Soon after Narendra Modi’s speech at Madison Square Gardens, I got an email from one of my liberal, Obama-voting aunties that read: “Please try to watch. He has awesome presence.” I have to admit, I was taken aback, and maybe a little embarrassed. This auntie was not someone who I thought would be swayed by a long speech and a 56-inch chest.When I quizzed her on what she knew about Modi or his party’s policies, she came up blank. But still, she knew she liked him, or at least his presence. It was also the spectacle of it all and the importance given to Modi that had so impressed her. Sure, Obama had no choice but to meet him, but everyone else? They had rallied to his cause and then some. There was a crowd of people like her — or at least looking like her, with similar stories of coming to America and doing well enough – in the national spotlight. Modi’s success and their success seemed to meet at MSG; it was one of those synergistic events. 

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I did end up watching the video of the event, and what I saw were Indian-Americans themselves – the camera kept cutting to the crowd’s reactions to Modi’s every line – in this new, visible light. Modi was “on” but so was the crowd; they were basking in his glow or maybe in one of their own making. It is unclear how many of the 18,000 in attendance followed his every Hindi word (there was no simultaneous translation despite the importance placed on the event), but maybe that was not the point. This crowd was exclusive (it was a ticketed event, with the front-benchers paying $5,000 a head); and Modi’s visit was managed by no less then 800 volunteers organised by the Indian American Community Foundation. As for the crowd, going by their expressions, they were there to affirm their identities and interests through Modi. In the process they contributed to his own cult of personality, complete, in this case, with an on-the-spot portrait of the Prime Minister’s face sketched by a local artist on the center stage. The comedian John Oliver may have mocked the Modi portrait as a meaningless cliché, but in truth it was larger than life. 

The crowd, through their presence and cheering, burnished the Modi brand. It is a brand that, of course, had already been tried and tested in Gujarat and reached the pinnacle of success (with a decisive 33% of the vote) on the Indian national stage. Modi, for his part, mostly kept the crowd’s attention through jokes, plentiful pats on the back, and numerous promises, ranging from creating housing for all Indians in India by 2022 (applause) to the consolidation of OCI and PIO designations (cheers), and visas-on-arrival (hysteria). Modi is a skillful politician, and this was a highly orchestrated event. The Bollywood-style song and dance and other displays preceding his speech made for a complete entertainment package and created a seamless platform of diasporic motifs.

The much smaller crowd of protesters outside of Madison Square Gardens (several hundred) attempted to challenge Modi’s legitimacy by referencing his relationship to the Gujarat riots of 2002 and his years of silence on the matter. They were also protesting the rise of Hindutva that the RSS-affiliated Modi represents, linking it to how Muslim-bashing in India has become more acceptable and even mainstream (from continual rioting in Uttar Pradesh, to more everyday verbal and physical abuse, to the denial of flat rentals in countless Delhi colonies and beyond). But also linking it to the narrow definitions of and visions of Hindu life and beliefs that it promotes. They were also concerned with restrictions on Indian civil liberties – how voices of dissent, whether in the political pages of newspapers, on Indian television, in publishing or in Indian classrooms are being patrolled and sometimes curtailed by the new government or its minions. They were, in short, more concerned with Modi’s record in India than what he could do for Indian Americans.

For the crowd inside Madison Square Gardens, these issues are not really relevant since they have neither to live under Modi’s rule nor endure its social and political ramifications. They can happily go about their business (with promised removal of Indian red tape), enjoy freedom of expression and secular values (which protect their own status as members of a religious minority in the US), and even vote for the liberal Barack Obama, as the majority of them did in the last two elections. What is true is that the Modi visit made them them feel good and special, and well, proud to be Indian. It was a show they’d been waiting for, for a long time.

The same day of Modi’s MSG extravaganza, another video was circulating of a very different kind of crowd – that of a Delhi Metro mob chasing and thrashing foreign students from Burkina Faso and Gabon. Watching one digital image after another, I couldn’t help notice the cries of “Bharat Mata Ki Jai” in Madison Square Garden echoed in the Metro mob pursuit of three hapless African students at the Rajiv Chowk Metro Station. The Metro incident was not due to anyone being molested (which would have still been a case of vigilantism on the part of the crowd), as initially reported, but rather sparked by people taking photographs of the students and then escalating with responses on both sides before the students were out-and-out attacked – as reported in The Indian Express. And yet, “Bharat mata” got conveniently invoked as justification for this crudest (and criminal) form of racism.

Not all crowds are alike, obviously. You could say they have different reasons for assembling and take different actions once assembled. Sociologists have long theorised about the nature of crowds, usually from the perspective of being in one. Do crowds suppress individuality or do they allow us to get in touch with our true selves and beliefs? In a place like the Metro, or any other crowded form of mass transit, diverse groups come together not out of a shared sense of  identity or political purpose, but rather a shared need to get from one place to another. And yet, as in all crowds, it is a mental experience as much as a physical one. The goal of mass transit in a large, diverse city is predicated on people’s recognition of their shared social and even political identities as urban citizens first – no matter what color, class, gender, or creed. 

The goal of Modi in Manhattan, meanwhile, may very well have been to coalesce this crowd of Indian Americans into political subjects.To look at him, yes, as he rotated 360 degrees on center stage, but also to look around at each other. 

The author teaches at George Mason University and is the author of English Heart, Hindi Heartland: The Political Life of Literature in India