NEW DELHI — Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi raised a lot of eyebrows here recently when he decided it was a good idea to wrap the nation’s advances in plumbing together with a celebration of Mahatma Gandhi.
An audience of smitten followers and party faithful broke into applause as Mr. Modi marked the 100th anniversary of Gandhi’s first campaign against British rule in colonial India in May 1917, linking it to his own Swachhagraha — “Clean India” — campaign to boost economic performance by ending public human defecation and cleaning up the country’s notoriously polluted and dusty cities.
