345: Indo-US ‘Spirit’ Regained
Sinderpal Singh, Senior Research Fellow, ISAS
3 October 2014
India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi has just compl
eted a five-day visit to the United States,
with wide coverage in the US and global press. Obse
rvers were keen to see how Modi, who
was declined a visa to enter the US in 2005 as a re
sult of the riots in his home-state of Gujarat,
could revitalise a relationship that was perceived
to be in decline in the last few years,
epitomised by the very recent arrest and strip-sear
ch of a serving Indian diplomat in New York.
This is in sharp contrast to the heady heights of t
he bilateral relationship in 2010, when during
his visit to India, US President Barack Obama and I
ndia’s then Prime Minister Manmohan
Singh proclaimed the US-India relationship as “the
defining partnership of the 21
st
century”.
In the four years since then, observers of the bila
teral relationship have lamented the clear gulf
between expectations and delivery.