Former Prime Minister Jawahar Lal Nehru at a San Francisco luncheon.

READ THIS IN HINDI:

अमेरिका में नेहरू की 'बराबरी' करेंगे मोदी

SAN FRANCISCO: Prime Minister Narendra Modi will visit Silicon Valley during his trip to the United States in September this year, marking only the second time any Indian head of government will have traveled to California after Jawaharlal Nehru came to San Francisco in 1949.The term ''Silicon Valley'' was not even born at that time (it was first used in the 1970s) although Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard had begun their famed ''garage start-up'' a few years before Nehru’s visit. Those days, San Francisco was better known (than Washington DC or New York City) as a fount of political activism by NRIs (a term which was also not born).It was the birthplace of the Ghadar Party (initially the Pacific Coast Hindustan Association) that espoused India’s independence. Besides a host of students from University of California, Berkeley, such as Lala Hardayal, Mohammed Barkatullah and Tarak Nath Das, it also hosted Lala Lajpat Rai and Manabendra Nath Roy, who would go on to co-found the Communist Party of Mexico and the undivided Communist Party of India. Jayaprakash Narayan (JP) also studied at UC Berkeley before transferring to Iowa State.However, it is not so much politics but business that is bringing Modi to the Bay Area, besides the draw of a large overseas Indian audience. California has the largest population of Indians in the U.S – over half a million, mostly in the Bay Area. A reprise of the Madison Square Garden, New York, kind of event is in the works, with San Francisco’s Cow Palace or AT&T Park as possible venues. Should he want to hit up the academic crowd, there’s Stanford University and UC-Berkeley within hailing distance.(Source of pic: Truman library photo)But it will be his tech and business foray that has Silicon Valley cognoscenti all aflutter. Although, Silicon Valley is home to storied companies such as Google, Intel, HP, and Oracle, not to speak of nifty new social media enterprises such as Facebook and Twitter that Modi is perhaps more familiar with, it real value lies in its ecosystem that gives start-ups a chance to be come a giant even though many flame out.''I hope his time is not monopolized by billionaires and big companies. Silicon Valley is so much more than that. It is the culture of start-ups and the enabling ecosystem that makes it what it is,'' says Vinod Dham, a former Intel vice-president who is known as the Father of the Pentium chip before he became a venture capitalist.Some surveys have indicated up to a quarter of all start-ups in Silicon Valley are founded by immigrants, with at least 15 per cent having an Indian founder or co-founder.Of course, politics will never be too far given the Indian legacy here. Should Modi’s dispensation look up the archives during Nehru’s 1949 visit (he was accompanied by his sister Vijayalakshmi Pandit and his daughter Indira Gandhi), they will see India’s first Prime Minister received with wild adulation by Bay Area Indians -- and the American media.''Nehru has virtually no competitor for the title ‘most charming head of state in the world.’ You leave his presence like a battery from a charging station. This man has captured the hearts of his people,'' the Stanford Daily reported on his arrival, describing him as ''a cultured patriot with a Cambridge accent, luminous eyes, and a magnetic smile.''Nehru himself was no less eloquent, telling an audience in Berkeley’s Hearst Greek Theater, ''We live in an age of paradox. We talk of peace and prepare for war . . . we talk of internationalism and one world, and yet, nationalism and narrow prejudices govern our policies. We move from one temporary expedient to another, achieving nothing of permanence.''