When Achille Forler, a Frenchman in Gujarat, opened registrations for the first Alliance française French language institute in the State, around a thousand people obtained paid memberships in the first year. One of the very first was a young man named Narendra Modi. “He was a regular member,” Mr. Forler, speaking in French, recalled in a phone call with The Hindu. “He attended many of the art exhibitions, concerts, film screenings and events we had organised.”
The membership receipt, obtained by the future Chief Minister of Gujarat and Prime Minister of India, was shared with the public in the run-up to Mr. Modi’s state visit to France.
From February 1981 to the end of 1989, when Mr. Forler, who founded the Alliance française d’Ahmedabad with his wife Chantal Forler, Mr. Modi became a familiar face. “I would recognise and greet all the regulars, but I wouldn’t speak to all of them,” he said. Mr. Modi, he said, was an exception. “He had the classic social worker look,” Mr. Forler quipped, describing the then Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh worker as wearing a kurta pajama, carrying a black bag.
“He had an interest in photography, and we went to the library together, and he picked out a book he wanted to borrow,” Mr. Forler said. While Mr. Modi regularly attended events, he didn’t take French classes, Mr. Forler said. “It was just me and my wife who were teaching classes,” he said. Mr. Modi mostly kept to himself, and didn’t seem to chat with other members during his visits there, Mr. Forler said.
Towards the end of 1989, Mr. Forler got a job as an audiovisual attaché at the Embassy of France in New Delhi, marking the end of his work at the French language institute in Ahmedabad. Mr. Modi “was the last person I met in my office before I left,” Mr. Forler said. “It was just the two of us.”
Turning point
Just two years prior, Mr. Modi had moved from the RSS to the Bharatiya Janata Party, a turning point in his career. “When I left in 1989, I knew he was close to Mr. [L.K.] Advani, and that he was going to enter politics,” Mr. Forler said. Mr. Advani, a senior BJP leader and former Deputy Prime Minister, was elected as a Member of Parliament around the time of Mr. Forler’s departure, and was chosen as the Leader of the Opposition shortly thereafter. Mr. Modi took up a greater role in Gujarat politics, and was elected Chief Minister in 2001.
As for Mr. Forler, the onetime French language institute founder and embassy worker charted an unlikely course in the Indian music industry — after running a telecom and broadcast consultancy from 1991 to 2005, he ran a music label that was eventually merged into Universal Publishing Group, whose Indian operations he was chosen to head for three years until 2016.
