The above 👆🏿 news report on Prime Minister’s upcoming State visit to the USA brings to focus his amazing popularity abroad amongst the Indian Diaspora. To his political detractors the Modi Act might seem like political vaudeville but to many Indians both within the country and abroad it is actually a premier political Formula-1 Racing event.
Modi is the first Prime Minister of India to have understood, appreciated and fully leveraged the potential of the soft power of vast Indian Diaspora in the world to boost India’s image and its foreign policy abroad as well as his own stature on the international stage. He has done it now for the last 9 years consistently and with extraordinary energy and finesse. It is indeed a very clever and ingenious way of conducting global diplomacy on his own terms.
No other prime minister of India has ever been imaginative or creative enough to try anything even closely resembling what Modi has been able to do. His detractors call his Madison Square kind of shows and town-hall-like appearances as just PR glitz and gimmick and that they serve nothing but personal vainglory . But the fact is even if it is simply showy, schmalzy PR exercise, what it has achieved in 9 years is indisputably impressive on many different accounts:
1. The Indian Diaspora of several countries in the world —- many of whom have found them themselves to be treated as 2nd Class citizens in the country of residence have found in him at last a source of vicarious achievement. And that, they find somehow, strangely redounds to their own credit. It gives them some newfound self-pride and inspiration to carry on living and persevering in their lives abroad as immigrants or H-1B visa-workers.
2. The domestic constituencies of the BJP , Modi’s party, are highly impressed and greatly energised by the adulation they see that their diasporic fellow-countrymen living and working abroad showering on their leader with confetti and festoons. .
3. The leaders and heads of state and of govts. in foreign countries are forced to take note of the Indian community and constituency in their country and to give them due respect.
4. It leaves the leaders of other countries that are known to be inimical to India — like say Pakistan, China, Turkey and a few others — at a disadvantage . Although these countries would never admit it, they feel woefully inadequate in being able to themselves try emulating or imitating Modi’s act. Recently, in the Australian Parliament , a Minister addressing the assembly was reported to have admitted in all honesty that he was “truly jealous” of the public adulation Modi received at his rally with the Indian diaspora there . Modi’s show truly puts leaders of neighbouring Pakistan, Bangladesh or China in the palest of shadows.
5. Back home in India, the political adversaries and detractors of Modi are left gnawing on their own ties and shirts in silent, envious resentment over Modi’s “Rock Star” status abroad… It can be very frustrating for a leader like Rahul Gandhi to go the United States of America, put up, by comparison, a lack-lustre road show for the Indian diaspora there and still hope to win hearts and minds of Indians with the same forceful aplomb with which Modi does. Rahul Gandhi’s calibre or horsepower rating as a politician gets easily exposed … and that does very little to enhance his own political prospects.
In one word or phrase, Modi’s public rallies abroad with the Indian Diaspora can best be described as his own special way of conducting Indian foreign policy without throwing heavy-weight punches as our big-bully neighbour China does… That phrase would be borrowed from the legendary Muhammad Ali the pugilist champion, the “greatest”: Modi seems to have perfected the art of “floating like a butterfly” abroad at Madison Square Garden which then enables him to “sting like a bee” back home here at Ramlila Maidan .
Sudarshan Madabushi