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    ISAS Briefs

    Quick analytical responses to occurrences in South Asia

    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.