Modi has regularly paid respect to Gandhi and spoken movingly about his ideals and legacy.
But the relationship between Modi’s Hindu nationalist ruling party and one of the 20th century’s most venerated figures remains deeply ambivalent.
The Raj Ghat memorial complex is one of the most hallowed spaces in the capital New Delhi, and more than a million people escorted Gandhi’s body as it was transported there after his assassination.
In the decades since it has hosted the funeral pyres of India’s top statesmen and women.
Arriving leaders bowed before Modi as he hung shawls around their necks in front of a photograph of Sabarmati Ashram, a long-term residence of Gandhi’s in the prime minister’s home state of Gujarat.
The ashram is a popular spot on the itinerary of visiting world leaders, with Modi using it to host, among others, his former British counterpart Boris Johnson, former US president Donald Trump and his wife Melania.
HINDU NATIONALIST IDEOLOGUE
Gandhi’s assassin Nathuram Godse, hanged for the killing the following year, has been championed by right-wing activists.
In their view, Gandhi failed to stop Britain’s colony from being partitioned into the separate nations of India and Pakistan, thwarting it from becoming a state governed by ancient Hindu scriptures.
Modi has never explicitly denounced Godse or his ideology, and his government has championed the work of Vinayak Damodar Savarkar, an important Hindu ideologue who served as Godse’s mentor.
The prime minister has a heavy personal investment in the success of this year’s G20 summit, which he has used to burnish his image as an international statesman ahead of national elections next year.
Images of Modi have adorned billboards and bus stops around the country to tout the gathering of the world’s top economies as a moment of national triumph.
The summit concludes on Sunday with Biden flying on to a state visit in Vietnam.
Source: CNA
