January 10, 2025 10:59 pm (IST)

Make this your homepage

Foreign

Los Angeles wildfire toll climbs to 10, thousands of structures destroyed | 8 labourers still trapped in Assam's flooded mine even after 3 days of rescue ops | SC refuses to hear petitions seeking review of its same-sex marriage judgement, says there is 'no error' | 'They should wind up the alliance': Omar Abdullah on AAP-Congress fight over Delhi elections | Pune woman killed by her colleague in full public view for not paying back his money, no one intervenes | Los Angeles wildfire leaves 5 dead, forces 1 lakh including celebs to flee, Hollywood hills ablazed | PM Modi condoles death of six people in Tirupati stampede incident | Days after condemning Pak airstrikes, India in a first engages with Afghanistan's Taliban regime | 6 dead in stampede near Tirupati temple during token distribution to offer prayers | Prominent journalist-film producer Pritish Nandy dies of cardiac arrest at 73

Tea-seller's son can head a country only in India: Hagel

India Blooms News Service | | Aug 10, 2014, at 07:37 am

#Tea Sellers son head country # Chuck Hagel Narendra Modi

New Delhi, Aug 9 (IBNS): United States Secretary of Defence Chuck Hagel on Saturday said both India and the US were the two nations where even a tea seller's son can become the Prime Minister or a Kenyan's child can become the President of the country.

"In few places in the world other than in India and America could the child of a small-town tea salesman rise to become Prime Minister...or a child raised in Indonesia, born to a Kenyan father and a Kansan mother, rise to become President," Hagel said at the Observer Research Foundation here.

He was making reference to Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and US President Barack Obama.

Modi used to sell tea in trains and help his father run a small tea stall in Gujarat at an early phase of his life.

Vadnagar station, where Narendra Modi’s father owned a tea stall, was where Narendra Modi also sold tea.

According to his biography, his early years were not very easy. It says: "The family belonged to the marginalized sections of society and had to struggle to make ends meet. The entire family lived in a small single storey house (approximately 40 feet by 12 feet). His father sold tea at the tea stall he set up in the local railway station. In his early years, Narendra Modi too lent a hand to his father at the tea stall."

It was his tea seller background that in this election Modi managed to hard-sell projecting himself as a man who rose from the grassroots.

Barack Obama, who is the 44th President of the US, was born to an American mother and a father of Kenyan origin.

Obama was elected as the President of the country on Nov 4, 2008, and sworn in on Jan 20, 2009.

Support Our Journalism

We cannot do without you.. your contribution supports unbiased journalism

IBNS is not driven by any ism- not wokeism, not racism, not skewed secularism, not hyper right-wing or left liberal ideals, nor by any hardline religious beliefs or hyper nationalism. We want to serve you good old objective news, as they are. We do not judge or preach. We let people decide for themselves. We only try to present factual and well-sourced news.