FILE- In this May 16, 2014 file photo, Indians take photographs of a portrait of Bharatiya Janata Party leader Narendra Modi, with an outline of the India map made with colored powder and surrounded by rose petals, in Gandhinagar, Gujarat state, India. Modi, who became a Hindu nationalist before he was 10 years old, has upended life in India’s only Muslim-majority state, flexing those nationalist muscles for his millions of followers.
“Modi has fulfilled another promise,” said a more quiet-spoken supporter, Sushanto Sen, a retired senior manager with an aerospace and defense company, who lives in the crowded north Indian city of Lucknow. “Kashmir is part of India, and whatever rules apply to us should apply to others too.” Modi is the proud son of a tea-stall owner who became a canny politician and skilled orator and who now, Putin-like, does adventure TV shows like “Man vs. Wild.” .“I have never experienced fear or nervousness,” he told the show’s host, the British ex-special forces soldier Bear Grylls, with whom he hiked through an Indian tiger reserve carrying a spear fashioned from a knife and a branch, TV cameras in tow. “I am unable to explain to people what nervousness is.
Modi, who first became prime minister in 2014, has reinforced his power with nearly every election since then. But just a little over a decade ago he was denied a U.S. visa because of suspicions that he had quietly supported the bloody 2002 anti-Muslim riots that shook Gujarat, the state which he long ran as chief minister.
Many of his early beliefs were shaped in the RSS, with its heavy emphasis on paramilitary drills, Hindu prayers and personal sacrifice. The current head of the RSS, Mohan Bhagwat, turned heads last year when he said Muslims were welcome in India, but also insisted that everyone living in India was a Hindu.
It’s a lesson Modi learned well, cementing his authority at the top of the party since becoming prime minister and sidelining potential rivals. Over the decades, most special rights had been whittled away. But they remained symbolically powerful across Indian-controlled Kashmir, where most people want independence from India or a merger with Pakistan. The restrictions on the sale of land to non-Kashmiris were particularly important, seen as a way to keep outsiders from swamping the state and changing its nature.
All kashmiri muslims are non-indians and refugees from 1947 & 1972 wars. Kashmir and Jammu are Hindu States for centuries.
Upended? Only the corrupt people who ruled the state to fill their own pockets at the expense of the people are upended.
I didn't think India actually wanted Modi?
'Hindu nationalist by the time he was 10 years old' - Modi, get a hobby mate.
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