In pictures: Narendra Modi's early life

In this Tuesday, May 20, 2014 file photo, India"s Prime Minister-elect Narendra Modi displays the letter from the Indian president inviting him to form the new government

Narendra Modi, who led his Bharatiya Janata Party to a landslide victory in India's general election, is being sworn in as prime minister.

Narendra Modi (2-L) with his supporters in Varanasi on April 24, 2014

Mr Modi is credited with running a brilliant campaign, winning 282 seats in the 543-member parliament. He himself stood in two constituencies - Vadodara in his home state Gujarat and the holy city of Varanasi in Uttar Pradesh - and romped home in both.

Narendra Modi (C) looks at solar panels before inaugurating the Gujarat Solar Park at Charanka village in Patan district, some 250kms from Ahmedabad, on December 30, 2010.

Mr Modi, who was Gujarat chief minister for over a decade, is regarded as a dynamic and efficient politician who helped to make his state an economic powerhouse.

Indian Hindus riot in the smoke-shrouded streets of Ahmedabad, the main city in the western Indian state of Gujarat in this March 1, 2002 file photo. Narendra Midi's critics depict him as an autocratic Hindu supremacist who would tyrannize the country's minority Muslims if his Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) came to power. Modi himself insists he is a moderate who will create a prosperous India for people of all creeds. Picture taken March 1, 2002.

But under his watch, more than 1,000 people, mostly Muslims, were killed in religious violence in 2002 when Hindu rioters took to the streets of Gujarat to avenge the deaths of 59 Hindu pilgrims in a train fire, allegedly started by Muslims. Critics say Mr Modi did little to stop the violence, an allegation he has always denied.

Modi as a child

Narendra Modi was born on 17 September 1950 in the town of Vadnagar in Gujarat's Mehsana district. He claims that as a young boy, he helped his father sell tea at Vadnagar railway station. (Photo courtesy: Manish Bardia)

In this photograph taken on September 6, 2009, Chief Minister of the western Indian state of Gujarat Narendra Modi (3L) and former chief minister Keshubhai Patel (2R, front) gesture as they attend a Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) gathering at Tria Mandir in Adalaj, some 20kms from Ahmedabad.

Mr Modi enjoys strong support among senior leaders in the right-wing Hindu organisation Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), which is the ideological fountainhead to a host of hardline Hindu organisations, including the BJP. This photo shows him attending an RSS gathering in 2009 in Gujarat.

Modi as a young RSS pracharak

Mr Modi worked for many years with the RSS as a "pracharak", or propagandist, and some say that this training made him into the firebrand orator he is today. (Photo courtesy: Manish Bardia)

Modi in a disguise during the Emergency

When then prime minister Indira Gandhi declared a state of emergency in India in the 1970s, the RSS was banned and several of its leaders and activists were jailed. Mr Modi disguised himself as a Sikh to escape the authorities. (Photo courtesy: Manish Bardia)