[Beneath the surface of the two leaders’
personal relationship are the shifting tectonic plates of geopolitics. With the
expansion of Chinese power into the Indian Ocean, American and Indian interests
in the region are gradually converging. It is difficult to say which government
was more quietly gratified this month when Sri Lanka’s Beijing-aligned
president lost his re-election bid, making it less likely that the island off India’s
coast would eventually provide a foothold for Chinese military expansion.]
By Ellen Barry
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An Indian shopkeeper
offered kites with images of Prime Minister Narendra Modi of
India and President Barack
Obama in Mumbai this month. Credit
Indranil
Mukherjee/Agence France-Presse — Getty
Images
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NEW
DELHI — Ever since India’s
prime minister, Narendra
Modi, visited President
Obama in the fall, the word in New Delhi has been that the two
men — one a former Hindu activist, the other a former law professor — had
“chemistry.”
Mr. Obama broke the ice by leaving his White
House staff behind to give Mr. Modi a personal 15-minute tour of the Martin
Luther King Jr. Memorial. Soon after, Mr. Modi decided to invite Mr. Obama to
Republic Day celebrations this month, becoming the first Indian leader to
choose an American as his guest for the spectacular annual parade.
It is hard to say who was more taken aback:
the Americans — Mr. Obama’s attendance required him to juggle the timing of the State of the Union address — or the
Indians, when Mr. Obama said yes. He is scheduled to arrive in New Delhi on
Sunday.
The emerging good will between the two leaders
was not preordained. Mr. Modi came into office with a formidable piece of
baggage, having been blacklisted by the United States government for nearly a
decade over his handling of religious riots in Gujarat, the state he led.
American diplomats’ efforts to mend fences were late and awkward, and Mr. Modi
is known to hold a grudge.
Beneath the surface of the two leaders’
personal relationship are the shifting tectonic plates of geopolitics. With the
expansion of Chinese power into the Indian Ocean, American and Indian interests
in the region are gradually converging. It is difficult to say which government
was more quietly gratified this month when Sri Lanka’s Beijing-aligned
president lost his re-election bid, making it less likely that the island off India’s
coast would eventually provide a foothold for Chinese military expansion.
And aides to Mr. Modi say the years long
discussion of his human rights record concealed an important fact: He is,
compared with nearly all of the Indian leaders who preceded him, quite
pro-American.
“He was always very canny in recognizing that
the United States was important for his own ambitions, and for Indian
ambitions,” said Ashley Tellis, a senior associate with the Carnegie Endowment
for International Peace and author of a new report on the two countries’
relationship. “What was missing was that connective tissue which takes what he
knew in his head and translates it into action.”
The meeting between the two leaders in
Washington, he said, provided that emotional turning point.
This week has brought a marathon of
last-minute negotiations, mainly over issues that the United States and India
have been grappling with for years.
Mr. Modi has styled himself as a detonator of
roadblocks, and some headway may be made this time. A central obstacle is the sweeping
liability law passed by Parliament in 2010 that froze plans for American
corporations to construct nuclear power plants in India. Negotiators are also
trying to finalize major defense purchases and to close gaps on exports of
Indian pharmaceuticals, some of which the United States bans over patent
disputes and safety concerns.
American officials, meanwhile, have pressed
for India to follow China’s lead and agree to an ambitious target to limit
carbon emissions, although they have played down expectations for a
breakthrough. But the officials said the potential seemed to make another trip
to India worthwhile, making Mr. Obama the first American president to visit
twice during his tenure.
“Our hope is that the chemistry between the
leaders and the personal relationship can lead to positive outcomes for our
country,” said Benjamin J. Rhodes, the president’s deputy national security
adviser. “And so it’s worth the investment in the relationship with the
country, the leader and the people of India.”
Famously reserved, Mr. Obama does not forge
close relationships with other world leaders easily. But Mr. Modi has been an
exception, aides said, as the two leaders found some shared experiences.
“Just the humble origins from which both of
them came from and the opportunities presented to both of them” created a
“certain space in which the two leaders were able to engage in these
conversations,” said Philip Reiner, Mr. Obama’s top adviser on South Asia.
They now stand at very different points, one
man confronting the question of how he will stand in history and the other
enjoying international celebrity after years of harsh criticism from the West.
Mr. Modi, in particular, has given careful thought to the symbolic takeaway of
the visit for each leader.
“Go for the big guy himself, and his
international rehabilitation is complete,” said Ashok Malik, a columnist who
advised Mr. Modi’s campaign. “What does Obama get out of it? He needs a legacy
like nobody’s business.”
Since last February, when the United States
ambassador to India at the time, Nancy J. Powell, ended America’s nine-year
period of not meeting with Mr. Modi and held a chilly meeting with him, a
series of developments has warmed the atmosphere.
A frustrating trade dispute was resolved. Mr.
Modi appointed two senior advisers to his government who had been living in the
United States for years. India’s Ministry of External Affairs distanced itself
from a diplomat, Devyani Khobragade, who was arrested in New York last year
over her treatment of her maid, providing a rallying cry for anti-American
sentiment in India. And Indian security officials were delighted when the
F.B.I. opened an investigation into
a former American diplomat, Robin L. Raphel, who they long said was influencing
American policy in Pakistan’s favor.
One reason for a closer embrace of Washington
by New Delhi is that the members of the new political elite around Mr. Modi
have far deeper ties to the United States than their predecessors, from the
left-leaning and long-dominant Indian National Congress party.
Many of Mr. Modi’s supporters are Gujarati
businessmen who have prospered in the United States and preach the successful
immigrants’ gospel of free enterprise. In the 1990s, as a campaigner for a
Hindu nationalist organization, Mr. Modi spent months traveling in the United
States, and aides say he avidly studied the country.
Although most Indians have a positive view of
the United States, according to a Pew Research Center poll taken last
year, that enthusiasm has never penetrated into India’s government — in
particular its defense establishment. The roots of this are deep: The United
States has sold advanced weaponry to Pakistan and China, two neighbors which
India has gone to war with, and, after India conducted nuclear tests, imposed
sanctions on the Indian military.
That this gap persists will be demonstrated on
Monday, when Mr. Obama is to stand beside Mr. Modi at the Republic Day parade
for an extensive display of Indian military hardware, much of it supplied by
Russia. He will also be reminded of India’s pressing need for investment in
infrastructure, an area where the United States cannot begin to compete with
China and its vast, state-controlled reserves of foreign currency.
Indeed, the most important message from next
week’s meeting could end up being a more subtle one: that the relationship is
turning, as slowly as an oil tanker, toward a closer, more predictable
long-term alignment.
Richard M. Rossow, an expert on
Indian-American relations at the Center for Strategic and International
Studies, said the president’s decision to return to India so soon after meeting
Mr. Modi was the best indication that the two men had sized each other up and
wanted to move forward.
“Are they buddy-buddy?” he added. “That’s for
them to tell you about. But more importantly for the president of the United
States, he sees a counterpart that will actually try to deliver on things that
are promised in those meetings. And so I think that is probably the best way that
they can show friendship.”
Correction:
January 22, 2015
Because of an editing error, an earlier version of this article referred incorrectly to the resolution of the scheduling conflict that President Obama faced in traveling to India. He had to juggle the timing of his State of the Union address; he did not have to change its date. The article also misstated part of the name of a research organization that conducted a recent survey of Indians’ views of the United States. It is the Pew Research Center, not the Pew Research Foundation.
Because of an editing error, an earlier version of this article referred incorrectly to the resolution of the scheduling conflict that President Obama faced in traveling to India. He had to juggle the timing of his State of the Union address; he did not have to change its date. The article also misstated part of the name of a research organization that conducted a recent survey of Indians’ views of the United States. It is the Pew Research Center, not the Pew Research Foundation.
Peter Baker contributed reporting from
Washington.
