launch of the Global Organization of People of Indian Origin (GOPIO) — which was “secular” — in 1989. I was a member of the delegation to the Caribbean that organized the attendance of Dr Jagan and Basdeo Panday.
The head of the VHPA was an engineer, Mahesh Mehta from the Boston area, who is one of the most indefatigable organizers I have ever met. From 1990, he started planning Global Vision 2000 to bring Hindus from across the globe together in commemorating the 100th anniversary of Swami Vivekananda’s 1993 historic address to the World Conference of Religions in Chicago. I had returned home by then, and was part of a Caribbean Delegation that included Raviji Maharaj and  Dr Vijai Nayaransingh of Trinidad and Ramesh Kallicharran from Queens. Global Vision was a three-day even held between Aug 7th and 9th at Washington DC’s giant indoor 45,000-seat sports arena, Capital Center. There were over 10,000 attendees, and the event included several breakout sessions along with the plenary gathering. I was asked to participate in a panel discussion in one of the breakout sessions on the theme “Retention of Hindu values in the Overseas Hindi Samaj”, and one of my co-panellists was introduced as Narendra Damodaras Modi, a BJP karyakarta (worker).
The other co-panellist I remember was Vijaya Raje Scindia, known popularly as “Rajmata Scindia”, another BJP official and consort of the last ruling Maharaja of the princely state of Gwalior. In the attached picture, Rajmata Scindia and I are applauding a point made by Sri Modiji in response to a question from the audience.
In his main presentation, Modiji was very passionate, and conveyed a very coherent vision of being guided by Hindu values in all aspects of life, public and private. Informed that I had returned to Guyana after twenty years, following studies and work in the US (law), to work at the grassroots, he questioned me closely on the challenges faced by the community.
I gathered that he had spent several weeks during the previous month as a guest of the US State Department and the American Council of Young Political Leaders that conducted a programme for young foreign politicians to become exposed to American political, social and economic institutions. He interacted with a wide array of American leaders, and travelled widely, including to Hoston and the American West. Like Gandhi, he appeared to “want the cultures of all lands to be blown about my house as freely as possible. But I refuse to be blown off my feet by any.”
I was not surprised at his later meteoric rise in Indian politics.