By Eric Killelea,
They danced Friday night in the GSH Event Center in southwest Houston, circling the drummer beneath a poster of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
The roughly 400 Houston Hindus wore saffron caps, T-shirts and sashes emblazoned with slogans identifying themselves as Modi’s “parivar”—a Hindi term for family—and part of his Hindu nationalist movement known as the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). The group sat in the auditorium and stared at a projected image of Modi’s bearded face and congratulated each other for hosting call-a-thons in Houston to reach voters in India to ask them to vote for Modi. Many of them even traveled to India to help during the campaign.
India’s 150,000-member diaspora in Houston has built a reputation as being largely pro-Modi and has helped with funding, campaigning and spreading the prime minister’s charismatic and strong global image. “Though we’re in the U.S., we are trying to help him because we like to see the development,” Arun Mundra, an event organizer, told me at the recent event, Modi 3.0. “Whenever India will become strong, the world will become strong.”
The Hindus praised Modi for winning his third term in India’s election. Many of them felt a sense of pride that he’d transformed India into an economic power and a Hindu nation and believe his successes stand to benefit their family and friends overseas and their own ability to thrive in Houston.
This story was originally published in chron.com. Read the full story here.
