Leaders in the Indian community of Philadelphia were among those in attendance at India prime minister Narendra Modi's events in New York on his first visit to the U.S. last night."My wife and I attended the dinner last night at the Pierre Hotel," Kris Singh PhD., founder and chief executive at Holtec, the Marlton power plant parts maker, told me. "The Prime Minister gave a short speech -- more like a homily -- and then graciously stood for hours greeting every guest with an Indian 'namaste'' or a Western handshake.

"I found him to be a gifted and charismatic speaker. His line on making India better understood by the rest of the world through increased tourism -- 'Terrorism divides peoples, tourism unites them' -- drew rapturous applause. He spoke in Hindi. I was impressed with his command of Hindi which is not his native language. I, like many others present, believe that Mr. Modi will be transformative force for making India into a more perfect liberal democracy and the countrys economy will be re-energized by his no-nonsense approach to governance.

"It was really quite an event -- a frenzied, chaotic, but happy occasion. 20,000 people were screaming in the stands for a rock star, you would have thought," adds Dr. Aseem Shukla, associate professor of surgery at the University of Pennsylvania and cofounder of the the Hindu American Foundation (www.hafsite.org) (corrected). (More about Dr. Shukla and his history with Modi before he was elected Prime Minister earlier this year, here.)

Before the visit, Shukla wrote this piece at FirstPost on the significance of the New York event. Highlights:

"If the Modi moment is prone to hyperbole and tired metaphors, it is because the moment is ripe with emotions not ascribed to a political leader in over sixty years...

"More than forty-thousand Indian Americans went through a ponderous online process clamoring for twenty-thousand tickets to hear the prime minister speak... What explains the rock star welcome?... No one expects the dapper Modi to don a Karzai-esque cape when he swoops into Gotham City, but if Modi actually delivers on many of the promises of his campaign, be prepared for more mythmaking...

"Modinomics: Indian Americans wrestle with the guilt that they left India in search of a prosperity that eluded them at home. The India they left was clear in its socialist messaging: individual prosperity necessarily deprives another of limited resources. Resources were to be allocated, not created; economic structures militated against wealth creation. To that narrative, another already existed--renunciation. Capitalism was the converse not of socialism, but of the real aim in life of shedding the bonds of materialism and maya.

"The diaspora finds many ways to deal with the duality--continue earning while giving more to building temples, seeking spiritual solace and learning at sundry ashrams, churches and mosques. But the Modi archetype resolves the conflict. Modi is the renunciate who does not repudiate prosperity. Modi may be a sadhu in his personal life--no kanchan or kamini, though accepting some kirti--but he is a sadhu who preaches that wealth creation is good, as long as one is not enslaved by it and is able to lift all boats with it.

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"Modi is the man for this moment"