Joshua Keating writes: At this time last year, Narendra Modi was legally banned from the United States. Modi had been denied a business visa due to accusations that in 2002, when he was chief minister of the state of Gujarat, he allowed or even encouraged riots in which more than 1,000 people, most of them Muslims, were killed. The U.S. ambassador wouldn’t even meet with him until February, when it became overwhelmingly clear he was about to be elected prime minister of India.
While Modi, once known as a Hindu nationalist firebrand, toned down his rhetoric on the campaign trail, there was widespread concern that his business-friendly modernizing message masked ethnic nationalist, internationally hawkish, or autocratic tendencies. But in the four months since he’s been elected, he’s done little to confirm the direst predictions of his critics.
Relations between India and its neighbors China and Pakistran have been rocky in recent months, though it’s hard to blame that on any provocations from the prime minister. He invited Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif to his inauguration, has has held talks with the Pakistani leader, and went on a successful tirp to Beijing this summer. Modi took the unusual step of pressing Chinese President Xi Jinping over the countries’ ongoing border dispute during a meeting in New Delhi last week, but the exchange could certainly have gotten a lot more heated.
On domestic issues, Modi has relieved some and disappointed others who expected he would take a free-market hatchet to India’s public sector. He has moved slowly on economic policy and focused on reforming India’s bloated and notoriously slow-moving bureaucracy.
Modi promises to “create world-class infrastructure that India badly needs to accelerate growth and meet people’s basic needs” in a “sustainable and environmentally sensitive” manner. Modi’s obviously a long way from delivering on some very big promises—access to electricity, sanitation, and financial services for every one of India’ 1.2 billion people, to name just a few of those vows—but from the point of view of foreign governments, including the U.S., that were extremely skeptical of him a few months ago, Modi’s been on his best behavior so far.
Though a U.S. administration desperate for reliable allies in Asia would probably prefer to let bygones be bygones, nearly every newspaper article about a meeting between Modi and a senior U.S. official will note the controversy over the riots and the travel ban. We may someday get to the point where what happened in Gujarat in 2002 no longer colors the international perception of Modi, but we’re not there yet.
