Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
venting cyber attacks on our respective infrastructures. We are talking about a new bilateral
investment treaty that will build on the 20 per cent increase in trade we've seen just this
last year. And we have watched as trade is increasingly flowing in both directions. We have
new initiatives linking students and businesses and communities, and one of my personal
favourites is the Passport to India, a programme designed to bring more American students
to study in India to match the great numbers of Indian students that come to America to
study, because we want to create those bonds between our young people and our future
leaders'. Her talks on that visit also covered anti- terrorism, economic ties, nuclear projects
and defence co-operation. An American foreign affairs specialist said in Delhi a year later:
'We are better off if you are free and confident. Even if India annoys the US all the time,
it's still better to have a strong India... Even if we don't get returns and the balance is in the
red on nuclear contracts, Iran and the MRCA (the Indian fighter jet contract), it's better we
are aligned and work on our common world view'.
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There are however sceptics about the relationship in India, as well as those in the US
who strongly believe India should be more docile and subservient. There will always be
headlines about differences. Usually these will be on issues such as Iran and there is also
concern in India about how determined the US is to support Asian countries against the
sort of Chinese aggression seen in the East China Sea. There will also be unexpected rows,
as happened in December 2013 when US law officers suddenly arrested Devyani Kho-
bragade, India's 39-year-old deputy consul general in New York, just as she was dropping
her daughter at school. Accused of visa fraud over an Indian maid who had worked in her
home, she was handcuffed, strip-searched, underwent DNA swabbing, and was held in a
cell with others accused of crimes including drugs till she was released on $250,000 bail.
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This led to a dispute over Khobragade's diplomatic status and provoked a furious reac-
tion from India, which cancelled various diplomatic privileges that the US enjoyed in India
but did not give to India's diplomats in America. Security barricades that blocked a road
adjacent to the embassy in Delhi's diplomatic area were dramatically removed. India's for-
eign service officials were united in condemning the US, led by Sujatha Singh, India's new
foreign secretary, who had been in Washington for talks the day before the arrest and was
apparently not consulted.
The sharp reaction - and media frenzy - in India flushed out a latent anti-America feel-
ing born of resentment of the way the US threw its weight around. As Stephen Cohen of
the Brookings Institution in Washington was reported saying in the
Financial Times
, 'we
have created a myth that India is pro-America and that is not the case'.
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Before this row broke out, the relationship had been drifting because of a lack of care in
both countries with a weakly-led Indian embassy in the US and an American ambassador
in Delhi who, though able, could not excite political support back home. There were few,
if any, committed supporters in the Obama administration, and there were many officials
