India's
newest prime minister has set up a a website to collect messages from
anyone who has congratulated him on Twitter, Facebook and other forms of
social media.
Plenty
congratulated Narendra Modi on Friday, when he climbed to the top of
India's political ladder. Any tweet with the hashtag #CongratsNaMO will
appear on an online "victory wall,"
which is currently a constantly rotating slideshow of congratulatory
text. People can also send a text to a number listed on the site or
leave a comment on Modi's Facebook post about the wall (at the time of
writing, there were more than 81,000 comments on the Facebook post).
At
one point, that hashtag had climbed to at least the No. 2 trending
topic worldwide. The huge response on the wall is not surprising; Modi
won by a landslide and has a huge social presence. He has more than 4
million followers on Twitter, more than 14 million Likes on Facebook,
tweets almost daily and into the campaign selfies.
Modi's
victory made a huge statement about the Bharatiya Janata Party. The
Indian National Congress has controlled the nation's lower house of
parliament for the vast majority of time since India became independent
in 1947, but an increasing disdain for political corruption and Modi's
record of increasing economic opportunity for the middle class as the
chief elected official in the northwestern state of Gujarat have
catapulted him to the head of the country.
Despite
Modi's resounding victory, many in India and abroad are wary of the
nation's new leader. Modi is an unabashed Hindu nationalist in a nation
that is 14% Muslim. In 2002, religious riots in the state left 2,500
people dead, most of them Muslim, and charges that Modi did little to
prevent the deaths follow him to this day.
For
now, the detractors have been swept away by the ease of Modi's victory.
During a victory speech in Vadodara, Gujarat, on Friday, he delivered a
message that many in India have waited years to hear.
“Brothers
and sisters, you have faith in me, and I have faith in you,” Modi said,
according to the New York Times. “We have the capacity to fulfill the
common man’s aspirations.”
Posted by : Gizmeon
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