The New Face of India Is the Anti-Gandhi

In September 2014, at Madison Square Garden in New York, India’s prime minister, Narendra Modi, addressed a crowd of nearly 20,000 people. It was a sold-out spectacle worthy of a lush Bollywood production, with dancers warming up the audience and giant screens flashing portraits of Modi in the style of Shepard Fairey’s 2008 Barack Obama “Hope” posters. There was a revolving stage, a speed portrait painter, and a bipartisan coterie of American politicians, including senators Chuck Schumer and Robert Menendez, and South Carolina governor Nikki Haley, who is of Indian descent.