What a difference a year can make. At this time last year, Narendra Modi was an outsider to New Delhi, hoping to beat the odds and lead his right-of-center Bharatiya Janata Party back to national power after 10 years in the wilderness.
Today Prime Minister Modi stands at the pinnacle of Indian politics. In May, he led the BJP to India’s first single-party parliamentary majority in 25 years. He has since steamrolled a dispirited and disorganized opposition in a string of state elections. A leader whose reputation for hard-line Hindu nationalism once evoked suspicion in Western capitals has successfully projected himself as the one politician who can right India’s battered economy and help the country fulfill its strategic potential as a bulwark of democracy in a region threatened by both an aggressive China and a resurgent radical Islam.
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