PRESIDENT OBAMA AND INDIA’S MODI FORGE AN UNLIKELY FRIENDSHIP

The White House Letter

[There are compelling reasons the leaders of the world’s largest democracies would find common cause. The United States is encouraging the rise of India as a giant Asian partner to balance China, and India is trying to accelerate its economy with an injection of investment from American companies.]

By Gardiner Harris

President Obama and Prime Minister Narendra Modi in the gardens of
Hyderabad House in New Delhi in 2015. Credit Jim Bourg/Reuters

WASHINGTON — There are few relationships between President Obamaand another world leader more unlikely than the one he has with Prime Minister Narendra Modi of India.

The two have a public warmth — or “chemistry,” as the Indian news media like to describe it — and that is likely to be on display Tuesday when Mr. Modi visits the White House for the second time in two years. It will be the seventh time the two leaders will have met.

There are compelling reasons the leaders of the world’s largest democracies would find common cause. The United States is encouraging the rise of India as a giant Asian partner to balance China, and India is trying to accelerate its economy with an injection of investment from American companies.

“It is true that Obama and I have a special friendship, a special wavelength,” Mr. Modi said last month in an interview with The Wall Street Journal. Benjamin J. Rhodes, the president’s deputy national security adviser for strategic communication, said on Saturday that the two leaders “have each invested in developing a close relationship.”

It is worth recounting just how unlikely such a friendship is.

The nation’s first black president, Mr. Obama has made the protection of minorities a central pillar of his life. And he has argued that criticism and dissent are core tenets of democracy.

Mr. Modi, by contrast, spent much of his life rising through the ranks of theRashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, a right-wing paramilitary organization that campaigns forcefully for India’s Hindu majority. Mr. Modi was in charge of the state of Gujarat when rioting in 2002 cost the lives of more than 1,000 people, most of them Muslims. Just last week, 24 people were convicted of massacring Muslims during the riots, and pending cases are attempting to prove that Mr. Modi, who has so far escaped judicial censure, was part of a high-level conspiracy to encourage the killings.

Generally poorer and less educated than India’s Hindus, Muslims are about 14 percent of the population, about the same proportion as African Americans in the United States. In India, Mr. Modi’s reputation among Muslims could broadly be compared to that of a Southern segregationist from the 1950s.

Perhaps just as troubling, Mr. Modi’s government has increasingly used the country’s broad and vague laws restricting free speech to stifle dissent, according to a recent report by Human Rights Watch. Other laws have been used to intimidate and even shut down nongovernmental organizations, such as Greenpeace.

Neither Mr. Obama nor Mr. Modi is given to displaying affection. Both avoid the socializing common in their capitals. And while Mr. Obama is a doting father and dutiful husband who maintains close bonds with his childhood friends, Mr. Modi abandoned his arranged marriage decades ago and has no children or any public friendships.

Some political analysts have expressed deep skepticism that the two leaders have any real fondness for each other.

Mr. Modi is part of a class of “populist, electable, narcissistic right-wing autocrats whose appeal is that they pander to majoritarian anger,” said Kanti Prasad Bajpai, a professor of Asian studies at the National University of Singapore.

“Obama is the opposite of that, so it is hard to see how close they can be,” Mr. Bajpai said.

Others see similarities that extend beyond political beliefs.

Both men rose from modest circumstances, had difficult relationships with their fathers and were widely considered transformational figures when elected. (Mr. Modi’s humble origins, largely corruption-free government and intense focus on winning foreign investment are sharp breaks from his predecessor.) And parts of Mr. Modi’s political operation, in particular its effective use of social media, were based on Mr. Obama’s model.

Ashley J. Tellis, a senior associate with the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, said both men “are remarkably warm and have a personal graciousness about them that is very evident in personal encounters.”

Raymond E. Vickery, a former United States assistant secretary of commerce who has met Mr. Modi, said both had grown up as outsiders and valued frankness.

“Modi is a really down-to-earth guy who tries to answer your questions and doesn’t just go to talking points,” Mr. Vickery said.

Mr. Obama made the first significant gesture in the relationship when, during Mr. Modi’s first official visit to Washington in 2014, the president left his White House staff behind to give a personal 15-minute tour of the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial.

Mr. Modi responded by inviting Mr. Obama to be his guest at the annual Republic Day celebrations in New Delhi in January 2015. When Mr. Obama arrived, Mr. Modi broke with protocol to greet the president at the airport with a hug. And at a later appearance, Mr. Modi referred to the president as Barack and thanked him for his “deep personal commitment” to their friendship. In a toast at a state dinner, Mr. Obama called Mr. Modi “my partner and friend.”

“The hours they’ve spent together,” Mr. Rhodes said Saturday, “have allowed them to have a good understanding of their respective worldviews and domestic circumstances, and made it possible to deepen defense ties, advance our civil nuclear cooperation and achieve a breakthrough onclimate change.”

He added, “It’s also an indication of how important President Obama thinks our relationship is with India, as the world’s largest democracy and an increasingly important partner.”

On Tuesday, White House officials said, the two leaders are expected to discuss climate change and clean energy partnerships, security cooperation, and economic growth. Analysts said the leaders might announce a new defense logistics agreement, further progress on India’s efforts to phase out ozone-depleting hydrofluorocarbons and perhaps a deal for Westinghouse Electric Corporation to build nuclear power plants in India in a long-delayed fulfillment of a pact first struck in 2006.

A shared interest in clean power and climate change is central to their personal bond, some analysts said.

“These two guys get very little political traction at home for being climate champions, but they are anyway, and I think they respect each other for that,” said Andrew Light, a former senior adviser to the United States special envoy on climate change.

Tavleen Singh, an Indian commentator and admirer of Mr. Modi, said the prime minister’s high-profile sanitation campaign and his efforts to improve the status of women would also endear him to Mr. Obama. Still, she said she doubted the two men were truly affectionate.

Zia Haq, an assistant editor at the Hindustan Times in India, was also skeptical.

“I refuse to believe the two men could be very good personal friends deep down, because Modi is all things Obama can’t possibly be,” Mr. Haq wrote in an email.

@ The New York Times