కమలా అధ్యక్షురాలైతే భారత్-అమెరికా మరింత దిగజారుతోంది!

[CaptainMaverick]

Harris Gets Muted Response in India as Few See Change in US Ties

• Her Indian roots won’t change US-India relationship: analysts
• Modi has enjoyed warm personal ties with Donald Trump

How India’s warm embrace of Kamala Harris grew chilly

India was excited about Kamala Harris in 2020. Four years later, the reaction to her presidential bid is more complicated.

s Harris nears a presidential nomination, India seems to view her differently. While her identity may continue to excite the Indian diaspora in the United States, in the homeland observers are not only more muted on her connections but also uncertain about her strategic stance toward the subcontinent.

The initial “silly and irrational exuberance” saw a “dose of reality,” said Harsh V. Pant, visiting professor at King’s College London and vice president at the Observer Research Foundation, an Indian think tank. Things had changed, he said, and “it’s fair to say that there is no real warmth for her in India.”

Indian analysts point to several factors in this shift. One is a perceived lack of embrace of her Indian heritage by Harris. Another is a growing concern of Harris’s periodic comments on issues related to Indian democracy and human rights, ruffling feathers in India and pricking the warming ties between Washington and New Delhi.

It’s led to a feeling of “rejection” among Indian fans of Harris, Pant said. “That terminated the affair with Kamala Harris and India. She has to be seen as an American as opposed to an Indian American,” he added.

Indians are also by now familiar with members of the diaspora in high offices abroad. Britain, Ireland and Portugal have all had prime ministers with Indian lineage in recent years. In the United States, there were two candidates from the diaspora — Nikki Haley and Vivek Ramaswamy — in the Republican presidential primaries this year.

Modi, meanwhile, is widely believed to enjoy warmer and more personal ties with Donald Trump, who is the Republican’s candidate for president. Both leaders have hosted each other at political rallies in their respective countries, with Trump holding a “Howdy Modi” event in Houston before a huge crowd of Indian Americans in September 2019 — just days after Modi’s new policy in Kashmir.

That event was followed up in 2020 with a visit by Trump to Modi’s home state of Gujarat for an event billed “Namaste Trump.” There, the US president addressed a rally of nearly 100,000 people at a stadium in the city of Ahmedabad.