Modi Adds Authenticity to a Partnership in Democracy

The atmospherics match the usual descriptors with which we have captured Prime Minister Modi’s first state visit to America, curated to perfec­tion to showcase New India in all its power shades—ancient and modern. As it went, there he was, leader of the world’s “largest democracy” in the world’s “old­est democracy”, with a message that, no mat­ter what the expediencies of national interests dictate, makes them partners in a world where democracy itself is a disputed item. Whereas the host, the new world whose mythologisation of the present is more influential than its history, is struggling hard to maintain the leadership of the free world, the guest, the old world whose civilisational memory continues to influence its sense of history as well as its practice of politics, is claiming the leadership of freedom, in the marketplace and the political arena, in a region with broken or brutalised civil societies. Together, in the photo-ops and what’s not stated in the joint statements, the guest and the host tell a story of why the differences and convergences they represent are integral to the global power structure.

Modi reached America, with bittersweet memories of a country quite familiar to him, at a time when the idea of being America itself is undergoing a profound shift in perception and in real-time power. It still maintains the status of an economic superpower and the most influential soft power, but it’s not what it was politically in another time, when it won the war of ideas as well as ideolo­gies, when its moral idealism, no matter how much it was disputed by die-hard Third Worldists, was a natural political response.

Today, the world may be multipolar, but America is pitted against a new set of enemies. Over the ruins of the Soviet Empire looms a Russia that has internalised the impulses of both commu­nism and Tsarism, presided over by a leader whose war against Ukraine is part of his rage against the ‘rotten’ West, which, in the rhetoric of most dictators with a false sense of cultural superiority, is a byword for America.

The Chinese challenge is more immediate. Just days before Modi landed in New York, Beijing hosted Secretary of State Antony Blinken in what was touted as a breakthrough visit. China talked about the need for mutual respect and said it had no intention of undermining America’s place in the world. Frostiness was restored when President Biden called China what it really is: a dictator­ship. It is the cultural difference in the politics of domination that keeps China and America in a permanent state of mistrust. China’s global ambition is conditioned by the doctrine of suspicion, in which its own people figure as prominently as the foreign powers that don’t under­stand Chinese characteristics. It’s this shared Western incomprehension, China believes, that shapes their views on oriental dictatorship, human rights, and the so-called victimhood of Taiwan. With America, China can afford nothing beyond a false détente. For America, caught between two antagonists with a shared history of ‘hurt’ and ‘humiliation’, it’s Cold War doubled up, and it can no longer take the dedicated spot of global leadership for granted.

Modi was a necessary state guest for America. The growing incompatibilities of national interests and international morality have forced Washington to redefine the term ‘natural allies’. It may be political and cultural affinities strong enough to withstand current vagaries that make allies natural. No longer, as the old hierarchy in which the West once prevailed has already collapsed. It’s the attitudes and aspirations of emerging powers, not the certainties of traditional powers, that make and unmake allies today. India is a natural friend for the US not because Washington can bank on Delhi’s endorsement or solidarity, say, in its engage­ment with China or for that matter Ukraine. America realises that investing in the power and possibilities of democracy is the only insurance against extra-territorial tyrannies. India is not just a necessary friend; it’s an inevitable friend.

For Modi’s India, too, the friendship of two storied democracies is not an unconditional conver­gence of interests. How India has reached this moment itself tells a tale of de-ideologising foreign pol­icy and breaking free from anti-Americanism, the default ism of the Third World of which Nehru’s India was the proud flag bearer. Even after the fall of the Berlin Wall, it took a while for India to see the world without the comforting lens of the Cold War—and to break free from anti-Americanism. Narasimha Rao began the process of liberating foreign policy from ideological taboos and welcoming the first whiffs of globalisation; Atal Bihari Vajpayee made aligning with America the instinct of a confident democracy catching up with a world that could no longer be divided into blocs.

We may call the Modi doctrine in foreign policy principled pragmatism. It is not idealism undi­luted by national interest; it is international engagement with ideological detachment. The foreign policy establishment may continue to pay homage to the sacred tradition of nonalignment; it is nothing more than a habitual recourse to redundant nomenclature. The Modi who spoke at the US Congress was certain about where India stood—not with forces that destabilise the Indo-Pacific; nor with those who have brought war back to Europe. Modi’s internationalism, as the obvious allusions in his Capitol speech clarified, struck a fine balance between international morality and national realism.

Aligning with America, as he said with poetic flourish, was the coming together of democratic principles, rooted in a shared commitment to “giving the world a future—and to the future a world.” To emphasise the unsaid, to reach that future, America may lead the global front in arming Ukraine in its defence against Putin’s war; India may prefer “dialogue and diplomacy”. Does it make India an apologist for Putinism or an ally of Russia? No. India may need Russian arms and more, and it’s not a case of dependence but of history appended to pragmatism. Equally nuanced is a challenge India shares with America: how to deal with China. India prefers independence in its struggle for peace, with the full knowledge that China believes in the uses of permanent turbulence. In Modi’s own words, the India-US partnership has reached new heights, and he has attributed this “new dawn” to the greater possibilities of democracy. It’s such assertions in the face of gathering unfreedom—and we know where it comes from—that make the Modi moment in America worthy of all the superlatives it has generated. Natural friends respect each other’s indi­vidual traits and attitudes, which never overshadow the values they share.

In the end, the moment was not larger than the man himself. No elected leader in a democracy today can match the popularity of the Indian prime minister. At a time when leaders who once enjoyed strong grassroots endorsement are being abandoned by their own parties or disgraced by law, Modi’s covenant with the world’s largest swathe of free voters remains unbroken. If authen­ticity is what some leaders lack, even as they seek eternal mandate, Modi has it in abundance. That’s what adds to the aura of democracy’s tallest spokesman, and that’s what has made him an event in America.

diplomacyIndia-US relationsJoe BidenModi in AmericaNarendra Modi