White House invites Modi to visit U.S.

May 17, 2014

Washington, May 17: U.S. President Barack Obama effectively reversed a nine-year U.S. visa ban when he congratulated Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi on his party's “historic” victory in the Indian general election, and then invited Mr. Modi to visit the U.S. at a “mutually agreeable time to further strengthen our bilateral relationship.”

White_House_invites_ModiAdditionally, the White House said on Friday, “We look forward to working with [the new Indian government] once formed to advance our partnership.”

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry chose micro-blogging site Twitter to say to Mr. Modi, “Congrats to @narendramodi and BJP. Look forward to working w/you/growing shared prosperity/security w/world's largest democracy.”

The State Department elaborated on Mr. Kerry's statement saying that it congratulated Mr. Modi and the BJP on its victory in winning a majority of seats in India's historic national election, “which saw more voters cast their ballots freely and fairly than in any election in human history.”

State Department officials said that they understood that the next steps were for the Indian Election Commission to officially inform the President of the certified election results, and for him to appoint a Prime Minister.

The U.S. has, since 2005, denied Mr. Modi an entry visa on the grounds that he has been linked to curtailments of religious freedom in the context of the 2002 Gujarat riots.

However, on Friday, the White House Press Secretary Jay Carney said during a media briefing “The Prime Minister of India will be welcomed to the U.S.,” and added that once the government was formed, the U.S. looked forward to working “closely with the Prime Minister and the Cabinet to advance our strong, bilateral relationship based on shared democratic values.”

The State Department echoed the White House view that “The Prime Minister of India will be welcomed to the U.S. [and] as Head of Government, Mr. Modi would be eligible for an A-1 visa.”

Some groups in the U.S. drew attention to the visa and Gujarat riots issue on Friday, and the Coalition Against Genocide (CAG), an umbrella group focusing on justice and accountability for the pogrom said that it “pledged to continue its struggle with renewed fervour in the wake of the election results in India.”

CAG Spokesperson Raja Swamy underscored Mr. Modi's alleged links to the RSS cautioning that “During this election campaign, RSS leaders have been openly raking up contentious issues, posing a threat to communal harmony and increasing the prospect of violence against minorities.”

Reactions to the BJP's stronger-than-anticipated victory in the elections were nevertheless broadly positive.

New York Democratic Congressman and Co-Chair of the Congressional Caucus on India and Indian-Americans, said, in a statement “From Kerala to Jaipur, from Mumbai to Kolkata, the power of democracy was on display throughout the country. I applaud India's commitment to the democratic process and wish the Indian people and government the very best.”

Sanjay Puri, Chairman of the U.S. India Political Action Committee similarly said, “On behalf of the Indian-American community and friends of India in the U.S., USINPAC extends its warm congratulations to Narendra Modi for leading the BJP to a spectacular victory in these historic elections in India.”

Emphasising that Indian-Americans were “heartened to note that the BJP will have single party majority in the Parliament,” he added, “The Indian Diasporas and friends of India in the U.S. … cheer and send our best of wishes to the people of India, and the leadership of Mr. Modi.”

The Confederation of Indian Industry, which has spearheaded numerous efforts to boost India's profile as an investor in the U.S. economy and a destination for U.S. investments, welcomed the election results with an eye on the prospects for accelerating future economic growth.

Chandrajit Banerjee, CII Director-General, said, “With a decisive mandate, the new government could take the tough decisions that are urgently needed to revive economic growth. The first priority is to get the cleared projects operational. This is the quickest way to revive investment demand.”

He also urged the new government, once formed, to sharpen the focus on “issues arising out of the land acquisition act and the new companies act,” and passing a “strong reform package… to generate the 150 million new jobs that India needs over the next ten years.”

Comments

Add new comment

  • Coastaldigest.com reserves the right to delete or block any comments.
  • Coastaldigset.com is not responsible for its readers’ comments.
  • Comments that are abusive, incendiary or irrelevant are strictly prohibited.
  • Please use a genuine email ID and provide your name to avoid reject.
News Network
June 4,2020

Jun 4: Mahatma Gandhi’s statue outside the Indian Embassy in Washington DC was vandalised with graffiti and spray painting by unknown persons allegedly involved in the ongoing protests in the US against the custodial killing of African-American George Floyd.

This has prompted the mission officials to register a complaint with the local law enforcement agencies.

The incident is reported to have taken place on the intervening night of June 2 and 3 in Washington DC.

The Indian embassy has informed the State Department and registered a complaint with local law enforcement agencies, which are now conducting an investigation into the incident.

On Wednesday, a team of officials from Metropolitan Police in consultation with the Diplomatic Security Service and National Park Police visited the site and are conducting inquiries.

Efforts are on to clean up the site at the earliest.

Vandalism of the statue of the apostle of peace comes during the week of nationwide protests against the custodial killing of African-American George Floyd in Minneapolis on May 25.

Several of these protests have turned violent which many times has resulted in damage of some of the most prestigious and sacred American monuments.

In Washington DC, protestors this week burnt a historic church and damaged some of the prime properties and historic places like the national monument and Lincoln Memorial.

One of the few statues of a foreign leader on a federal land in Washington DC, the statue of Mahatma Gandhi was dedicated by the then Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee, in the presence of the then US president Bill Clinton on September 16, 2000, during his state visit to the US.

In October 1998, the US Congress had authorised the government of India to establish and maintain a memorial “to honour Mahatma Gandhi on Federal land in the District of Columbia."

According to the Indian Embassy website, the sculpture of Mahatma Gandhi is cast in bronze as a statue to a height of 8 feet 8 inches. It shows Gandhi in stride, as a leader and man of action evoking memories of his 1930 protest march against salt-tax, and the many padyatras (long marches) he undertook throughout the length and breadth of the Indian sub-continent.

The statue, the design of which was created by Gautam Pal, is a gift from the Indian Council for Cultural Relations (ICCR). The pedestal for the statue of Mahatma Gandhi is a block of new Imperial Red also known as Ruby Red a block originally weighing 25 tonnes reduced to a size of 9'x7'x3'4". It now weighs 16 tonnes.

Comments

Add new comment

  • Coastaldigest.com reserves the right to delete or block any comments.
  • Coastaldigset.com is not responsible for its readers’ comments.
  • Comments that are abusive, incendiary or irrelevant are strictly prohibited.
  • Please use a genuine email ID and provide your name to avoid reject.
Agencies
June 28,2020

Paris, Jun 28: More than 10 million cases of the new coronavirus have been officially declared around the world, half of them in Europe and the United States, according to an AFP tally on Sunday based on official sources.

At least 10,003,942 infections, including 498,779 deaths, have been registered globally.

Europe remains the hardest hit continent with 2,637,546 cases including 195,975 fatalities, while the United States has 2,510,323 infections including 125,539 deaths.

The rate of infections worldwide continues to rise, with one million new cases recorded in just six days.

The tallies, using data collected by AFP from national authorities and information from the World Health Organization (WHO), probably reflect only a fraction of the actual number of infections.

Many countries are testing only symptomatic or the most serious cases and some do not have the capacity to carry out widescale testing.

Comments

Add new comment

  • Coastaldigest.com reserves the right to delete or block any comments.
  • Coastaldigset.com is not responsible for its readers’ comments.
  • Comments that are abusive, incendiary or irrelevant are strictly prohibited.
  • Please use a genuine email ID and provide your name to avoid reject.
News Network
February 26,2020

Feb 26: Looking out over the world’s largest cricket stadium, the seats jammed with more than 100,000 people, India’s prime minister heaped praise on his American visitor.

“The leadership of President Trump has served humanity,” Prime Minister Narendra Modi said Monday, highlighting Trump’s fight against terrorism and calling his 36-hour visit to India a watershed in India-U.S. relations.

The crowds cheered. Trump beamed.

“The ties between India and the U.S. are no longer just any other partnership,” Modi said. “It is a far greater and closer relationship.”

India, it seems, loves Donald Trump. It seemed obvious from the thousands who turned out to wave as his motorcade snaked through the city of Ahmedabad, and from the tens of thousands who filled the city’s new stadium. It seemed obvious from the hug that Modi gave Trump after he descended from Air Force One, and from the hundreds of billboards proclaiming Trump’s visit.

But it’s not so simple.

Because while Trump is genuinely popular in India, his clamorous and carefully choreographed welcome was also about Asian geopolitics, China’s growing power and a masterful Indian politician who gave his American visitor exactly what he wanted.

Modi “is doing this not necessarily because he loves Trump,” said Tanvi Madan, the director of the India Project at the Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C. “It’s very much about Trump as the leader of the U.S. and recognizing what it is that Trump himself likes.”

Trump likes crowds — big crowds — and the foot soldiers of India’s political parties have long known how to corral enough people to make any politician look popular. In a city like Ahmedabad, the capital of Modi’s home state of Gujarat and the center of his power base, it wouldn’t take much effort to fill a cavernous sports stadium. It was more surprising that a handful of seats remained empty, and that some in the stands had left even before Trump had finished his speech.

For India, good relations with the U.S. are deeply important: They signal that India is a serious global player, an issue that has long been important to New Delhi, and help cement an alliance that both nations see as a counterweight to China’s rise.

“For both countries, their biggest rival is China,” said John Echeverri-Gent, a professor at the University of Virginia whose research often focuses on India. “China is rapidly expanding its presence in the Indian Ocean, which India has long considered its backyard and its exclusive realm for security concerns.”

“It’s very clearly a major concern for both India and the United States,” he said.

Trump isn’t the first U.S. president that Modi has courted. In 2015, then-President Barack Obama was the first American chief guest at India’s Republic Day parade, a powerful symbolic gesture. Obama also got a Modi hug, and the media in both countries were soon writing about the two leaders’ “bromance.”

Trump is popular in India, even if some of that is simply because he’s the U.S. president. A 2019 Pew Research Center poll showed that 56% of Indians had confidence in Trump’s abilities in world affairs, one of only a handful of countries where he has that level of approval. But Obama was also popular: Before he left office, he had 58% approval in world affairs among Indians.

The Pew poll also indicated that Trump’s support was higher among supporters of Modi’s Hindu nationalist party.

That’s not surprising. Both men have fired up their nationalist bases with anti-Muslim rhetoric and government policies, from Trump’s travel bans to Modi’s crackdown in Kashmir, India’s only Muslim-majority state.

And Trump’s Indian support is far from universal. Protests against his trip roiled cities from New Delhi to Hyderabad to the far northeastern city of Gauhati, although those demonstrations were mostly overshadowed by protests over a new Indian citizenship law that Modi backs.

Modi, who is widely popular in India, has faced weeks of protests over the law, which provides fast track naturalization for some foreign-born religious minorities — but not Muslims. While Trump talked about ties with India on Tuesday, Hindus and Muslims fought in violent clashes that left at least 10 people dead over two days.

In some ways, Modi and Trump are powerful echoes of each other.

They have overlapping political styles. Both are populists who see themselves as brash, rule-breaking outsiders who disdain their countries’ traditional elites. Both are seen by their critics as having authoritarian leanings. Both surround themselves with officials who rarely question their decisions.

But are they friends?

Trump says yes. “Really, we feel very strongly about each other,” he said at a New Delhi press briefing.

But many observers aren’t so sure.

“The question is how much of this is real chemistry, as opposed to what I’d call planned chemistry” orchestrated for diplomatic reasons, said Madan. “It’s so hard to know if you’re not in the room.”

Certainly, Modi understands America’s importance to India. While the two countries continue to bicker about trade issues, the prime minister organized a welcome that impressed even India’s news media, which have watched countless choreographed mass political rallies.

“There is no other country for whose leader India would hold such an event, and for which an Indian prime minister would lavish such rhetoric,” the Hindustan Times said in an editorial.

“The spectacle and the sound were worth a thousand agreements.”

Comments

Add new comment

  • Coastaldigest.com reserves the right to delete or block any comments.
  • Coastaldigset.com is not responsible for its readers’ comments.
  • Comments that are abusive, incendiary or irrelevant are strictly prohibited.
  • Please use a genuine email ID and provide your name to avoid reject.