Narendra Modi Education
As a child, Modi helped his father sell tea at the Vadnagar railway station. Later he ran a tea stall with his brother near a bus terminus.
Modi completed his higher secondary education in Vadnagar in 1967, where a teacher described him as an average student and a keen debater, with interest in theatre.
Narendra Modi had an early gift for rhetoric in debates, and his teachers and students noted this.
Modi preferred playing larger-than-life characters in theatrical productions, which has influenced his political image.
When eight years old, Modi discovered the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) and began attending its local shakhas.
Narendra Modi Higher Education
Modi spent the ensuing two years travelling across Northern and North-eastern India, though few details of where he went have emerged.
In interviews, Modi has described visiting Hindu ashrams founded by Swami Vivekananda: the Belur Math near Kolkata. Later he visited Advaita Ashrama in Almora and the Ramakrishna Mission in Rajkot.
Modi remained only a short time at each, since he lacked the required college education. Vivekananda has been described as a large influence in Modi’s life.
In the early summer of 1968, Modi reached the Belur Math but president turned him away. Later Modi wandered through Calcutta, West Bengal and Assam, stopping in Siliguri and Guwahati.
Modi then went to the Ramakrishna Ashram in Almora, where president rejected him again, before travelling back to Gujarat via Delhi and Rajasthan in 1968–69.
Sometime in late 1969 or early 1970, Modi returned to Vadnagar for a brief visit before leaving again for Ahmedabad. There, Modi lived with his uncle, working in the latter’s canteen at the Gujarat State Road Transport Corporation.
Narendra Modi Education Continued
In 1978 Modi received a Bachelor of Arts degree in political science from School of Open Learning at University of Delhi, graduating with a third class.
Five years later, in 1983, he received a Master of Arts degree in political science from Gujarat University, as an external distance learning student.