Modi grows in strength, US offers olive branch
Now that the United States of America is warming up to Mr Narendra Modi, the Congress party does not know which way to look. Ever since the US had announced its decision in 2005 not to grant a visa to Mr Modi, the party had been exploiting the issue to reiterate its silly stand that the denial was a vindication of the allegations of the Gujarat Chief Minister's involvement in the 2002 violence. With US Ambassador to India Nancy Powell meeting Mr Modi on Thursday, it is clear that Washington, DC, has thought it prudent to soften its position. Now the Congress is downplaying the development and claiming the issue is between the US and Mr Modi. It never was, and the Congress-led UPA Government ought to have taken Washington's slight to Mr Modi as a rebuff to the dignity of the country — after all, Mr Modi is an elected Chief Minister of a State of the Indian Union. It did not, beyond offering lip service. But, keeping the Congress's discomfiture aside, what remains relevant is that the US is seeking to reinvent its position because it has seen the direction in which the wind is blowing in India. Mr Modi, as the Bharatiya Janata Party's prime ministerial candidate, is likely to become the country's next Prime Minister. The US cannot have missed the high popularity ratings which various opinion polls have been giving him, nor can it have ignored the enthusiastic and large crowds which he has been drawing across the country at his public rallies. The US has too much at stake in India to further antagonise Mr Modi or his party, with both of whom it could in all probability have to deal in a few months from now. There are many security and financial parameters on which India and the US partner. The health of the American economy rests to a significant extent on New Delhi's friendliness with Washington, DC. These pragmatic considerations have compelled the US to correct its opinion about Mr Modi.
But none of it changes the fact that the US had erred in 2005 when it succumbed to pressure from motivated activists within and outside the administration and decided not to allow Mr Modi to enter the country. The pretext of the Gujarat Chief Minister's supposed role in the 2002 violence had always been flimsy. The US has happily done business with known despots, dictators and human rights violators — Mr Modi is neither of these. And if the reason Washington gave for its decision was valid, it ought to have changed its stand after the Supreme Court-appointed Special Investigation Team gave Mr Modi a clean chit in the only case that came up before the courts directly against him. The fact is that the US had announced the visa ban on the mere perception of a section of people with a vested interest; even in those days no court in India had indicted the Gujarat Chief Minister. The US Administration was playing to the gallery and pandering to the hate-Modi brigade. It has now suddenly remembered that as “fellow democracies” both India and the US must engage in meeting the “widest range of political leaders”. This realisation had never dawned on the US until now, though Mr Modi has been not only a Chief Minister throughout the period but also one of the most prominent leaders of the country's principal opposition party.