Narendra Damodardas Modi was born on 17 September 1950 to a Gujarati Hindu family of grocers in Vadnagar, Mehsana district, Bombay State. Modi completed his higher secondary education in Vadnagar in 1967, where a teacher described him as an average student and a keen debater. In 1978, Modi received a Bachelor of Arts degree in political science from School of Open Learning at University of Delhi. In 1983, he received a Master of Arts degree in political science from Gujarat University, graduating with a first-class.
He was the third of six children born to Damodardas Mulchand Modi and Hiraben Modi. Modi's family belonged to the Modh-Ghanchi-Teli (oil-presser) community. His father ran a tea stall at the Vadnagar Railway Station in Gujarat. He and his brother ran a tea stall near a bus terminus in Gujarat.
He started attending local shakhas of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) since he was eight. In 1971, he became a full-time pracharak of the RSS. He became an RSS sambhag pracharak (regional organiser) in 1978 for Surat and Vadodara and in 1979, moved to Delhi to work for the organization. He was elected as the Organizing Secretary of the BJP's Gujarat unit in 1987.
He rose to become the Chief Minister of Gujarat after Keshubhai Patel’s health deteriorated on 7 October 2001. The state elections in December 2002 saw him win 127 seats in a 182-seat assembly, further consolidating his position. He was Gujarat's longest-serving chief minister from 2001 to 2014.
He fought the 2014 Lok Sabha elections as the PM-nominee of the NDA – an alliance led by the BJP.
The NDA won the 2014 Lok Sabha elections on the development plank, and Narendra Modi became the 14th Prime Minister of India on May 26, 2014. He won the Lok Sabha elections in 2019, this time with a bigger margin and took an oath on May 30 2019.