President Joe Biden hailed the country’s deepening relationship with India as he stood alongside its leader Thursday, highlighting the ascendant nation’s strategic importance while making only oblique references to New Delhi’s backsliding democracy.
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi heads the world’s largest democracy but has ruled as an autocratic-leaning Hindu nationalist whose government has overseen a crackdown on everyone from journalists to political opposition leaders as part of a larger targeting of Indian Muslims. Despite its wariness of Modi, the U.S. has looked to New Delhi as a rising economic partner and a bulwark against China’s dominance in the region.
Biden did not upbraid Modi in public but gently noted a need for a shared commitment to ‘democratic values.
“Indians and Americans … cherish freedom and celebrate the democratic values of universal human rights,” Biden said during a news conference, “which face challenges around the world and in each of our countries but which remain so vital to the success of each of our nations: press freedoms, religion freedom, tolerance, diversity.”
While standing with his Indian counterpart in the White House East Room, Biden deemed the nations’ partnership "among the most consequential in the world" and "stronger, closer, and more dynamic than at any time in history." Biden brought up human rights concerns behind closed doors, White House aides insisted, although they did not immediately get into details.
Human rights advocates have criticized Biden not just for hosting Modi, but for throwing him a state dinner, a prestigious honor bestowed upon only two other foreign leaders since Biden took office.
Earlier Thursday, Biden welcomed Modi to the White House with a speech touting religious freedom as a “core principle” for both nations, a gentle chiding for the prime minister’s treatment of Muslims.
“Equity under the law, freedom of expression, religious pluralism and diversity of our people — these core principles have endured and evolve,” said Biden in the welcoming ceremony. “Even as they have faced challenges throughout each of our nations’ histories, and will fuel our strength, depth and future.”
Modi, who has not taken a question at a news conference in his nine years as prime minister, flashed some impatience when asked about his nation’s commitment to democracy and human rights, before fiercely declaring that “democracy is in our DNA.”
“We live in democracy,” Modi said as part of a long winded defense. “Regardless of caste, creed, religion and gender, there is absolutely no space for discrimination.”
Modi’s visit to Washington has illustrated his rise. India just became the world’s most populous nation, the nation’s surging economy is drawing foreign investment, and Modi will host the world’s leaders at the G-20 in New Delhi this fall.
The U.S. feels it has no choice but continue to court him as an essential bulwark on the far side of the globe. To the dismay of the White House, India has remained neutral in the war between Russia and Ukraine. And while New Delhi has not offered Moscow any direct assistance, it has continued to purchase its gas, helping Vladimir Putin fund his war efforts. Biden did not publicly push Modi to back Kyiv but Biden said the two spoke about “our shared effort to mitigate humanitarian tragedies unleashed by Russia’s brutal invasion of Ukraine.”
But India’s biggest role, the administration believes, could be to provide a check on China. India and China share a lengthy border and recent tensions. U.S. has elevated India as part of the Quad alliance — along with Australia and Japan — to reinforce democracy’s position in the Pacific and has pushed New Delhi to act as a buffer against the economic and territorial ambitions of Xi Jinping. And Biden, in response to a reporter’s question, did not back down from his recent characterization of Xi as a “dictator,” a label that was met with fury from Beijing.
Biden administration officials have said they are not blind to India’s faults and troubles. Instead, they say in dealing with a geo-strategically vital country of 1.4 billion people, they prefer to level their criticisms behind the scenes.
But doing so, human rights activists argue, means offering a tacit blessing to the abuses taking place under Modi’s watch — and it forfeits an opportunity to improve the situation. A handful of progressive Democrats boycotted Modi’s speech before a joint session of Congress scheduled for after the news conference.
“A joint address is among the most prestigious invitations and honors the United States Congress can extend,” said Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), one of those shunning the speech, in a statement. “We should not do so for individuals with deeply troubling human rights records – particularly for individuals whom our own State Department has concluded are engaged in systematic human rights abuses of religious minorities and caste-oppressed communities.”
Human rights advocates cite a litany of abuses by the Modi government, including passage of a law that discriminates against Muslims by making religion a basis of citizenship and the revocation of the autonomy granted to the majority-Muslim Jammu and Kashmir region. Some Indian states also passed “anti-conversion” laws that appear to target Muslim men who marry Hindu women. These and other moves have played out against a backdrop of more violence against religious minorities and crackdowns on government critics and journalists.
Many presidents have had to deal with unsavory foreign elements to advance U.S. political interest. Biden, when he ran for president, trashed Trump’s seeming indifference to suffering around the world, promising to put human rights at the “center” of his foreign policy. But he and his team have also made deals with nations like Saudi Arabia and Turkey.
The White House touted a series of agreements reached at the summit, including new economic deals, climate commitments, and contracts for semiconductors and other technologies. Aides defended the decision to have the state dinner, suggesting it is a representation of the administration’s appreciation of India’s new engagement with the world and, they say, its commitment to be a good global citizen.
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