In a rather belated recognition of the Indian political currents, the United States has finally decided to end its nine-year boycott of Narendra Modi, with its India envoy Nancy Powell set to meet him in Gandhinagar on Thursday.
The US turnaround comes long after the European nations and Australia began warming up to the Gujarat Chief Minister and BJP’s prime ministerial candidate. Britain, in fact, ended its boycott of Modi back in October 2012.
Confirming Ambassador Powell’s upcoming meeting with Modi, a State Department spokesperson said: “This is part of our concerted outreach to senior political and business leaders which began in November to highlight the US-India relationship.”
With opinion polls broadly favouring Modi and his BJP-led NDA in the ensuing general elections, there has been intense speculation in recent months that Washington would begin reaching out to him.
The Obama administration was apparently in the process of taking stock of the political developments when the unexpected diplomatic crisis triggered by the arrest and strip-search of Indian diplomat Devyani Khobragade prompted it to put off the “outreach” to Modi.
Some analysts believe the US should have acted much earlier. Terming the exercise “long overdue”, noted South Asia watcher lisa Curtis commented: “The US should have reached out to Modi shortly after it was clear he would be leading the BJP in May’s national elections.”
“Nevertheless, this is a good step that will allow the US to engage with Modi before the campaign season is in full steam,” noted Curtis, a former State Department staffer and now a senior fellow with the Washington-based Heritage Foundation. The American coldshouldering of Modi had begun in March 2005, when the US Government rejected his application for a visa to visit the country to address an Asian-American business convention.
Citing “serious violations of religious freedom” in the wake of the 2002 Gujarat riots, the US authorities not only denied him a diplomatic visa, but also revoked the tourist/business visa which he was holding.
Although he received periodic invitations from Indian-American organisations to the visit the United States over the past several years, Modi did not apply for any US visa after the 2005 rejection. Instead, he addressed the NRI bodies through satellite hook-ups on a few occasions.
Some Indian-American groups have been working hard in recent years to get the US government to change its position vis-à-vis Modi. last March, Chicago businessman Shalabh Kumar had organised the visit by three Republican lawmakers along with a business delegation to Gandhinagar for a meeting with Modi.
The US chapter of Overseas Friends of BJP was quick to welcome the Obama administration’s decision. “We highly appreciate the decision taken by US President Barack Obama, and Secretary of State John Kerry. This would further help in strengthening of Indo-US relationship,” said OFBJP-US president Chandrakant Patel.
“Modi is the most popular leader of the country right now. Given that he has been given clean chit by all the courts in India, it was not fair on the part of the US to not to have relationship with Modi,” he said.