Madison Square Garden was at full capacity Sunday, not for a Knicks game or a Jay-Z concert, but for the prime minister of India. A crowd of more than 18,500 cheered along with Narendra Modi on his first visit to New York City as prime minister.

Modi was elected leader of India in May, where he won in a landslide. Since then, he has garnered a rock star-like following.

A member of the right-wing Bharatiya Janata Party in India, he had reportedly stated that he refuses to speak to world leaders in English. At Madison Square Garden on Sunday, he delivered an hour-long speech in Hindi, but had spoken to a crowd in Central Park in English the night before.

The Madison Square Garden event was full of spectacles -- it opened with one of India's most popular singers performing one of Mahatma Gandhi's anthems while an artist painted a portrait of the prime minister. Watch the whole event here:

Traditional dancers from Gujarat, the prime minister's home state, also took to the stage.



Dancers perform before Modi speaks at Madison Square Garden. (Lucas Jackson/Reuters)

Along with the overwhelmingly positive welcome for Modi in New York were crowds protesting his visit. Before this year, Congress had denied Modi a visa allow him to enter the United States because of his alleged negligence in preventing a 2002 massacre in which more than 1,000 people died, many of them Muslim.

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A protester with the Alliance for Justice and Accountability shouts slogans during a demonstration against Modi outside Madison Square Garden. (Julie Jacobson/AP)



Protesters stage a demonstration across the street from Madison Square Garden. (Julie Jacobson/AP)

Still, hundreds of supporters gathered in Times Square and welcomed the prime minister.

A jam packed Madison Square Garden awaits the arrival of Indian PM Narendra Modi #ModiAtMadison pic.twitter.com/IaSbOuskXi — TIMES NOW (@TimesNow) September 28, 2014

Modi's welcome wasn't without incident, though -- a YouTube video captured one of India's leading news hosts, Rajdeep Sardesai, being heckled and then pushed by a crowd. Sardesai tweeted about the incident:

Glad we caught the idiots on cam. Only way to shame the mob is to show them. #ModiAtMadison — Citizen/नागरिक/Dost Rajdeep (@sardesairajdeep) September 28, 2014

In just a few hours, the video received more than 100,000 hits.