With Modi’s visit, Houston’s Indians say ‘howdy’ to world

On Sunday, India Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit to Houston is expected to attract more than 50,000 people to NRG Stadium — plus roughly a thousand volunteers, 400 singers and dancers, President Donald Trump and a significant protest outside.

The mammoth event — exuberantly named “Howdy, Modi!” — reflects the growing size, power and complexity of the Indian-American community, both in the Houston area and the U.S.

“People I talk to are beyond excited,” said Houston novelist Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni. “They are throwing themselves into it heart and soul. I have friends who are volunteering for this event as if it’s a full-time job.

“This is going to be a kind of family celebration. We want to say, ‘Look at our community here! We are successful. We are strong. We have done good things for Houston!’ We would like Modi to know all of this.”

“We have been working hard for the last three years to have him visit Texas,” said Jiten Agarwal, the president and CEO of Expedien, an IT firm with offices in Houston and New Delhi.

Harsh Vardhan Shringla, the Indian ambassador to the U.S., said that while in Houston, Modi will meet with the heads of major energy companies. It’s widely assumed that both parties are interested in bolstering India’s imports of liquefied natural gas.

“India is a large and attractive market for business, particularly the energy sector,” said Lyondell-Basell CEO Bob Patel, himself an Indian immigrant. “There’s certainly going to be significant opportunity there over the long term.”

Rishi Bhutada, the official “Howdy, Modi!” spokesperson, is normally Star Pipe Products’ vice president for finance. On Memorial Day, he said, when Modi announced that he’d visit Houston on Sept. 22, many of the city’s Indian-American groups hurriedly joined forces, creating the Texas India Forum, a nonprofit umbrella group that now includes more than 600 organizations from across the U.S.

They secured NRG Stadium, Bhutada said, because no other large venue was available for the date.

In mid-July, the Texas India Forum announced the event, offering free tickets via its website, which helpfully explains the event’s name for non-Texans: “‘Howdy,’ shorthand for ‘How do you do?,’ is a friendly greeting commonly used in the southwestern United States.”

Within three weeks, all 50,000 tickets had been claimed — roughly 8,000 of them by Modi fans traveling from outside the Houston area. More than 5,000 people are now on the waiting list. The event will be shown on Indian TV channels in both the U.S. and India. Bhutada said that hundreds of watch parties have been organized in Texas, and “literally thousands” across the U.S.

In early August, Modi’s visit to Houston abruptly became far more controversial. The prime minister announced that he was revoking the special status that had allowed the heavily Muslim region of Kashmir to have its own constitution. Modi had been accused of Hindu nationalism before. Now, with Kashmir under lockdown, and Pakistan on edge, questions swirled about India’s reputation for peacefulness and plurality.

Several groups representing India’s religious minorities plan to protest Modi’s visit. On I-45, outside NRG Stadium, a red billboard urges protesters to “Stand with Kashmir, stand with humanity.” On Saturday, Sikh tractor-trailer drivers held a dress-rehearsal rally, driving big rigs decorated with flags and protest signs to the NRG Center.

Aban Rustomji, a Zoroastrian who was born in India, raised in Pakistan, and moved to Houston in 1979, says sadly that she’s worried by the “mass infringements of civil rights” that she sees in India. But not all Zoroastrians agree with her, and disagreements over Modi have split the city’s tiny Zoroastrian community. “It’s like Republicans and Democrats,” she said sadly. “We argue over the Thanksgiving table. We know that we cannot say certain things and remain friends.”

Many in Houston remain steadfast Modi supporters, pleased by the prime minister’s attitude toward modernization, the environment and improving India’s economy. And preparations for “Howdy, Modi!” continued to roll.

A week before the show, at the brand-new Gujarati Samaj event center, director Heena Patel was putting dance troupes through their paces. “Howdy, Modi!”, billed as a community summit, will include not just speeches by the prime minister, Trump and other dignitaries, but also made-for-a-stadium entertainment. “Woven,” a 90-minute show, aims to convey the Indian-American experience via biographical video clips and roughly 400 singers and dancers, the vast majority volunteers from Houston.

Dance teacher Rathna Kumar’s troupe had been practicing furiously all day. At 3 p.m., when Patel released the classical dancers and moved on to a Bollywood troupe, the classical girls swarmed to a stack of pizza boxes; they hadn’t yet eaten lunch.

At Kiran’s, a restaurant in Upper Kirby, chef Kiran Verma has put her staff of 17 on high alert: They’ll be working both lunches and dinners every day until the Tuesday after the prime minister’s business. The private rooms were all booked. On Sunday, normally an off day, she and the kitchen crew worked nine hours to prep for the coming rush. “There are a few things,” she said cryptically, “that for security reasons I can’t discuss.”

Taral Patel is chief of staff for Fort Bend County Judge KP George, one of the most powerful Indian-Americans in U.S. government. Soon after Modi’s visit was announced, Patel said, the receptionist who answers the county’s main phone line began fielding questions from constituents who wanted to know whether George would meet with Modi. Some felt strongly that he should; others, that he shouldn’t. He will. The county receptionist, Patel said, was hurriedly briefed on Kashmir.

Sociologist Stephen Klineberg, who for almost 40 years has overseen the Kinder Houston Area Survey, follows Houston’s fast-growing Asian-American communities with great interest. “A great part of the story,” he said, “is that there’s terrible conflict between Pakistan and India over Kashmir. Such hostility and hatred. But that hostility disappears when Indians and Pakistanis come to Houston and America. What is a big tension over there, here becomes much less powerful.”

That shift is particularly notable between immigrants and their children, who are often friends with Pakistani-Americans. Raj Mankad, director of communications at the Rice 360 Institute for Global Health, grew up in Alabama, the child of immigrants. He won’t attend “Howdy, Modi!”, but his aunt and uncle are such fans that they’re flying on a chartered plane from New York to Houston, just for the day — unable to stay in Houston long enough even to see their nephew.

Divakaruni is disappointed that she’ll miss Modi’s visit because she’ll be on the book tour for her new novel, “The Forest of Enchantments.”

“It’s the first time Indian-Americans in Houston have had an event of this size, this scale, this excitement,” she said. “It’s more than political – it’s political, cultural and social. It takes a big event like this to show people what a big, important part of Houston we are.” lisa.gray@chron.com