A low-caste tea boy in his youth, Narendra Modi was today sworn in as India's 15th prime minister at a ceremony in New Delhi attended by regional leaders.
President Pranab Mukherjee administered the oath of office to the 63-year-old Mr Modi at the coronation-style swearing-in ceremony in the forecourt of the sandstone presidential palace, cheered on by thousands of guests including politicians, businessmen and movie stars.
Mr Modi, India’s first prime minister born after independence from the UK in 1947, heads a Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government and has pledged to kick-start India’s moribund economy severely impaired by the corruption and maladministration of the outgoing Congress Party.
Following a high-octane and gruelling election campaign, Mr Modi, who will be prime minister until 2019, ended two back-to-back five-year terms of the Congress Party dominated by the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty.
Its ignominious defeat, the worst in its 128-year history, meant it does not even qualify to be the official opposition in parliament.
Within minutes of being sworn in, Mr Modi, widely viewed as a polarising politician, promised to forge a “strong and inclusive” India, a pledge seen as placatory towards the country’s more than 150 million Muslims, who regard him with fear and suspicion.
“Let us together dream of a strong, developed and inclusive India that actively engages with the global community to strengthen the cause of world peace and development,” he said.
A 45–member cabinet that includes 21 junior ministers was sworn in alongside Mr Modi amid tight security in which more than 5,000 police and paramilitary were deployed, along with drones and marksmen. Roads leading to the palace in the heart of the city were closed to traffic five hours before the ceremony.
Neighbouring leaders The 90-minute ceremony was, for the first time, attended by the president of Mauritius and by leaders from India’s seven neighbouring states in the South Asian Association for Regional Co-operation (SAARC) – Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Nepal, the Maldives, Pakistan and Sri Lanka.
Mr Modi's invitation was dressed up as an effort to reach out to SAARC but was aimed principally at Nawaz Sharif, prime minister of nuclear rival Pakistan.
Security officials said Mr Modi was extending an olive branch to Islamabad. At the same time he was conveying to Sharif that Delhi now has a powerful leader with a strong political mandate, a leader capable of taking decisive action should Pakistan revert to “sponsoring” terror strikes against India as in the recent past. It was the first time after the two countries became independent 67 years ago that a prime minister from one state attended such a ceremony in the other.
However, despite securing the strongest political mandate of any Indian leader in 30 years, Mr Modi still faces the challenge of winning over the country’s Muslims.
They hold him culpable, as chief minister of western Gujarat state, for the weeks-long Muslim pogrom there in 2002 in which more than 1,000 people died. And though Mr Modi was never legally indicted for this violence, he continues to be blamed by human rights activists and the media for not summarily ending it.
