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Modi’s address is part of a high-profile visit to Washington that also includes his first state dinner at the White House on Thursday evening. The pomp is remarkable when you consider the lengths to which he was once kept by American leaders. Modi, then the chief minister of Gujarat, a state in western India, was effectively denied entry to the United States in 2005 over allegations related to religious mob violence.
Back then, the future Indian prime minister faced sanction under a law making foreign officials ineligible for visas if found responsible for “severe violations of religious freedom,” after riots in Gujarat in 2002 led to the deaths of about a thousand people, mostly Muslims. In a statement at the time, Ambassador David C. Mulford said the State Department’s decision was based on an Indian National Human Rights Commission report that found there was “a comprehensive failure on the part of the state government to control the persistent violation of rights of life, liberty, equality, and dignity of the people of the state.”
But things changed quickly after Modi became prime minister of India in 2014. That year he delivered a speech at Madison Square Garden after receiving the visa he was once denied. He first addressed Congress in 2016 and then three years later, after a comfortable reelection win, met with President Donald Trump for a joint rally in Houston. Thursday’s state dinner and the congressional address appear to confirm that Modi is not just rehabilitated but rapturously welcomed.
“There is an unprecedented trust” between the leaders of the United States and India, the prime minister told the Wall Street Journal in an article published Tuesday.
Though the Gujarat riots took place more than two decades ago, the debate about them is ongoing. Modi’s supporters have argued that he was powerless over the massacres in Gujarat, and a special investigation team convened by India’s Supreme Court said there was no evidence of wrongdoing by the future prime minister. Modi, a staunch Hindu nationalist and parliamentary leader of the ruling right-wing Bharatiya Janata Party, has said that India is a place for people of all faiths and beliefs.
Researchers said there has been a rise in the persecution of India’s Muslim minority since Modi took over, along with other democratic backsliding. Early this year, Indian tax authorities raided the BBC’s offices and seized its journalists’ phones. That incident took place as the government took extraordinary measures to censor the British outlet’s documentary, “India: The Modi Question,” which contained previously unreported British diplomatic cables that said the mob violence in Gujarat was preplanned “under the protection of the state government.”
Modi’s rehabilitation in the United States says more about India than him personally. India overtook its neighboring giant, China, to become the world’s most populous nation last year. Unlike China, many of its 1.4 billion or so population are young, so the country is expected to keep growing for decades. Trade with the United States has boomed under Modi’s watch, with India now often seen in Washington as a potential bulwark for global trade as it shifts away from an inward-looking China and an isolated Russia.
The Indian leader’s global presence has been boosted by the country’s huge diaspora, including many in Washington. When Modi speaks to the members of Congress, he will be escorted by Indian American Rep. Shri Thanedar (D-Mich.). Vice President Harris will be one of dozens of Indian American officials present. Two Republican presidential candidates, Nikki Haley and Vivek Ramaswamy, are set to attend, too.
But it is not always possible to separate the leader from the country. Modi himself has frequently conflated his own story with that of India. Unlike many other Indian leaders, he has a humble background and is the first Indian prime minister to be born after the country became independent. “I present my country to the world as my country is, and myself, as I am,” Modi told the Journal.
As Indian media has noted, with his visit, Modi becomes one of only a few world leaders to have addressed a joint meeting of Congress more than once. Winston Churchill, the wartime British prime minister, spoke three times. South Africa’s Nelson Mandela spoke once before apartheid ended, as an opposition leader recently released from prison after 27 years, and once after, when he was president. Benjamin Netanyahu has spoken three times, though the Israeli prime minister’s last speech was in 2015. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has spoken twice, albeit once virtually.
In speaking about the visit, the Biden administration has focused on India’s future rather than Modi’s past. Biden’s national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, told reporters this week that it was a “hinge moment” for the United States and India, adding that their bond “will be one of the defining relationships of the 21st century.”
Modi, who will probably win reelection next year, still has a lot of ambition. He seeks a far more important role for India on the global stage, potentially including a permanent seat on the U.N. Security Council. But a more globally influential India may not be one that the United States welcomes.
New Delhi has refused to condemn Moscow for its invasion of Ukraine in large part because of its historical reliance on Russian military gear, which makes up about 85 percent of India’s arsenal, according to research from the U.S. Institute of Peace. And while India may have its own simmering border dispute with China, few experts think it will side comfortably with Washington and its allies against Beijing, especially if it came down to war over Taiwan.
Writing in Foreign Affairs this week, USIP’s Daniel Markey argues that the United States should “cooperate with India on the reality of shared interests, not on the hope of shared values.” By symbolically welcoming Modi in Washington’s seat of democracy, the Biden administration is making history too. It may not like the consequences.
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