Over 24,000 Indian Americans have signed up for Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s event at Uniondale in New York on September 22 during his visit to the United States for the UN’s Summit of the Future, the organisers said. The event will be held at the Nassau Veterans Memorial Coliseum, which has a capacity of 15,000.
“Indian Americans from at least 42 states are expected to attend, and the response has been particularly strong from the tri-state area [New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut],” the Indo-American Community of USA (IACU), the organisers, said in a statement.
IACU, a not-for-profit that works to promote unity within the Indo-American community through cultural events and public programs, said registrations for the event have come through 590 community organisations, all of whom signed up as Welcome Partners, from across the United States.
The event “Modi & US: Progress Together” will include attendees and participants from across religious communities—Jewish, Zoroastrian, Jain, Christian, Sikh, Muslim, and Hindu. “They also represent a significant cross-section of India’s diverse languages, including Hindi, Telugu, Punjabi, Tamil, Bengali, Malayalam, Gujarati, and others,” the statement said. “In addition to remarks by Prime Minister Modi, the event will showcase cultural performances and appearances by prominent Indian Americans in business, science, entertainment, and the arts.”
The event seeks to celebrate India and the US and the “cultural ethos” of viewing the “world as one family, diversity a strength, and the well-being of all people and the planet an inspiration for building a better world together”.
{{/usCountry}}The event seeks to celebrate India and the US and the “cultural ethos” of viewing the “world as one family, diversity a strength, and the well-being of all people and the planet an inspiration for building a better world together”.
{{/usCountry}}HT this month reported the event was expected to be “unique and different” in its format, flow, and themes compared to Modi’s past events in the US. This will be Modi’s fifth address to the Indian community in the US. In 2014, he spoke at the Madison Square Garden (New York).
In 2015, he addressed Indians in California’s San Jose with a focus on the tech community in Silicon Valley and the political leadership in the West Coast. Modi spoke to community organisation leaders at a smaller event in Washington DC in 2017.
In 2019, Modi and then-American President Donald Trump addressed the biggest-ever gathering of Indian-Americans in Houston. During his state visit to the US last year, 8000 Indian-Americans attended the ceremonial welcome at the White House. Modi spoke to Indian-American professionals at the Kennedy Center and addressed another community event at the Reagan Center in Washington DC.