A rockstar welcome for a smooth arrival: for a while, on this evening of Thursday July 13, the crowd of fans chanted “Modi! Modi! » in the large auditorium of La Seine musicale in Boulogne-Billancourt (Hauts-de-Seine). White-hot, the audience was won over when the Indian Prime Minister entered the stage with measured steps, hands clasped in the namaste rigorously. Ecstasy of the crowd in trance, nearly 4,000 Indians of the diaspora waving the flags of India, chanting the first verses of the national anthem Vande Mataram (“praised be the fatherland”) or screaming at full lungs the martial injunction ” Bharat Mata Ki Jai » (India victorious).
We feel Narendra Modi jubilant in front of his adoring fellow citizens who came en masse, not only from France but also from Europe to attend the speech of the Indian Prime Minister, guest of honor the next day at the July 14 parade. When he cajoles his audience, we can also guess the satisfaction of someone who knows perfectly how to benefit indirectly from his compliments: “The enthusiasm you are showing today is unprecedented, he begins, hands outstretched to the audience. I feel like I’m still in India. But, who, I ask you, makes this event extraordinary, yes, who? » Support Response “Modi! Mod ». Reply from the adulated to his adulators: “No, you are wrong, it is not Modi, it is all of you! »
Narendra Modi, Prime Minister since 2014, is a populist tribune, a nationalist who inflames crowds by exalting the nationalist fiber of Hindus (79% of the population). He knows how to play on the ultra-sensitive strings of a country with a convulsive history, marked by a complex cohabitation with the Muslim dynasties which once subjugated it and by British colonization which once enslaved it.
Now, insists the Prime Minister, India’s time has come. A time that sees this “Bharath Mata” emerging country (the “Mother India”) allow her children to “make all their dreams come true” ; this India which has now become so essential to the functioning of the world that it contributes “to take [la planète tout entière] forward “. As for him, Narendra Modi, who never loses sight of the deadline for the 2024 elections, he assures his people that “every drop of [son] blood does not irrigate [son] body only for you, for [son] country “. “Modi! Modi! »rumbles the crowd.
“Democracy” and “diversity”
For the head of government of a nation that has recently become the most populous on the planet and the fifth largest economy in the world, India has indeed a vocation to lead humanity on the paths of its redemption. Mr Modi on Thursday repeated his concept of Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam (” the world is one big family”), a fundamentally inclusive Sanskrit term since it would allow Gandhi’s country to assume a universal role: ” [L’écrivain français] Romain Rolland, did he not say, reminds Mr. Modi, that India was the mother of all civilizations? »
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