PM Modi's US Visit: Nation's pride, pseudo seculars' envy

The State Visit of the Indian Prime Minister is a significant milestone in the history of India-US relations and holds great promise for enhancing the collaboration between the two countries, particularly in countering China's influence in Asia, as India emerges as a strategic ally of the US, says BJP national spokesperson Prem Shukla.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit to the United States at the invitation of United States President Joe Biden and First Lady Jill Biden is definitely another historic achievement of the Indian Prime Minister. Prime Minister Modi has made multiple visits to the US during his nine-year tenure. However, what distinguishes this visit is that this is a State visit. A State visit is the highest-ranked visit as per diplomatic protocol and also symbolises strong bilateral relations. 

One could clearly see the grandiose welcome given to Prime Minister Modi not only by the US officials, US President and the Indian Diaspora, but also by the American citizens and the excitement to meet the most popular world leader, two years and running, was very much visible.

This is the third state visit of a foreign leader hosted by US President Joe Biden. The other two are that of French President Emmanuel Macron and South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol. Prime Minister Modi’s visit differs slightly as he is the head of government. According to US protocol, the state visit is formally extended to the Head of State. To go around this, the US came up with another level of foreign visits, the ‘Official State Visit’. 

As on the suggestion of the Indian government, the UN had declared 2023 as the year of Millet, Millet stalks will be seen in the talons of a peacock (national bird of India) that will form the backdrop. In a move that is sure to cause a few burns to the ‘so-called liberals’ of India, the saffron colour dominated the decor in a nod to Indian culture.

Furthermore, Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit has surely created a huge buzz due to the historic events that took place. Firstly, PM Modi led the celebration of the International Day of Yoga at the United Nations Headquarters in New York, which led to a Guinness World record as people from more than 180 countries participated. 

Further unlike his other two counterparts, this becomes the second time he addressed a joint sitting of the US Congress. By doing so, he joined a select group of world leaders who have had the privilege of speaking to Congress on multiple occasions. This group also included world leaders like Winston Churchill, Nelson Mandela and Benjamin Netanyahu.

From an economic point of view, the State Visit has already proved a great success. PM Modi a number of American CEOs and invited them to boost investment in India. The list includes Micron Technology President and CEO Sanjay Mehrotra, Applied Materials President and CEO Gary E Dickerson, General Electric CEO H Lawrence Culp, Tesla CEO Elon Musk, Apple CEO Tim Cook, Google CEO Sundar Pichai, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, and FedEx CEO Raj Subramaniam to name a few. 

Notably, several recent investment announcements have been made by US companies, indicating their growing interest in India. Elon Musk declared to make a “significant investment” with an official announcement expected soon, post his meeting with PM Modi. The Cabinet approved chipmaker Micron Technologies’ $2.7 billion plan to set up a new semiconductor testing and packaging unit following discussions with PM Modi. 

Moreover, there are investment promises made by companies like Boeing -- to establish a logistics centre for aeroplane parts, Amazon -- $13 billion for enhanced cloud infrastructure, Apple -- to expand manufacturing operations in India along with collaborations with Foxconn, Wistron Corp and Pegatron Corp, Cisco systems, Walmart, General Electric and Applied Materials to name a few.

Let us also take a look at how this State Visit fares when compared to the visits of other powerful nations to the US namely the P-5. The United Kingdom has only attended Summits and has had official working visits and working visits in the past two decades in the US. The same goes for Germany which last had a State Visit in 1975 back when it was the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG). 

Japan’s last State Visit was back in 2015 when Shinzo Abe was a state guest of President Barack Obama, whose main aim was to strengthen the 70-year post-war bond between Japan and the US as seen by his address in the joint meeting of Congress. 

Lastly, we have already highlighted the recent visit of Emanuel Macron, who discussed various issues ranging from the Ukraine-Russia conflict to the economy, emerging technologies, trade and supply chains. However, he did not address the Congress as he did in his previous visit back in 2018. Xi Jinping’s visit in 2015 comes close. However, he addressed the UN, but not the joint Congress sittings. Further, Russia’s last state visit to the US was almost three decades back in 1994.

If we look closely, none of the P-5 countries’ visits has taken away so much from their visit as PM Modi has. He not only addressed the Joint sittings of Congress but also set a world record during his Yoga programme in the United Nations headquarters, met a plethora of CEOs from multiple organisations to accelerate investments in India, form strong cultural and defence ties with the US. 

Over and above, he did a press conference along with US President Joe Biden. This move was a massive blow to the pseudo-seculars who would often bring up the issue of the Prime Minister not doing press conferences and accuse any other media house that did an interview of the Prime Minister of being biased. 

PM Modi’s confident and well-balanced answer to a difficult question raised by foreign journalists on foreign soil caused a massive setback to their objective. When asked about the steps that he and his government were willing to take to improve the rights of Muslims and other minorities in the country and to uphold free speech, PM Modi replied: “We have always proved that democracy can deliver. And when I say deliver, this is regardless of caste, creed, religion, or gender. There is absolutely no space for discrimination. And when you talk of democracy, if there are no human values and there is no humanity, there are no human rights, then it is not a democracy. And that is why when you say ‘democracy’ and you accept democracy and when we live in a democracy, then there is absolutely no space for discrimination. And that is why India believes in moving ahead with everybody with trust and with everybody’s efforts. These are our foundation principles, which are the basis of how we operate, how we live our lives.”  Would the pseudo-seculars dare call the journalists of the US sold or biased?

All in all, the Indian Prime Minister’s State Visit is surely a historic event as he became the first Indian leader to address a joint session of the Congress twice, the second Indian Prime Minister to go on a State Visit to the US and the third leader to be invited for a State Visit by US President Joe Biden. This visit will surely bring US and India together to work and counter the dominance of China in Asia as India becomes a strategic ally of the US. Further, the inflow of investments from various organisations will lead to the growth of the manufacturing sector and ultimately the economy. It will be visiting leading to ties like these that will eventually lead India to be at the top of the world.

The author is national spokesperson of the Bharatiya Janata Party. Views expressed are personal