Democrats in the US Congress are increasingly willing to call India out on human rights issues.
The US presidential election campaign is getting into gear, albeit more slowly because of the severe limitations imposed by the pandemic on movement and interaction.
The Democratic Party’s presumptive nominee Joe Biden has begun hiring hundreds of new staff and advisors to counter President Donald Trump’s re-election machinery already in place.
The coronavirus is expected to dominate both domestic and foreign policy debates this election cycle. Trump’s handling of the pandemic, the patchy response and a perceived absence of US leadership on the world stage in these difficult times will be scrutinised and weaponised by the Democrats.
It’s a given that China, where the virus originated, will be in sharp focus with both candidates vying to be tougher on Beijing for not caring and sharing enough information with the rest of the world in the early stages of the outbreak. Trump’s decision to withhold funding from the World Health Organisation will be a key point of contention going forward.
That said, it is also time to ask how the two candidates look at India and what their vision is for the partnership. The contours of Trump’s India policy are known — his administration has placed New Delhi at the centre of its Indo-Pacific strategy, which Biden’s foreign policy advisor Tony Blinken referred to as the “Asia Pacific” region — the old nomenclature.
Trump has consistently called Prime Minister Narendra Modi a “good friend,” recently announcing the donation of 200 ventilators to India to help with patients of coronavirus. The two seem to share a rapport and have gone the extra mile to politically boost each other, heaping praise and hyperbole in equal measure.
The Trump Administration recently asked India to play a greater role in the Afghanistan peace process — an idea was taboo for US policy makers for years even as various US administrations praised New Delhi’s development aid to the war-torn country. Whether India can or wants to be a bigger player in Afghanistan and open a dialogue with the Taliban is a separate issue but the fact that Washington has traveled the mental distance is significant and should be noted, the many reasons why notwithstanding.
Trump visited India in late February just before the pandemic became a full-blown crisis in either country. It was the first time a US president had made the trip in his first term. Both George W. Bush and Barack Obama traveled to India in their second term and after a somewhat delayed recognition of the importance of the partnership. Obama in his first term was courting China.
A conservative columnist for The Washington Post, Henry Olsen, recently described the Trump Administration’s India policy as a “calculated effort to deepen US ties with the only nation that can serve as an Asian counterweight to China.” He noted that a $3 billion defence deal was announced during Trump’s visit and how the US could be a partner in India’s military growth. The defence deal signed in February was barely acknowledged in the mainstream US media. The absence of a trade deal dominated headlines.
Interestingly, Olsen also said that Modi’s “embrace of Hinduism as a national unifying force raises questions for many regarding India’s commitment to liberal democracy as well as the nation’s future stability. This doesn’t mean, however, that closer ties aren’t in the United States’ national interest.”
This is the crux of the issue at this time, especially for the Democrats: should the relationship with India be considered important in itself or should it be influenced by the nature of the current government in New Delhi? The realists would say it should be the former.
But it appears realists are currently in short supply in the Democratic Party and the party’s diverse base is pulling in different directions. Democrats in the US Congress are increasingly willing to call India out on human rights issues, especially after Modi’s decision last August to revoke Article 370 in Jammu & Kashmir, the long communication blackout, detention of political leaders and curtailment of civil liberties. The subsequent Citizenship Amendment Act raised real alarm in the liberal circles in Washington.
The communalisation of the coronavirus by some BJP leaders who blamed the Muslim community at large for spreading it in Delhi has given further ammunition to India’s critics and lobbyists deployed by Pakistan. Sections of the Democratic Party are especially concerned about what they consider the stigmatisation of an entire community.
These are legitimate issues and they trouble the Democrats but the question is how they plan to handle them. Do they succumb to the basest constituency pressure from whichever lobbying group is the most aggressive or do they keep the broader US-India relationship in mind? The way it looks right now is that top Democrats on Capitol Hill do not mind putting the heat on India, if only to satisfy certain constituents with an agenda.
As a long-time Indian American observer of US politics said, they “are looking at the trees, not the forest.” While the Republicans can cut through to strategic issues, the Democrats have some difficulty.
Senator Bob Menendez, the top Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, introduced a bill on coronavirus dealing with response and recovery. Instead of taking note of India’s relative success in fighting the virus, the bill clubs India with China, Egypt, Turkey, Hungary and Cambodia as a country that is has “taken measures that violate the human rights of their citizens without clear public health justification, oversight measures, or sunset provisions.”
To be sure it’s a single reference to India in a long, 148-page bill, which is focused on laying out the Democrats’ response on fighting the pandemic. The bill is about debt restructuring for countries in dire straits, help for refugees and migrants, extension of visas and authorisation of $4.4 billion to address urgent humanitarian needs across the globe.
Why would Menendez, who could become the committee chairman if Democrats take the Senate this November, include what is essentially a deliberate provocation designed to hurt India? Insiders on Capitol Hill say that it was not his office that put this language in to club India with China but staffers of other senators who have co-sponsored the bill. There are nine co-sponsors, including senators Benjamin Cardin of Maryland, Cory Booker of New Jersey, Tim Kaine of Virginia and Ed Markey of Massachusetts.
Most of the co-sponsors have been publicly critical of Modi’s moves in Kashmir and the restrictions. Their staffers are particularly prone to information supplied by certain organisations that have been overactive on Capitol Hill since last August. If the Democrats win the Senate this November, Capitol Hill could become harder to climb.
The bill is not expected to be marked up for consideration — no Republicans have signed on to it. But the Democrats are sending a message.
The larger question is whether Biden can pull Democrats in the Congress behind him on a coherent India policy or will Congressional leaders determine the tenor and tone of the relationship?
The views expressed above belong to the author(s). ORF research and analyses now available on Telegram! Click here to access our curated content — blogs, longforms and interviews.
Seema Sirohi is a columnist based in Washington DC. She writes on US foreign policy in relation to South Asia. Seema has worked with several ...
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