Asian News International (ANI) reported that Indian diaspora members gathered in Munich Oct. 24 to back Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government, but gave no measure of wider support.
ANI named NRIs for Bharat Rise as the organizer and said the event drew Indian professionals, students and families from across Germany. It characterized the gathering as peaceful under the name “Bharat First.” The a.i.d.a. Archiv München calendar listed a “Bharat first” event at Rindermarkt on Oct. 24, from 10 a.m. to noon ET (14:00 to 16:00 UTC), describing it as a planned Hindu-nationalist gathering.
The calendar entry warned that listings may change or be canceled; it records a scheduled event, not what happened. ANI reported that the gathering took place but supplied no crowd estimate.
ANI said participants urged respect for a government mandate framed as representing 1.4 billion Indians. It also reported that attendees challenged what organizers called anti-India narratives, discussed Germany-based YouTuber Dhruv Rathee and argued that online critics did not speak for the wider Indian community in Europe. The report named no speakers and offered no survey or other measure of diaspora opinion.
The Election Commission of India (ECI) recorded 979,751,847 electors and 646,420,869 votes polled in the 2024 general election, for turnout of 66.1%. These figures count participation in a national election; they do not indicate how representative the Munich gathering was of Indians in Germany or Europe. The 1.4 billion figure is not the ECI’s count of electors or votes cast.
