For a better future

India and the United States, with liberal, democratic and entrepreneurial values in their veins, and a shared stand on terrorism, should be inevitable allies. In 1998, Atal Bihari Vajpayee, prime minister at the time, articulated in a speech in New York that the two countries were “natural allies in the quest for a better future for the world in the 21st century”.

Ironically, 1998 was the same year in which India carried out its nuclear tests and incurred the wrath of the US, which led a band of countries in imposing political, economic and technological sanctions against India. That—to use a sports metaphor—came against the run of play. Earlier that decade, there was growing warmth in India-US relations after the collapse of the USSR.

The sanctions soon got diluted and later lifted, but generally speaking , India and the US have never had the smoothest of friendships—in spite of John F Kennedy’s support to India in the 1962 war with China, Norman Borlaug’s help with India’s Green Revolution, the healthy growth in bilateral trade in recent years, the sharp rise in significance of the Indian diaspora in the US, the civil nuclear deal signed by the Manmohan Singh government, and regardless of the collaborations in energy, defence, climate, technology and other critical areas.

Which may have something to do with how fiercely India wanted to safeguard its hard-won Independence. As far back as 1951, Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru, speaking in Parliament, extolled the virtues of being non-aligned and not letting anyone tell us which policy to pursue. That was when the world was already getting polarised, with the US and the USSR on either side of the divide. Down the road, the US aligned itself with Pakistan and India, without joining any bloc, leaned more towards the USSR.

Even today, as you can suss out from an article in the Time magazine from June 2023, the western world seems to be well aware of the spiritual leanings of India’s foreign policy towards vasudhaiva kutumbakam and the G20 theme under India’s presidency: One Earth, One Family, One Future. Both show an approach of “multialignment”.