This is Dominic Pino filling in for Jim Geraghty. Jim will be back next week. On the menu today: What Indian prime minister Narendra Modi said to Congress, and what it means for the U.S.–India relationship going forward.
What India Means to the U.S.
Narendra Modi has been prime minister of India since 2014. His Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP, or “Indian People’s Party”) is on the right of the Indian political spectrum. It is the largest political party in the world, with more members than the Chinese Communist Party, and supports Hindu nationalist ideology and economic development. Modi’s victory in 2014 was the first time in three decades that an Indian political party had won a majority on its own in the Lok Sabha, the lower house of the Indian parliament. The BJP won again in 2019, expanding its majority. The next parliamentary elections are scheduled for May 2024.
As part of his state visit to the United States, Modi addressed Congress yesterday. Historically, U.S.–India relations have been fraught. During the Cold War, India pursued a nonaligned foreign policy that, in practice, was aligned with the Soviet Union. One of the world’s largest arms importers, India was dependent on the Soviet Union and subsequently has been dependent on Russia for weapons. The country has not acquiesced to Western sanctions on Russian energy and has greatly increased its purchases of Russian oil, taking advantage of its low price on global markets, since the Ukraine war began.
The U.S. has also been concerned about India’s internal affairs. For one thing, Modi’s government has been accused of backsliding from democracy to authoritarianism. For another, there have been incidents of religious discrimination and religiously motivated violence, especially against India’s Muslim minority. Some strains of Hindu nationalist ideology view Muslims as foreign invaders of India, despite their centuries-long presence in the country.
In a joint press conference with Biden before his speech to Congress, when asked about improving tolerance for Muslims and other minorities in his country, Modi said, “We have proved democracy can deliver. When I say deliver — caste, creed, religion, gender, there is no space for any discrimination.” That has not been true in practice, which he certainly knows. Modi almost never does press conferences, and his lack of experience fielding questions directly from reporters was evident. He should have known that question was coming and should have prepared a better answer. Freedom of religion is a promise of India’s constitution, but it needs to be fleshed out better in Indian society. This will be a challenge for India–U.S. relations going forward.
Freedom of speech and press freedom are further areas of concern. Indian National Congress leader Rahul Gandhi has been prosecuted for defamation and removed from parliament for comments he made about people with the surname “Modi,” and the Indian government banned a BBC documentary critical of Modi’s tenure as chief minister of Gujarat and sent tax-enforcement agents to search the BBC’s offices in the country.
All that said, India is the world’s largest democracy. Its administration of elections puts the U.S. to shame, efficiently counting hundreds of millions of votes in national, state, and local elections every single year, with widespread trust in the results across ethnic, linguistic, and regional barriers. While the BJP has been dominant recently in national parliamentary elections, it faces steep competition at the state and local levels, where many regional parties dominate. India has 2,500 political parties, and 20 of them hold power at one level of government or another. The Indian National Congress defeated the BJP in a landslide in elections in the state of Karnataka in May, and it controls four state governments, up from only two a year ago.
Specific instances of censorship aside, India has a vibrant press that publishes in dozens of different languages. The BJP has recently had electoral success in local elections with Muslim candidates, and it disciplined a spokesperson who made disparaging comments about Muslims.
As for relations between the Indian and American governments, the U.S. has pursued a closer relationship with India, and India has pursued a closer relationship with the U.S. One of the primary reasons for that is China. India’s border with China has been the site of various military clashes over the years, with China claiming a significant portion of Arunachal Pradesh, a state in northeast India, as its own territory. When Russian tanks rolled into Ukraine, many Americans thought of parallels between China and Taiwan; Indians thought of Arunachal Pradesh.
From the U.S. perspective, a stronger relationship with India provides a counterbalance to Chinese power and influence. India this year became the world’s most populous country, and it has the world’s largest volunteer military. Its economy has grown rapidly and is expected to continue to grow rapidly as China’s growth tapers off. As a bigger player in world affairs, in what U.S. policy-makers consider to be the most important region of the world, India should be top of mind for the U.S.
What Modi Said to Congress
Modi’s address to Congress was notable because it was the second time he has given one. Only Winston Churchill, Nelson Mandela, and Benjamin Netanyahu have given more than one in-person address to Congress. (Volodymyr Zelensky gave a virtual and an in-person speech.) Modi began by remembering some members of Congress, such as Nevada senator Harry Reid, Arizona senator John McCain, and Utah senator Orrin Hatch, who were present when he last spoke there in 2016 and have since died.
“A lot has changed since I came here seven summers ago, but a lot has remained the same,” Modi told Congress. “In the past few years, there have been many advances in AI, artificial intelligence. At the same time, there have been even more momentous developments in another AI, America and India.”
He pointed to economic growth. “When I first visited the U.S. as prime minister, India was the tenth-largest economy in the world. Tenth. Today India is the fifth-largest economy. And India will be the third-largest economy soon,” Modi said.
Democracy was the key theme of Modi’s remarks, with the word appearing in the speech dozens of times. He said,
Democracy is one of our sacred and shared beliefs. It has evolved over a long time and taken various forms of systems. Throughout history, however, one thing has been clear. Democracy is the spirit that supports equality and dignity. Democracy is the idea that welcomes debate and discourse. Democracy is the culture that gives wings to thoughts and aspirations.
The evolution point is important. India is still a relatively young country, having become independent in 1947, and its development has been bumpy, to say the least. Indians across the political spectrum do have a commitment to the idea of parliamentary democracy. Even as the BJP has come to dominate national politics, Modi has not sought to concentrate power in himself as a dictator. This commitment to the existing constitutional order separates India from other developing countries, where matters of governance are much more up in the air.
Modi sees India as an example for the world: “In the last century, when India won its freedom, it inspired many other countries to free themselves from colonial rule. In this century, when India sets benchmarks in growth, it will inspire many other countries to do the same.”
India is rapidly expanding its highway network, along with construction of airports, seaports, and railroads. The BJP has famously touted its toilet-construction initiatives, which have improved public health by reducing open defecation. Modi said that India’s national health-insurance program covers more people than the population of all of South America and that its banking program has as many participants as the population of North America. India’s digital-payment infrastructure leads the world. Even many relatively poor people in India have smartphones, and they can use them everywhere to instantly pay for goods directly from their bank accounts.
“Today in modern India, women are leading us to a better future,” Modi said. He pointed to the fact that many women serve in elected office and in the military and that India has the highest proportion of women airline pilots in the world. He did not mention that one of the biggest hurdles to Indian economic development has been the country’s low female labor-force participation rate, which has been declining since 2000.
Modi devoted a considerable part of his remarks to the environment, which has been a consistent priority in his rhetoric for international audiences. “India grows while being responsible about our planet. We believe the earth is our mother and we are her children,” he said. He pointed out that India’s solar-energy capacity has grown enormously. He talked about making “sustainability” a “true people’s movement.”
India has some of the worst air pollution in the world, a result of industrialization, transportation, and inefficient farming practices that include massive controlled burns. Over 40 percent of the country still works in agriculture, a number far too high for an industrialized economy. As the world’s second-largest (after China) producer, consumer, and importer of coal, the country relies heavily on coal for electricity. Going with the cheaper options probably makes sense for a developing country in need of energy, but India’s posturing as the world’s conscience on the environment is a bit hard to take.
The Ukraine war has been a point of marked difference between the U.S. and India. The U.S. has led the international group supporting Ukraine, while India has abstained from U.N. votes on the war and remained neutral. In his speech to Congress, Modi decried the Russian invasion, as he has consistently done in other speeches around the world, but did not voice support for Ukraine.
“The global order is based on the U.N. charter,” he said. “Peaceful resolution of disputes and respect for sovereignty and territorial integrity. I will say directly and completely, this is not an era of war. But it is one of dialogue and diplomacy and we all must do what we can to stop the bloodshed and human suffering.” Because Russia’s actions in Ukraine plainly violate the principles of sovereignty and territorial integrity, India’s neutrality hurts its reputation in the West. Modi’s desire that the two sides come to the negotiating table and strike a peace deal is not currently plausible.
He repeatedly reiterated India’s commitment to the rules-based international order and the “free and open Indo-Pacific” that has become a core tenet of U.S. foreign policy. India has been active in strengthening the Quad (U.S., India, Japan, and Australia) as a counterbalance to Chinese aspirations.
One of Modi’s biggest applause lines was this: “We were strangers in defense cooperation at the turn of the century. Now, the United States has become one of our most important defense partners.” Defense cooperation was a major purpose of his visit and a major goal of the U.S. Reducing India’s reliance on Russian weaponry and replacing it with American weaponry will go a long way toward cementing a stronger relationship.
To that end, GE signed a memorandum of understanding to co-produce jet engines in India. Jet engines are extremely difficult to make, and there are fewer countries that produce them than there are nuclear-weapons states. The engines will be used for India’s domestically produced fighter planes.
The day before Modi’s speech, the U.S.-India Business Council hosted the INDUS X conference at the Chamber of Commerce Building. The conference highlighted the fledgling partnership between the Department of Defense and India’s defense ministry, with Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall delivering a keynote address. It included exhibits of different defense start-ups, working on everything from software to satellites to textiles, looking for partnership opportunities between the two countries.
The defense cooperation is likely the most important practical result of Modi’s visit, for both countries. Owing to India’s presence in the Soviet orbit during the Cold War, and simultaneous U.S. support for Pakistan, as recently as 15 years ago the U.S. essentially sold nothing to India for defense and vice versa. Now, bilateral defense trade is at $20 billion per year and is expected to continue to grow. It has wide bipartisan support in Congress and has grown under both Democratic and Republican presidential administrations.
While an overall trade deal is currently unpalatable because of domestic skepticism, in both countries, of free-trade agreements, specific deals such as the ones on defense are offering a path forward. In addition, India agreed to drop six disputes with the U.S. at the World Trade Organization and remove some tariffs on specific nondefense items. WTO disputes have been a past source of discord between the two countries, but they have greatly declined in the past few years as policy-makers prioritize general cooperation over specific disputes.
Another reason for closer ties is the large Indian-American population. Modi got the biggest laugh from his audience when he said that Indian Americans “are brilliant in every field, not just in spelling bee.” There are now nearly 5 million Americans of Indian descent, up from only about 2 million in 2000. They are highly educated, on average, and have a median household income of $119,000.
Most members of Congress understand the importance of this large demographic group, with dozens from both parties lining up to shake Modi’s hand as he walked to the dais before his speech and mobbing him on the House floor to get his autograph after it. Modi’s Twitter account quote-tweeted numerous representatives and senators who posted pictures of themselves with the prime minister. He noted in his speech that over 100 members of Congress have made trips to India in the past decade.
Five progressive Democrats — Ilhan Omar (Minn.), Rashida Tlaib (Mich.), Cori Bush (Mo.), Jamaal Bowman (N.Y.), and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (N.Y.) — boycotted Modi’s speech over religious discrimination against Muslims in India. Fellow progressive Democrat Ro Khanna (Calif.), who is Indian American, attended and said engagement with India was a better strategy. “I think they’d be much more open to a dialogue as equals about the project of multiracial democracy,” he said.
The boycotters looked small. Modi, for all his flaws, is the duly elected prime minister of the most populous country in the world, a democracy with a growing economy that sees a shared future with the United States. “When I was here in 2016, I said that our relationship is primed for a momentous future. That future is today,” Modi concluded.
His overall message: India has arrived as a major player on the world stage. It will maintain its strategic and political independence, but it sees a future of being closer with the U.S., not as treaty-bound allies, but as partners and friends. The U.S. must pay attention, and it should work with India to the greatest extent that it can. It’s in both countries’ best interests to do so.