Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi will visit the Googleplex later this month during his highly anticipated and increasingly controversial visit to Silicon Valley.
The search giant confirmed Thursday that Modi s itinerary will include a stop at the Mountain View campus.
San Jose-based Adobe Systems said Modi will also be meeting with its CEO Shantanu Narayen, who, like Google s new CEO, Sundar Pichai, was born in India. Other meetings with tech executives are also expected.
The biggest event will be a community reception sponsored by Indian-American organizations on Sept. 27 at the SAP Center in San Jose. More than 45,000 sought to get free tickets this summer for the 18,500-capacity facility, said Rakhi Israni of the Indo American Community of West Coast, a group newly formed to host the event.
From taxi drivers and farmers to professionals and CEOs of large companies, the excitement being felt in the Silicon Valley is unprecedented, the organization wrote in a statement.
But academics at Stanford University, Santa Clara University, UC Berkeley, UC Santa Cruz and institutions around the country are also calling for more debate about Modi s leadership and legacy when he visits the region. More than 130 professors recently penned an open letter raising privacy concerns about his new Digital India initiative and questioning alleged government harassment of activists in India.
The letter responds to a rather uncritical adulation of Modi as a new savior of India, said Thomas Blom Hansen, a Stanford anthropology professor who has studied the rise of Hindu nationalism and Modi s Bharatiya Janata Party, known as the BJP.
We feel there is an anti-democratic streak in this wider movement, he said. The government is pushing to shut down dissent and go after its opponents in ways that are rather disturbing.
Above: In this Monday, May 18, 2015 file photo, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, front right, takes a picture with an unidentified woman upon his arrival at Seoul military airport in Seongnam, South Korea. Modi is active on Facebook, Google+, Twitter and Instagram, and posts photographs on Flickr and Pinterest. (Han Jong-chan/Yonhap via AP, File)
