Leaders & Visionaries

Swami Vivekananda was a monk of the Ramakrishna Order who represented Hinduism at the World’s Parliament of Religions in Chicago in 1893.

His lectures introduced Vedanta and Indian philosophy to Western audiences and stirred fresh self-confidence at home. In 1897 he founded the Ramakrishna Mission, which joins spiritual work with social service.

Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel was a lawyer and independence leader who organised the Bardoli satyagraha and became one of the Indian National Congress’s most decisive figures.

As free India’s first Deputy Prime Minister and Home Minister he integrated more than five hundred princely states into the Union, earning the name Iron Man of India. His birthday is observed as National Unity Day.

Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin is a Russian politician and former intelligence officer who has served as President of Russia since 2012, after an earlier term from 2000 to 2008, with a period as Prime Minister between the two.

He rose through the security services and the St Petersburg administration before moving to national government in Moscow in the 1990s. Under his long stewardship Russia has remained central to world affairs.

Narendra Damodardas Modi is the Prime Minister of India, first sworn in in 2014 after four terms as Chief Minister of Gujarat. He began public work as a teenager in his home town of Vadnagar.

His governments have carried nationwide programmes in sanitation, digital payments and direct benefit transfer, and he has made yoga and outreach to the diaspora a signature of India’s global presence.

Donald John Trump is an American businessman and politician who served as the forty-fifth President of the United States from 2017 to 2021 and was elected the forty-seventh in 2024.

Before entering politics he built a real estate development career in New York and hosted the television programme The Apprentice. He took office for his second term in January 2025.