PM's US Visit: Barack Obama, Narendra Modi put human rights on the backburner

WASHINGTON: Dancers and demonstrators jostled for attention as Prime Minister Narendra Modi engaged President Obama in the White House on Monday and Tuesday, drawing attention to the divide that surrounds what many pundits have described as one of the most polarizing figure in Indian politics.

Security and police kept both groups at a distance from the Blair House (across from the White House) where Modi is staying for 24 hours as a state guest. The honor clearly signaled that the Obama administration has put its strategic embrace of India well ahead of any human rights complaints against both Modi and more broadly New Delhi.

But for what it is worth, overseas Pro-Pakistani-Kashmiri groups and Khalistani-Sikh sympathisers had their say, although for a change, overseas Indian nationalists and pro-Modi partisans eclipsed them with a colorful show of dancing and singing. Echoes of ras garba drowned out the protest slogans, as the two sides bumped up against each other.

In an effort to put human rights on the agenda during the talks, Amnesty International USA surprisingly pressed for both leaders to raise HR issues in each other countries (including urging Modi to raise treatment of blacks and minorities in the US and the denial of justice to Bhopal gas tragedy victims). But the two sides, evidently determined to sidestep contentious issues and putting strategic engagement on top of the agenda, ignored the plea.

In fact, the vision statement issued by the two sides explicitly suggested that the Obama administration was very much in a clinch with the Modi government, regardless of past reservations about human rights issues and the contretemps surrounding the revocation of his visa.

"The advent of a new government is a natural opportunity for to broaden and deepen the relationship," the two leaders wrote in a joint op-ed in the Washington Post, a clear endorsement by Obama of the Modi dispensation despite all the toxic reports about his human rights record.

Although the pro-Modi sentiment -- a subset of the larger overseas nationalism that has seized NRIs both nostalgic and bullish about India -- clearly trumped the marginal protests, sections of the U.S media and a few American lawmakers tried to inject it into the discourse the disaffection of the dissenters. "The specter of what many think will be left unspoken - human rights and civil society issues - hangs over the visit," the Washington Post reported, although the subject wasn't anywhere in sight and Obama pulled out all stops to erase any unease with personal touches such as greeting him in Gujarati and walking with him around the MLK memorial.

Modi's human rights record, the Post said, "could present an awkward juxtaposition Tuesday as the Obama administration attempts to present a united front." But no disunity was evident going by the manner in which the two sides, and the two men, engaged each other.