India-US Relations: Rahul and Modi Seek Meaning as US Elections Loom

India-US Relations: The no Battle for Influence Between Rahul and Modi

In 1874, King David Kalakaua of Hawaii, then called the Sandwich Islands, came on a 91-day state visit to the United States looking at reciprocity in policies towards each other. Those were early days for a new nation when the US may have been perceived as a large island, but its influence was confined to its sprawling landmass, as travelling from one end to another took a long time. Now state guests do not come to the US for so long. They come and they go. Some may leave a mark, and some may not, but a state visit to the US was actively sought.

In the past, when communication was limited, heads of state from India and elsewhere travelled to the US on a state visit once or never. The US was considered so powerful that, in diplomatic circles, there was a belief that those who can’t go to the US do not last long as heads of state.

Narendra Modi surely subscribes to this point of view, and he, therefore, wants to visit the US again and again. Unfazed by the fact that he was barred from entering the US after the Gujarat riots, he managed to surmount the challenge by becoming a PM.

Ever since he became the PM in 2014, he has completed his 9th visit to Washington. Though he is considered to be the most pro-US PM ever, he is weighed down by India’s historical commitment to non-alignment, which has been rechristened as “strategic autonomy” by the present BJP government. To his credit, PM Modi has braved pressures from Washington to give up India’s traditional friendship with Russia, but no one in Washington thinks he is anything but a close ally.

During the time Narendra Modi was earning his spurs as a young BJP leader in the ’80s, he went on a long trip to the US under the International Visitor Leadership Program (IVLP). Thereafter, he traveled to the US quite a few times and leveraged the formidable network of those who believed in the RSS and Washington’s ability to support those who were aligned with their free-market, anti-Soviet Union policies. In those days, the US was obsessed with taking on the Soviet Union and its communist supporters in different parts of the world. From this standpoint, Modi, like other BJP leaders who went to the US, represented a perfect fit.

Brought up on the staple diet of anti-Congressism, Modi has been fighting the ghost of Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru, who recognised long years ago the importance of the US in spurring the development of countries in the Third World. In 1949, Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru visited Washington as Prime Minister and conveyed to the leadership that he had a mind of his own. He received support from the US populace, but not from the leadership. He returned demeaned from the US, though he developed subsequently close ties with President Dwight D. Eisenhower. US President John F. Kennedy thought Nehru’s trip was the most difficult, though he had a good relationship with his wife, whom he hosted in Teen Murti Bhavan when she visited the country.

Since then, India-US relations have changed dramatically. Now no one talks about socialism, the public sector, or poverty. The conversation is more focused on technology, reining in China, and bringing bulky investments in various sectors. More rich Indians go to the US now than ever before, allowing for greater influence of the US on both our domestic and foreign policy. To his credit, PM Modi has sought to leverage this growing wealth among Indians to forge a powerful pressure group. He has tried to show that electorally, Indians count. This is all hogwash, as proved in the 2020 US elections. Modi held a “Howdy Modi” event that promised a “Donald Trump government,” obviously with the support of Indians. Trump came to grief thereafter.

Modi and India also lost their traditional bonhomie with the Democrats. This time around, Modi is not trying to be an electoral factor. During his latest trip, he did not meet Donald Trump, seemingly under foreign ministry advice, which invariably goes wrong. Despite playing it straight, Biden’s US has not made life easy for Prime Minister Modi. A US judicial court has summoned India’s National Security Advisor, Ajit Doval, and a few other officials for allegedly plotting the murder of an American citizen. India has also been criticised by the latest Freedom of Religion report for treating its Muslim and Christian minorities shabbily. Modi’s India is trying to brave these unhappy events that could set the course for the new administration next year, more so if the Democrats regain power. Due to these reasons, India would like Trump to come to power.

India-US Relations: The Rising Influence of Indian-Americans in US Elections

Electorally, the number of Indians may not be enough—just 1.35 percent of the total population—but they have begun to represent significant financial muscle that is aggressively wooed by US presidential candidates. In this presidential race, the Democrats have fielded a candidate who has Indian roots—Kamala Harris—and there have been others of Indian origin who have aspired for this high-stakes job, such as Nikki Haley (née Randhawa) and Vivek Ramaswamy. There are more who will throw their hats in the ring to share their American dream if Kamala wins the elections on November 5, 2024.

The US is a sucker for a good story. Ordinary Americans love a yarn when it has been woven with hard work and success written on it. That is why the BJP and RSS supporters in the US and India feared Congress leader Rahul Gandhi’s visit to Dallas and Washington a few days before Modi visited New York. They feared that the Western media and the Indian diaspora would begin to draw comparisons between the two leaders. Though Chief Minister MK Stalin was also in the US drawing big crowds and signing deals with many US companies, the BJP supporters were not really bothered about him. Their concern was Rahul, who was visiting the US after his relatively successful performance in the recent parliamentary elections and his emergence as a successful leader of the opposition.

Supporters of the RSS scrutinised every word he spoke or anything he may have done during his short stay. And true to his wont, Rahul gave them enough to mock him and his ample Nehruvian pedigree. His remarks that the RSS and the BJP, if they had gotten 400 seats on their own, would have ensured uniformity and homogeneity in the way Hinduism would have been practiced. His assertion that Sikhs, in that majoritarian scenario, would have lost their identity and not been allowed to wear their trademark turban and beard. Expectedly, he was trolled viciously, and BJP members like Petroleum Minister Hardeep Singh Puri, a Sikh, were wheeled out by the party leadership to debunk him and make him sound inadequate to the task of a leader of the opposition. The pro-Hindutva ecosystem that converges in the US with that of Donald Trump-led Republicans worked hard to show that meeting with the Muslim leader of the Democrats, Ilhan Omar, was an anti-Indian act, as she had gone to Pakistan-occupied Kashmir and criticised the Indian government’s decision to abrogate Article 370, which changed the status of the contentious state. What was forgotten, as eloquently reminded by many who disagree with this narrative that meeting Ilhan Omar was an anti-national act, was that many Democrats like presidential candidate Kamala Harris and Bernie Sanders had been critical of the abrogation. However, they never attracted the same response that is reserved for the Congresswoman from Minnesota.

What the BJP and RSS feared in Rahul’s visit was the resurrection of an India of old Nehruvian syncretic values. After all, for the last 10 years, since the BJP had been in power, it had tried to align with the narrative that has gained currency for some time in the US and the West—that Muslims are terrorists. It was also tethered to a policy framework that tied India to a worldview that had dominated the world after the horrific atrocities of the 9/11 WTC attack.

The implications of Rahul’s visit, though badly packaged by his prime handler, Sam Pitroda, were highlighted in London’s Financial Times. Headlined “Rahul Gandhi Brings a Different India to Washington,” the gravamen of the report was that the US was keeping a watch on the shift in Delhi. This is what the RSS leadership, which came in for scathing criticism from the Congress leader, feared the most. These entities did not want to convey to the US that India had changed.

(Cover Photo: India-US Relations: Rahul and Modi Seek Meaning as US Elections Loom | Courtesy: Special arrangement)

SANJAY KAPOOR is a Senior Journalist based out of Delhi. He is a foreign policy specialist focused on India, its neighbourhood and West Asia. He is the Founder and Editor of Hardnews Magazine. He is a Member of the Editors Guild of India (EGI) and, until recently, served as the General Secretary of EGI.