Modi-mania in New York's Madison Square Garden: A postcard from behind the scenes

by Aseem Shukla As I sat in the rafters looking out over Madison Square Garden as Prime Minister Narendra Modi began his speech–with a jumbotron flashing and a frenzied audience leading cheers–I thought back to the pageantry of the 1974 bout between Muhammad Ali and Joe Frazier at the same iconic venue. The New York Times used to place iron-on inserts in its Sunday edition and my father had cut the insert down the middle imprinting Ali on my t-shirt, and Frazier for my brother, as we mock-boxed while dancing around the living room. So it was a surreal deja-vu seeing the same venue, seemingly the same jumbotron, but this time with thousands of t-shirts bearing a likeness of Modi emblazoned with a stylized, Obama-esque pop print with “Unity, Action, Progress” transposed below the hashtag #ModiinAmerica. There was pomp and pageantry, of course, and there were double-takes for people-watchers around. Hindu swamis sat next to imams and Zoroastrian priests, and Muslim families bedecked in flowing white garbs sat cheek to jowl with Hindus with Vaishnav tilaks on their foreheads. There was Swami Chidananda Saraswati of Parmarth Niketan and Swami Siddhananda of Chinmaya Mission, and there sat Sushma Swaraj. Nina Davuluri, Miss America took the stage, and Priety Zinta was seated to add a dash of glamour. [caption id=“attachment_1737317” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  Modi can pull off an extemporaneous English speech quite easily–albeit in an unmistakable avuncular Gujarati accent.[/caption] No one could miss, of course, that Nikki Randhawa Haley, the Governor of South Carolina, four Senators and twenty-nine members of the House of Representatives, including the chair and ranking member of the influential House Foreign Affairs Committee, sat arrayed in the first row, following personal meetings with Modi. It was also lost on no one present that this extraordinary show of American political leadership just weeks before mid-term elections underscored an arrival in many more ways than just landing on the tarmac. This was not just Modi’s arrival to America. All of this heralded a new symbolism in U.S.-India relations may be the official trope, but as Peter Cook said on Bloomberg, Modi’s popularity is simply so overwhelming in the U.S., that politicians running for office could credibly hope to tap into the reflected glow of a politician at his apex. When I assumed a small volunteer role for the event just about a month ago, I thought the plans sounded like a circus in the making. There was less cohesion and many leaders and many plans. But as dawn broke on September 28, the only nod to a circus was the rotating stage that the Main Event’s pugilist occupied with no teleprompter, no props, to own the Garden with words alone. And, as always, his words. As he showed during his “may the force be with you” benediction to Hugh Jackman in a seven-minute address to a hip Central Park crowd, Modi can pull off an extemporaneous English speech quite easily–albeit in an unmistakable avuncular Gujarati accent. But Modi’s privileging of Hindi created a crisis in the external affairs ministry, and the near lyrical complexity of his Hindi style is a professional challenge that our Indian American interpreter Gurdeep Chawla took on with a mix of trepidation and confidence. I spent most of the day in the press bridge with a brigade of volunteers, and smiled as sometimes it seemed that more people were snapping cell phone shots of Arnab Goswami or Barkha Dutt than the prominent Indian Americans they were interviewing. It was an impossibly paradoxical task right from the beginning: raise at least $1.5 million in a month to pull off a reception at a prominent location, but keep tickets free. Bharat Barai, the teflon-coated organizer-in-chief, marshalled his rolodex and raised the needed money absorbing loads of barbs and bouquets on his way to the forum. He will look back today and see that it was difficult, but it was done; and it was good. But perhaps the real story in organization was in the accents heard in the background. A second look, and one saw that likely the largest community reception ever organized for a foreign leader in the United States came on the back of a team of many second generation Indian Americans born or raised in the country. These were twenty and thirty-something Washington insiders, public relations professionals, doctors and lawyers working nights after their day jobs. A New Jersey basement was immortalized as the “war room” with charts on walls, special printers humming all night and dozens of laptops sprawled across the room. And somehow, impossibly, a task was completed in a short month. This is not to say that lessons were not learned. Security logjams and a staff bottleneck caused the most frustrating delays for the separate entry set aside for many of the who’s who were accorded special invitee status, and a classless verbal ambush of Rajdeep Sardesai outside of the venue followed by some pushing and shoving made for a side story that most only heard about hours after the program. There was another commotion too, we were later told, as a gaggle of protesters neatly contained behind barriers were reduced to the bizarre position of condemning each other. The newest version of the internet portal Coalition Against Genocide sent out a press release distinguishing itself as only anti-Modi, as opposed to a pro-Khalistan rally that also claimed to be anti-Modi even as it irrationally condemned Modi for alleged crimes in 1984 Punjab. But the party played on, and from Madison Square Garden it moved on to Fifth Avenue and to the Pierre, a Taj Hotel property just a block from the historic Plaza Hotel. Ambassador S. Jaishankar hosted an affair that would have been adjudged swanky with Mukesh Ambani, Gautam Adani, Indra Nooyi, Vivek Ranadive, Ajay Banga, and senior Members of the U.S. Congress in attendance. But to the Ambassador’s lasting credit, room was made for a diverse swath of the Indian American community. The glitz factor decreased, perhaps, as the line to enter the hotel stretched a city block, but that was probably more Modi’s style anyways. Modi delivered yet another address modeled on his theme of a diverse palate for India’s growth focused on three pillars: ⅓ agriculture, ⅓ manufacturing, ⅓ service sector. In his trademark style, he boiled his talk down to a deliverable ask–each NRI in the audience should bring five, non-Indian origin Americans to tour India as a visitor. And, indeed, Modi could not resist adding that besides the rickshaw-walla and taxi-driver, these tourists will be patrons of the chaiwallah. As the night wrapped up, the most famous man-on-a-fast in the world right now didn’t even seem to sip water–while the crowd enjoyed his favorite savory appetizer, khandvi--as he patiently indulged what seemed to be 600 people’s greatest aspiration: the all important photo. Dr Aseem Shukla is a co-founder and member of the Board of the Hindu American Foundation, and an Associate Professor Surgery at the University of Pennsylvania. The views expressed here are his own.