It was the non-Gandhi prime ministers in Rao (1991-96), Atal Behari Vajpaye (1996, 1998-2004) and Manmohan Singh (20104-14) who took steps to rewrite the script of India’s USA policy in the post-Cold War and liberalisation era.
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He said according to the US Commission on International Religious Freedom’s recent report, religious tolerance and violence against religious freedom increased in India in 2015.
“Modi is also a nationalist leader and he will not blindly follow the United States”, he said.
Strategic consideration were the reasons behind frequent meetings between US President Barack Obama and Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Chinese state-run media today said and cautioned India that it can not rise by “containing” China or picking one side against the other.
The need to change India’s course in foreign policy and particularly the dealings vis-a-vis the United States, the world’s only superpower, was felt towards the end of the Indira Gandhi days and during her successor Rajiv Gandhi in the 1980s.
The statement said the United States and India shared common climate and clean energy interests and were close partners in the fight against climate change.
Prime Minister Modi, visiting at the invitation of President Barack Obama, will be spending some 50 power packed hours in the nation’s capital.
India US partnership is going to define the world in the coming decades, Royce said.
In a statement Tuesday, Westinghouse’s spokesperson Courtney Boone said, “We are very pleased that the president and Prime Minister Modi thought to put out a joint statement as it is clear that they are supportive of our ongoing negotiations”.
The two leaders also signed agreements to boost co-operation in trade, military ties and climate change.
“We discussed how we can, as quickly as possible, bring the Paris Agreement into force”, Obama told reporters.
He made the remarks while responding to questions on the meeting between Obama and Modi wherein the two leaders reaffirmed their commitment to join the Paris agreement by the end of this year.
Earlier an article in the state-run Global Times said that India can not rise by “containing” China or picking one side against the other, while taking note of the Indo-US ties which are being ramped up to an “unprecedented level”. India, the world’s third-largest carbon emitter among nations, said it would strive to formally join a global climate deal this year as the US and China have said they will do but it gave no ironclad commitment. “So China has had no opportunity to express its reservation to India’s membership”, the official said when asked about China’s objection to India’s membership to Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG), which mostly handles nuclear non-proliferation issues.
The US and 16 countries have already written letters of support to make India an NSG member. India is the world’s third largest greenhouse gas emitter after China and the United States. The Nuclear Power Corporation of India Ltd. and Westinghouse had confirmed engineering and site design work would begin immediately.
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Both countries participated in the talks that led to the historic climate pact in France.
