US President Joe Biden and India's Prime Minister Narendra Modi
Reuters Photo
Despite an invitation from Prime Minister Narendra Modi, President Joe Biden will not attend India’s annual Republic Day celebration in January 2024 as the chief guest. Ostensibly, his refusal stems from a possible scheduling clash with his State of the Union address to the United States Congress, a uniquely American ritual that all US presidents are required to participate in. This scheduling clash is, no doubt, a deft diplomatic ruse to avoid a more public discussion of some emerging strains in US-Indian relations.
What might be the sources of discord in an otherwise multi-faceted and increasingly deepening security partnership? After all, following some very delicate nudging, both Donald Trump’s and Joe Biden’s administrations had overlooked India’s acquisition of the S-400 missile battery from Russia. Washington, DC had also refrained from any significant public condemnation of New Delhi despite the latter’s staunch unwillingness to criticize Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine. Furthermore, the US, after ever so gently raising the issue of India’s purchase of Russian oil had chosen not to publicly upbraid India about the matter. Nor, for that matter, had it exerted any significant pressure on New Delhi to adopt an unequivocal stance on the Quadrilateral Security Initiative. Finally, despite ample evidence of democratic backsliding in India and growing pressure from important voices in the US Congress to forthrightly tackle this issue in diplomatic discussions, the Biden administration had adopted a remarkably generous attitude toward New Delhi.
DH Illustration
A noted American security analyst, Ashley Tellis, in another context, had characterized American behaviour toward India as “strategic patience”. That patience, it now appears, is now being taxed. As Biden declined the invitation to attend the Republic Day parade on January 26, 2024, India also had to postpone a proposed summit of the Quad. Both these developments are important portents that the bilateral relationship, which had managed to negotiate many shoals, had now entered more troubled waters.
What might explain this emerging tension in the relationship? Bluntly stated, the answer is not difficult to comprehend. The US had expressed only mild public concern after earlier this year Prime Minister Justin Trudeau of Canada had claimed in Parliament that his government had credible evidence of the role of India’s intelligence agents in the killing of Hardeep Singh Nijjar, a Canadian Sikh activist in Surrey, a Vancouver suburb. In the wake of this public allegation New Delhi had emphatically denied any such involvement and had demanded that Ottawa produce suitable evidence to back up this dramatic charge. What then transpired in Indo-Canadian relations is now all too well-known and does not need further elaboration or commentary.
However, following a more recent disclosure of another, possible and grave malfeasance appears to have seriously roiled the waters. This disturbance can be attributed to the apparent effort of an Indian citizen and businessman, Nikhil Gupta, on behalf of India’s intelligence community, while in the Czech Republic, to approach an undercover US agent in the belief that he was a contract killer for hire, to assassinate a prominent Sikh separatist, Gurpatwant Singh Pannun, in New York City. What appears to have incensed US authorities is that Pannun holds both US and Canadian citizenship. That a friendly country would attempt to kill an American citizen on US soil is a diplomatic breach that no American administration, regardless of political affiliation, can possibly countenance. Not surprisingly, the relationship, which had weathered various squalls in the recent past, has now hit the doldrums.
New Delhi may seek to overlook this current stall and insist that the wind will soon return to the sails of the bilateral relationship. However, such a sunny view is clearly unwarranted. If there is even a scintilla of evidence that it indeed had a hand in attempting to kill Pannun, it will have to find an adroit approach to extricate itself from the present straits it finds itself in. Despite the lure of an expanding Indian market for US investment, India’s flurry of diplomatic activity in various important global forums, and the significance that Washington, DC attaches to India’s role in countering an increasingly aggressive People’s Republic of China, the relationship cannot remain on a steady course in the wake of this development. No administration, whether Democratic or Republican, can gloss over this episode Assuming otherwise and resorting to anodyne gestures of investigating any possible involvement in this alleged plot, is most unlikely to restore the momentum that this vital strategic partnership had gathered over the past few decades.
Sumit Ganguly
(The writer is a Distinguished Professor of Political Science at Indiana University, Bloomington, USA)