Indian PM Modi looks to big welcome and mended ties

When India's prime minister visits the United States this week, he'll see a welcome normally reserved for rock stars - a sold-out appearance at New York City's Madison Square Garden. It's a stunning feat for a former tea seller who rose to the country's top job and was once denied a US visa.

More than 18,000 people, most of them Indian-Americans, are expected to pack the arena and thousands more will watch on giant screens in Times Square as Narendra Modi makes a speech during his first visit to the US.

The trip comes on the back of a spectacular electoral victory that has catapulted Modi, once an international pariah for his alleged complicity in sectarian violence in his home state of Gujarat, to a leader the world is eagerly courting.

US President Barack Obama was among the first Western leaders to call and congratulate Modi when his Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party swept into power in May.

Modi's acceptance of Obama's invitation also signifies that he has moved beyond the resentment of being denied a visa in 2005, three year after religious riots killed more than 1,000 Muslims in the western state where he was the top elected official.

"The prime minister is always looking forward, not back," Indian Foreign Ministry spokesman Syed Akbaruddin said recently.

Modi is visiting at a time of strained US-India relations, especially following last year's arrest and strip-search of an Indian diplomat in New York on visa-fraud charges.

With both sides hoping to reset that relationship, Modi's five-day trip, starting on Friday, is tightly packed: He will be meeting Obama and a slew of top US officials, addressing the United Nations General Assembly, and interacting with the heads of major US companies and influential Indian-Americans.