Now that Prime Minister Narendra Modi is set to reach the United States for his State Visit, a number of American “experts” on South Asia have suddenly become very active. They are writing volumes, telling the US government that it’s a bad idea to “prop up”—to use the words used by one such expert from a think-tank—a country whose values do not match with the liberal democratic values of the US; a country that will definitely not side with the US when it comes to confronting China. In fact if some of them had the final say, these experts would have replaced India with Philippines in the Quad—Philippines, which has an economy size of around $440 billion, compared to India’s $3.75 trillion, and has a defence budget the size of $4.3 billion, compared to India’s almost $73 billion. The buzz that is being tried to be built up is that a “Quad 2” comprising the US, Australia, Japan and the Philippines is a better bet for taking on China militarily in case of an attack on Taiwan, than Quad, which contains India. The narrative that the US cannot bet on India, was recently voiced by an American analyst of Indian origin, and from there it has picked up momentum, with “experts” writing every second day about how shifty India is. It is a different matter that these “experts” have conveniently forgotten that in the whole world it is only India that is standing up to China, militarily, for three years now, and that it is India which has been repelling Chinese military incursions time and again, even by engaging in hand to hand combat. The fact is, in spite of India’s supposed reticence about criticizing China publicly, it is India that is manning an active front against China, and no amount of scare-mongering about India’s “ambivalence” on China would change that fact. Lest these experts have not noticed, it is not India’s External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar who is in Beijing currently, but US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, speaking of the importance of keeping channels of communication open for responsibly managing the US-China relationship, and how US does not support Taiwan’s independence.
The other narrative at play is about interests and values. Apparently, shared interests bind India and the US and not shared values, because India is a “valueless”, illiberal, authoritarian power that is a democracy only in name. Ironically, such an overarching narrative is always the result of cherry picking. In a country of 1.4 billion people, there will always be problems and incidents that are not the norm. By that yardstick, even the US can be shown as a failing democracy. There is nothing called a perfect democracy, notwithstanding the various rankings published by western institutions and NGOs. When a ranking puts India below Afghanistan and Syria, it’s, at best, a political statement, apart from being a farce. Both India and the US are flawed democracies, but at the same time they are vibrant democracies, with their checks and balances more or less in place. India’s problem is that too many interests are arrayed either against the current government or against the country, or both. These forces are exploiting the faultlines that exist in a complex country like India, to build a narrative of intolerance and extremist behaviour. But then without facts to back up claims, any narrative will dissipate, sooner or later, as it became obvious during a recent press briefing in Washington, DC, where Biden administration spokesman John Kirby urged a lady reporter questioning the Indian PM’s State Visit, to go and see in New Delhi how vibrant India’s democracy is.
The India-US relationship is consequential because of both shared interests and values. It is good that both leaderships have understood it. Those analysts and experts who think that India’s Prime Minister does not deserve the importance that the Biden administration is giving him, they need to come out of the tiny boxes of resentment and biases that they have holed themselves in. India’s rise is an inevitability. No amount of fulmination will alter that reality.