U.S. President Joe Biden and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi underscored the strength of their nations’ partnership — and lauded the virtues of democracy — at a pomp-filled, packed day of talks Thursday at the White House.
"Two great nations, two great friends, and two great powers. Cheers," Biden said, toasting the teetotaling prime minister with a glass of ginger ale. Biden also does not drink alcohol.
The visit is designed by the administration to woo the world’s most populous nation amid Russia’s aggression in Ukraine and rising tensions with China.
The United States and India are "collaborating on nearly every human endeavor," Biden said as he appeared alongside Modi at a joint news conference, a rare move for the Indian leader.
Modi praised Biden at the lavish state dinner, which drew in 400 guests from various fields, including technology, business and science: "You are soft spoken, but when it comes to action, you are very strong," he said.
Key areas of cooperation, Biden said, include health diagnostic technology, space exploration, the transition to clean energy, and mitigation of the climate crisis. The United States and India, Biden added, are harnessing "shared expertise" on critical and emerging technologies such as quantum computing and artificial intelligence to avoid their use as "tools of misinformation and oppression."
The two countries, Biden said, are doubling down on cooperation to secure semiconductor supply chains, advance telecommunications networks and bolster defense partnership with more joint exercises, increased cooperation between defense industries, and additional military coordination across all domains.
Biden said he discussed with Modi "shared efforts to mitigate humanitarian tragedies unleashed by Russia's brutal war in Ukraine and to defend the core principles of the U.N. Charter on sovereignty and territorial integrity."
India, a major importer of Russian arms, has been reluctant to criticize Russian President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine.
Modi instead acknowledged the negative effect the fighting has had on the Global South, which includes the regions of Latin America, Asia, Africa and Oceania.
"We believe that in order to resolve these problems, it is absolutely critical for all countries to unite," Modi said through an interpreter.
He added that India has pushed for dialogue and diplomacy to end the conflict.
"We are completely ready to contribute any way we can to world peace," he said.
Answering a question from a U.S. reporter, Modi pushed back against concerns from human rights groups that his government has discriminated against religious minorities and sought to silence its critics.
"I'm actually really surprised that people say so," Modi said, insisting that democracy is "our spirit" and "runs in our veins."
"There is absolutely no space for discrimination," he said, stating that his country is based on the principle of "Sabka Saath, Sabka Vikas, Sabka Vishwas and Sabka Prayas," which means "together for everyone’s growth, with everyone’s trust."
Critics of Modi’s rosy assessment of the state of his country point to what they see as his role in India’s democratic backsliding.
"It's not surprising that Prime Minister Modi pushed back," Tanvi Madan, director of The India Project at the Brookings Institution, told VOA.
She added, "It was the most expansive answer we've actually heard on this question of democracy, with him saying, ‘With no human rights, there is no democracy.’ And so, that's something we haven't heard him say so explicitly before, and something maybe people will come back to down the line."
Earlier this week, a group of more than 70 American lawmakers sent a letter to Biden urging him to discuss the need to protect human rights and democratic values with Modi.
India has "a very important relationship with the United States," said Senator Ben Cardin, one of the signatories of the letter. "But we must wrap it in our values, and India needs to do more to protect the human rights of its own citizens," he told VOA.
National security adviser Jake Sullivan told reporters Tuesday that Biden would raise U.S. concerns about democratic erosion under Modi's Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party but will do so "in a way where we don’t seek to lecture or assert that we don’t have challenges ourselves."
Madan said this delicate diplomacy is strategic.
"American administrations want to see democratic India succeed in part because it can show, contra China, that democracy and development aren't mutually exclusive concepts," she said.
South Lawn welcome, congressional address
Earlier Thursday, Biden welcomed Modi at the White House South Lawn with a full honor guard ceremony and 21-gun salute, saying the U.S.–India relationship is "among the defining ones of the 21st century."
As a gift, the Bidens gave Modi an antique American book galley, a vintage American camera, a print of George Eastman’s patent of the first Kodak camera, and a hardcover book of American wildlife photography. The first lady gave Modi a signed first edition copy of the Collected Poems of Robert Frost.
About 7,000 Indian Americans were invited to the White House to witness the ceremony, including Vice President Kamala Harris, whose mother, Shyamala Gopalan, left India in 1958 to study for her doctorate in the United States.
Later at the Oval Office ahead of their bilateral meeting, Biden spoke about his first visit with Modi 10 years ago as vice president, when he said that Washington and New Delhi would have to build a relationship small step by small step.
"Over the past 10 years, those small steps have transformed into large progress," Biden said.
On Thursday, Modi addressed a joint meeting of the House and the Senate, one of the highest honors the U.S. government affords to foreign dignitaries. While his predecessors, Manmohan Singh, Indira Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru, have also delivered such a speech to American lawmakers, Modi will be the only Indian leader to do so twice.
Denied entry in 2005
The respect and pageantry afforded to Modi is remarkable considering that in 2005, he was denied a U.S. visa over allegations related to religious mob violence.
Biden has at least two reasons to roll out the red carpet for Modi, and they both have to do with U.S. geostrategic interests: to bolster India’s role in the region to counterbalance China and to wean it off Russian arms.
India is the only country that in the past decade has engaged in open conflict with China, along the 3,400-kilometer contested border, where both sides are ramping up militarization.
The U.S. administration is supporting New Delhi’s military modernization. Some deliverables of the visit include a $3 billion deal to purchase more than two dozen armed Predator drones for surveillance along India’s border with China and Pakistan, and an agreement for American company General Electric to co-produce fighter jet engines with state-owned Hindustan Aeronautics Limited in India.
"This visit is really about cementing the defense partnership between India and the United States," Irfan Nooruddin, a nonresident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council’s South Asia Center, told VOA.
India’s move toward American-made technology means China now faces "systems that are compatible with U.S. military systems in the region on China's western flank," Nooruddin said. "This means that China now has to deal both with the United States and its partners South Korea and Japan on the Pacific side — but also a powerful U.S.-India relationship and partnership in the Indian Ocean, and on the northeast of India's border on the western edge of China's border. This becomes quite challenging for China, and China will have to reorient its defense posture to deal with this new reality."
Another key area of cooperation is the Initiative on Critical and Emerging Technology, or iCET, announced last year. It enables enhanced collaboration in high-technology areas with a focus on addressing regulatory barriers and aligning export controls for smoother trade and "deeper cooperation" on sensitive, critical and emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence and quantum computing.
This includes an investment of at least $1 billion by American company Micron Technology to establish a semiconductor packaging plant in India — a deal blessed by the administration as it seeks to diversify the supply chain of chips away from China.
On Wednesday night, Modi had a private dinner with the president and first lady Jill Biden at the White House and exchanged gifts. Earlier Wednesday, the first lady took Modi for a tour of the National Science Foundation and a discussion with students and academics from the U.S. and India.
The administration reportedly will make it easier for Indians to live and work in the U.S. via the H-1B visa program.
