REPUBLIKA.CO.ID, NEW DELHI - Narendra Modi (63 years) was sworn in as India's prime minister on Monday, after a historic election victory that gave his party the first parliamentary majority in 30 years and ended two terms of rule by the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty. 

South Asia's bitterest rivals have an opportunity to turn a page in their history of troubled relations, Pakistan's prime minister said on Monday after he and other regional leaders arrived for the swearing-in ceremony of India's Narendra Modi.

Modi's invitation to leaders from across the region means his inauguration as prime minister in New Delhi is as much a show of his determination to be a key player on the global stage as a celebration of his stunning election victory.

Pakistan's Nawaz Sharif said the nuclear-armed neighbors, which were traumatically separated at the end of British rule in 1947 and have fought three wars since, should together rid their region of the instability that has plagued them for decades.

"We should remove fears, mistrust and misgivings about each other," he told the NDTV news network in the Indian capital, a few hours before Modi's elaborate swearing-in ceremony at the presidential palace, a colonial-era sandstone mansion.

Some 4,000 guests are expected at the palace, making it the biggest event of its kind since independence. Security was heavy for the ceremony, which is due to begin at 6 pm (1230 GMT).

Modi's Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and its allies swept India's elections this month, ousting the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty in a seismic political shift that has given his party a mandate for sweeping economic reform.

His day began with a visit to the site of independence hero Mahatma Gandhi's cremation on the banks of the Yamuna river. Even before his inauguration, Modi made waves on the global stage, where once he was treated by many with suspicion - and by some as a pariah - for Hindu-Muslim violence that erupted 12 years ago in Gujarat, the western state he ruled.

Modi has spoken with the presidents of the United States and Russia, and he has become one of only three people that Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe follows on Twitter. The US administration denied Modi a visa in 2005, but President Barack Obama has now invited him to the White House.

The low-caste son of a tea stall-owner, Modi has given India its first parliamentary majority after 25 years of coalition governments, which means he has ample room to advance reforms that started 23 years ago but have stalled in recent years.

Many supporters see him as India's answer to the neo-liberal former US President Ronald Reagan or British leader Margaret Thatcher. One foreign editor has ventured Modi could be so transformative he turns out to be "India's Deng Xiaoping", the leader who set China on its path of spectacular economic growth.

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