The rest of the news cycle’s more dramatic stories may edge this one out today, but it’s a big day in Washington where the U.S. is mending fences with India.
Traditionally, the U.S. tries to foster ties with India’s rival (and former part of its country) Pakistan, the more estranged India gets from the U.S. But underneath the official pomp there is an important circumstance.
THE POMP is reported in this Press Trust of India article:
Guns boomed in salute and the national anthems of the two countries were played before Bush and Singh jointly inspected a guard of honour.
Thousands of people, including those of Indian origin, witnessed the reception ceremony.
Welcoming Singh at the beginning of his three-day state visit, Bush said the US and India have developed a relationship of great potential and “we are looking to expanding our strong relationship for economic development, peace and prosperityâ€?.
Bush said the relations between the two countries had never been so strong and referred to the growing cooperation between the two countries.
Lauding the role of hundreds of thousands of Indian Americans for their contribution in development in various spheres and to America’s vitality, he said both the people of India and the US were working for peace and stability and both the countries believed in freedom and were confronting global terrorism.
India, he said has emerged as an economic power for the betterment of its people through the economic reforms launched in the early 90s.
Development and economic progress, growth and prosperity, hope and optimism remained a national strength, he said.
Bush said both the countries shared a common commitment to democracy, freedom and human rights to make a better and safer world.
That’s a nice, standard diplomatic speech, but in the case of U.S.-India ties THE CIRCUMSTANCE IS: there are signs that there is a major diplomatic shift going on. U.S.-Rediff:
After spending the best part of half a century as estranged democracies, India and the United States may be on the verge of “upgrading the relationship” to a level that may have been unthinkable even five years ago when US President Bill Clinton made an era-defining journey to India.
A senior adviser to the prime minister drew parallels two weeks ago — in India Abroad, the newspaper published by rediff.com in the US — with Dr Singh’s visit to Washington, DC, which began on Sunday, with then US President Richard Nixon’s 1971 decision to forge a new equation with China.
Though New Delhi and Washington were never adversaries the way Communist China and the US were, there was enough suspicion on both sides – sharpened by Nixon’s siding with Pakistan during the 1971 war and India’s aligning with the then Soviet Union – to ensure that both nations never grew close even when the conditions seemed apt.
The Clinton visit, the Jaswant Singh-Strobe Talbott talks, the Bush Presidency reaching out to India in the early months of the administration (before 9/11 compelled a swing to Pakistan), the Next Steps in Strategic Partnership, which President George W Bush and then prime minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee announced in November 2001 are all milestones on the highway to a new Indo-US relationship, expected to be forged during Dr Singh’s encounter with President Bush at the White House on Monday, the first visit to the centre of American power by an Indian prime minister in four years…..
Senior officials speaking on background warned against expectations of major tangible achievements from the visit, highlighting repeatedly the fact that putting the Indo-US relationship on a strong footing was achievement enough.
How ticklish has the U.S. attempts to have close ties to both Pakistan and India beein the past? This Indian Express article gives you an idea:
Whenever the Indian Prime Minister travels abroad, the shadow of Pakistan inevitably follows. But this time, the Bush Administration appears determined not to colour the attempt to transform Indo-US relations with the Pakistan factor.
Hours before Singh left Delhi for Washington, news filtered in that Pak Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz’s visit to the US has been postponed. Earlier, reports in Delhi had suggested that Pakistan was pulling out all stops to get the Bush Administration accept a visit from the Pak premier as close as possible to Singh’s visit to Washington, if possible in July itself.
Pakistan lobbyists in Washington were also mobilising support in the US Congress to get Aziz address a joint session. Arguments in Pakistan have already surfaced that if the US cuts a nuclear deal with India, a similar one should also be offered to Pakistan. While Pakistani ambitions were understandable, the moment, for now at least, belongs to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh.
The U.S. has had a rocky relationship with The World’s Largest Democracy (which India is) over the years. Read this post on Nixon “dissing” India and its later-assassinated Prime Minister Indira Gandhi on just-released tapes. The tapes also showed former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger on the same wavelength as Nixon. Kissinger later expressed regret about the decades-old comments.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.