FOr for the first time in a long time – perhaps the first time ever – that an Indian prime minister is getting extensive coverage in American television, print and digital media. Although some traces of skepticism can be found, the main tone is enthusiasm. For better or (sometimes) for worse, everyone wants to talk about India. It seems like the golden age of US-India relations has arrived.
Few Americans would know what “Amrit Kaal” means, or how it relates to India. But they know this is India’s moment, that India is the new China for America’s corporate leaders, and that there is bipartisan support for India on Capitol Hill. And for the first time, most Americans could possibly name an Indian other than Mahatma Gandhi. The name of that Indian is Narendra Modi.
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vicissitudes
The new enthusiasm represents a rapid change in the direction of the US-India relationship. In 2021, Eric Garcetti, Biden’s designated ambassador to India, vowed to make the NGO’s concerns about Muslim rights a “core part” of his mission. Then in 2022, the Biden administration began pressing India to publicly denounce its oldest arms supplier – and the only credible veto on the UN Security Council.
When the highly politicized United States Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) made its annual appeal to the State Department to designate India a “country of particular concern” for religious repression, Biden’s own ambassador for international religious freedom -At-Large Rashad Hussain categorically accused “officials” of the Government of India of “supporting the increasing attacks on people and places of worship”.
It was an open attempt and an act of desperation to sabotage the administration’s India policy. Hussain also prefaced his charge by saying “as the secretary said”. However, Secretary of State Antony Blinken did not say any such thing. That was in mid-2022. When the 2023 USCIRF report was released, Hussain was not invited back on stage.
Instead, President Biden invited Prime Minister Narendra Modi to Washington for an official state visit. Not to be outdone, the United States Congress issued its own invitation to Modi to address a joint session of the Senate and the House of Representatives. The joint session is symbolic, as support for India is one of the few things the Democrat-controlled House and Republican-controlled Senate agree on. India is now bipartisan in America.
If ever there was an golden age for US-India relations, it is now. It is not that the people promoting India’s corporate and diaspora are active. Even India’s most staunch critics in America have been marginalized like never before.
Some American news outlets that want to highlight criticisms of India have had to turn to Representative Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, who can be trusted to tell anyone that India is ready for a Muslim genocide.
For everyone else, it’s pure celebration. Modi fans are focusing on the rhetoric of “dynamic diaspora” and “world’s largest democracy”. Modi’s critics are focusing on India’s “young demographics” and the world’s “fastest growing large economy”. Both equally share a positive outlook for India and US-India relations.
Inevitably, China is part of that narrative, but a surprisingly small part. American geopolitical analysts have long imagined India opening some sort of second front to reduce Chinese maritime pressure in the western Pacific, but they do not realize that India has for more than sixty years has faced expansionist China.
It is India, not the United States, that has banned Chinese apps, incited China to boycott the G20, and actually inflicted casualties on Chinese soldiers who went too far across the Line of Actual Control. Even India’s Russian-made S-400 air defense missile system, to which the United States has objected so strongly, is primarily for use against China.
The Power of Indian-Americans
So, forget about all the defense procurement stories circulating through the war-torn internet. The real enthusiasm for India in the United States comes from the expatriate community and the corporate community. And since there are so many Indian-origin people running major American companies, the two can sometimes appear to be the same thing.
When Americans want to know about India, and especially when corporate America wants to know about India, they turn to the Indians in their midst. Indian-Americans are by far the highest earning minority group in the United States. Everyone knows that Google, Microsoft and IBM are all run by Indian-Americans, but they are only the tip of a very deep iceberg. In most of the top US companies and the professional services firms that serve them, Indian-born executives can be found at all levels of management.
Many of them had gone abroad thirty or forty years ago and are well aware of the economic changes that have taken place in India after their departure. Whatever his politics, he has no doubt that today’s India is a land of opportunities. Very few of them would have thought of the India of their formative years in the 1980s and 1990s.
Thus US-India relations, once the domain of security analysts and human rights organizations, have now become the domain of expatriate professionals. This civilization of the relationship augurs well for the future. Politics is inherently unpredictable, but economic networks are far stronger. The more US-India relations are driven by people, not politics, the more stable they will be.
“Amrit Kaal” is a slogan made in India, for India. It is not going to cross cultural divides like yoga, meditation or Ayurvedic medicine. But it is real nonetheless. Indian-Americans do not need to explain the concept to their corporate partners to put it into practice. All they have to do is prepare themselves, and send the message to their allies that now is the time for India to go full steam ahead.
Salvatore Babones is Associate Professor at the University of Sydney and Executive Director of the Indian Century Roundtable. Thoughts are personal.
This article is sponsored Motwani Jadeja Foundation.