[For years, the Indian government
has blocked the sale of a former U.S. consulate to a family of vaccine tycoons,
but it’s not clear why. The Americans are getting annoyed.]
By Jeffrey Gettleman, Suhasini Raj and Lara Jakes
Lincoln House, a former maharajah’s
palace and U.S. consulate in Mumbai, was supposed to have been sold six years ago
for $110 million. Ever since, the United States has been trying to transfer the
property to one of the richest families in India,
now among the major makers of Covid-19 vaccines, but for unknown reasons the
Indian government has been blocking it.
The dispute is “an unnecessary
irritant in bilateral ties,” Senator James E. Risch said in a written question
to Mr. Blinken during the confirmation hearing. “Do you commit to making the
resolution of the Lincoln House issue a priority with India, and to directing
the U.S. Ambassador to India to do the same?”
“Yes,” Mr. Blinken said, and this
week he will have a chance to prove his word.
On Tuesday, he is scheduled to
arrive in India for
his first trip to the country as secretary of state, and congressional and
administration officials say he intends to bring up this moldering mansion that
is becoming something of a diplomatic black hole.
Mr. Blinken has a full plate. He
will be trying to quickly cover everything from cybersecurity, human rights and
climate change to Covid assistance, the impending peril in Afghanistan and an
elusive trade deal that could mean billions of dollars of new business for
India and America, if it ever gets signed.
But Lincoln House has become an
unexpected obstacle. High-level diplomatic correspondence reveals how much
attention this single property has consumed, laying bare some of the tortuous
twists and turns of the U.S.-India relationship, which many American officials
hope will become their cornerstone in Asia.
The intended buyer is the Poonawalla
family, India’s vaccine tycoons, who have been in the spotlight this year
for cranking out hundreds of millions of Covid-19 vaccine doses.
Former Secretary of State Mike
Pompeo vented his frustration last year in a letter to India’s foreign
minister, writing that “the Government of India has never provided us any
credible legal response or explanation of why it has blocked the transfer.”
“Regrettably,” Mr. Pompeo added,
“the Lincoln House saga does not live up to the standards of our relationship.”
A year later, with maintenance
bills running up, Lincoln House still sits unsold, its high walls crumbling,
paint chipping off, rust streaks running down to the sidewalk, an
American-owned eyesore. A rambling, haunted-looking, cream-colored building, it
lies in one of Mumbai’s most desirable enclaves — Breach Candy — just a stone’s
throw from where soft waves tumble into the shore.
Officials in the administration of
Prime Minister Narendra Modi have met requests to discuss the matter with
impenetrable silence.
More than a half a dozen officials, from the foreign ministry’s chief spokesman
to the Mumbai collector (involved in registering property transfers) to the
principal director general of the Press Information Bureau, which handles
queries concerning Mr. Modi’s office, declined to comment.
American officials are beyond
annoyed.
The way they see it, there are no
legal reasons to block the sale, and India and the United States are supposed
to be friends. They point out that Washington rushed in intelligence assistance
and cold-weather gear last summer after Indian soldiers got battered
by Chinese troops along their disputed
Himalayan border. Then, when Covid
hit India hard, the United States sent medical relief totaling nearly a
quarter of a billion dollars.
U.S. officials interviewed by The
New York Times seemed perplexed by the holdup. They suspect Mr. Modi’s
government doesn’t like the idea of the United States making so much money off
the deal, which would be one of the biggest house sales in Indian history. Or possibly the
Modi government wants to prevent Lincoln House from going to the Poonawallas,
who are not among the handful of Indian billionaires known to be Modi
stalwarts. Or maybe it’s a matter of pride, and officials feel uncomfortable
with a foreign government simply selling off an iconic piece of Indian history
like any other property.
The three-story
mansion was built in the 1930s in Indian-Deco style (picture clean Art
Deco lines, with rounded cupolas and ornate window meshes) by the Maharajah of
Wankaner, one of the hundreds of princely states that existed under British
rule.
M.K. Ranjitsinh was the grandson of
the maharajah who built it.
“It was very modern for its time,”
he said of the home, which had a swimming pool, a cannon out front and a wooden
dance floor (“not like we used it much,” Mr. Ranjitsinh admitted).
But after independence in 1947, the
maharajahs lost their privileges. The upkeep for the house — called Wankaner
House back then — became too much for a minor aristocrat. So in 1959, the
Wankaner family sold the rights to the property (Lincoln House is actually on a
900-year-plus lease) to the American government for 1.65 million rupees, which
would have been around $350,000 at the time.
Though New Delhi is India’s
capital, the United States needed something big and impressive for a consulate
in Mumbai, then Bombay, India’s commercial powerhouse.
Indians of a certain ilk have fond
memories of grand soirees at Lincoln House.
“There were beautiful terraces so
you could see the garden below,” said Jeroo Mulla, a media professor who
visited the mansion several times, starting in 1975. “It was so unusual. It’s
not like the other ugly things around.”
But in 2011, the United States opened a modern consulate in Mumbai. It
was time to say goodbye to Lincoln House. A few years later, when it was put on
the market, the Poonawallas snapped it up.
The family runs the
Serum Institute of India, the world’s largest manufacturer of vaccines,
based in nearby Pune. At times the family has been at odds with the Indian
government over export restrictions and other issues but both sides need each
other and have downplayed their differences.
With a penchant for Ferraris and
racehorses, the Poonawallas are known for living large and
said they planned to use the 50,000-square foot space as a weekend
home.
In October 2015, India’s foreign
ministry gave the U.S. government explicit permission for the deal in a letter
saying, “This ministry would like to convey its approval for the sale.”
But soon after, another branch of
the Indian government, the Defense Estates Officer, objected, saying the
Americans had failed to give notice of the sale and cessation of use of the
property within a mandated 20-day period. American officials countered that
they hadn’t finalized the transaction or stopped using the property and
therefore hadn’t broken the rules.
After the Indian government
continued to frustrate the sale, many American officials, including two
ambassadors and Mr. Pompeo, weighed in, arguing that the sale should go through
and urging the Modi administration to help make it happen. U.S. senators sent
two letters to Mr. Modi. They never received a reply.
If the deal is not finalized by the
end of August, the Poonawallas have the right to back out, according to the
contract. If they do, the American government then faces an expensive question:
Now what?
There aren’t too many other buyers
who can drop $110 million on a home.
And because Lincoln House is a
heritage property, it would be difficult under current zoning rules to knock it
down and redevelop. American officials are beginning to worry it could be a
total loss.
Through a spokesman, Adar
Poonawalla, the scion of the family, declined to comment. However, last summer,
when the subject was raised in an interview with The Times, he said that the
family still wanted it and didn’t know why the government was blocking the
sale.
