Narendra Modi – Prime Minister of India
Narendra Damodardas Modi is a member of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), was Chief Minister of Gujarat from 2001 to2014 and became the (15th) Prime Minister of India on May 26, 2014.
Modi was born on 17 September 1950 to a family of grocers belonging to the backward Ghanchi-Teli community, in Vadnagar in Mehsana district of what was then Bombay Presidency (present-day Gujarat), India. He was the third of six children born to Damodardas Mulchand Modi and his wife, Heeraben. He helped his father sell tea at Vadnagar railway station when a child and as a teenager he ran a tea stall with his brother near a bus terminus.
He completed his schooling in Vadnagar, Where a teacher described him as being an average student, but a keen debater who had an interest in theatre. That interest has influenced how he now projects himself in politics.
Modi was a key strategist for the BJP in the successful 1995 and 1998 Gujarat state election campaigns, and was a major campaign figure in the 2009 general elections, eventually won by the Indian National Congress-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA). He first became chief minister of Gujarat in October 2001 after the resignation of his predecessor, Keshubhai Patel, and following the defeat of BJP in the by-elections. In July 2007, he became the longest-serving Chief Minister in Gujarat’s history, at which point he had been in power for 2,063 days continuously.
Narendra Modi was drawn to politics in his early teens and was a member of Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh (RSS). During the 1960 s India-Pakistan war, even though he was only a young boy, he volunteered to serve soldiers traveling through railway stations. As a youth, he became a member of the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad, a student body involved in anti-corruption. After having worked full time with them, he was then nominated as its representative in the BJP. Modi was also a campaigner in the RSS during his years in college and took on the task of encouraging the party members. Partnering with Shankersingh Vaghela, Modi began a strong cadre base in Gujarat. Narendra Modi has come from a humble background and is known for his simple lifestyle. He has a reputation of being a workaholic and introvert. Mr. Modi has tried to change his image from that of a Hindu Nationalist politician to that of a sincere administrator.
The party began getting political attention and formed a coalition government in April 1990. After this, the BJP came to power in Gujarat in 1995. During this period, Modi was responsible for the Somnath to Ayodhya Rath Yatra and a similar trek from Kanyakumari in Southern India all the way up to Kashmir in the north.
A careful observation of his rise to the national Podium would evince how he remained glued to his fundamentals – continuing agitations during the nationwide Emergency, organizing Murli Manohar Joshi’s Ekta yatra (journey for unity), and impressing everyone with electoral strategy ahead of the 1995 state elections. As BJP tasted victory, Modi relished his newly ordained post of the party’s General Secretary.
The workaholic and loyal ‘sevak’ moved to New Delhi to take up the new responsibility of managing the party’s activities in Haryana and Himachal Pradesh. Three summers whizzed past and Modi already had the post of National Secretary of the BJP under his kitty. He led the BJP into the April-May 2014 general election, winning the second-largest majority in the history of the Lok Sabha and become India’s first prime minister born after the country’s independence.
