Obama concludes visit with shared impressions
Whatever way one may want to look at it, US President Barack Obama's three-day visit to India has been a roaring success. He rounded off his trip on January 27 with an inspirational address to a gathering at the Siri Fort auditorium, touching upon issues ranging from bilateral cooperation to gender equality to religious tolerance to youth empowerment. Certain experts may be tempted to interpret Mr Obama's reference to religious harmony as a subtle disapproval of the freedom given to voices from fringe Right-wing elements in the country in the name of ghar wapsi.
But that would be a misreading because the US President expressed exactly the same opinion that Prime Minister Modi and his senior Cabinet colleagues repeatedly have on the subject. When he said that “India will succeed so long it is not splintered on religious lines”, he stated almost in exact words what responsible leaders from the incumbent regime have been using. That he should have given the recent instance of attacks on the Sikh community in the US, shows he was not being India-specific on purpose, but commenting on a strain of intolerance, even if sparse, in vibrant democracies — and the need to counter it.
To this end, he provided the example of his own experiences when he faced hostile questions on the faith he practised. In other words, Mr Obama's remarks were not a ‘parting shot’ to the Indian Government, as some commentators, who are forever looking to run down the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party, would like to believe. His invocation of Martin luther King Jr, who spoke of the “content of our character rather than the colour of our skin or the manner in which we worship our god”, applies equally to both India and the US — and indeed to the rest of the world. As Mr Obama pointed out, “In both our countries, our diversity is our strength.” This echoes Mr Modi's slogan of “Sabka saath, sabka vikas”.
The futility of looking at President Obama's Siri Fort address as some kind of subtle displeasure of the Centre's response to sectarian remarks, should be evident from the bonhomie that he shared with Mr Modi — with both calling each other “friends” and even hugging each other more than once (this is not usual with Mr Obama as he is said to be very reserved in his conduct in public).
Surely, this kind of proximity would not have been there had Mr Obama been upset with the Government's handling of the communal remarks that some elements supposedly (but not really) having the regime's support. Nor would the ground have been prepared for the many initiatives that have been agreed upon in defence collaboration.
Neither would Mr Obama have called for a greater role for India in the Indo-Pacific and the South China Sea. And, had Mr Obama not been at ease with the direction the Modi Government has taken in matters of governance, which involves social governance as well, the environment that led to a breakthrough on the civil nuclear liability law, that clears the way for US investments in India's nuclear energy projects, would not have happened. Now, the challenge for officials on both the sides over the coming months is to take forward the momentum and convert words into concrete and visible tangible gains. It's here that real success or failure will be determined.