Narendra Modi’s US conquest: Why the Nancy Powell meet is moot

Wake up and smell the coffee. Or in this case it should be the chai. The report that American ambassador Nancy Powell has sought a meeting with Narendra Modi is just the latest sign that Washington is acknowledging to the ground realities in India. In 2005 when the State Department had denied Modi a visa, then US ambassador to India, David Mulford had said “This decision applies to Mr. Narendra Modi only. It is based on the fact that, as head of the state government in Gujarat between February 2002 and May 2002, he was responsible for the performance of state institutions at that time.” At that time Mulford also took pains to point out America’s deep appreciation and high respect for the Vajpayee government in New Delhi and “the many successful Gujaratis who live and work in the United States and the thousands who are issued visas to the United States each month.” [caption id=“attachment_528047” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  Nancy Powell. Reuters[/caption] Nancy Powell’s boss is the Secretary of State and it is the State Department that has routinely denied the visa to Modi year after year in Washington D.C. @scotchism quips in a firmly tongue-in-cheek tweet “As Vivekananda said – “If a man can’t go to Amreeka, Amreeka must come to his doorstep.” Though Powell isn’t visiting Modi visa-in-hand, it is an embarrassing U-turn for her office. But it’s also an inevitable U-turn. In 2005, as Zahir Janmohamed points out in his detailed piece for India Ink about how the visa ban came about, there was little organized opposition to the visa denial. Evangelical Christians were at the forefront of the opposition to Modi and Indian-Americans who were aghast at what happened in Gujarat in 2002 teamed up with them to push that ban through. Since then that evangelical opposition has faded and three Republican members of Congress visited Gujarat in March 2013. Since 2005, court cases against Modi have come to naught. Joseph Grieboski, founder of the Institute on Religion and Public Policy, who was part of the no-to-Modi campaign also admitted to India Ink that no one really knew who Modi was in the US at that time. “When the U.S. denied Mr. Modi a visa in 2005, it was like the U.S. denying a visa to the governor of Iowa — no offense to Gujarat,” he said. “The U.S. did not see it as a big deal. And back then, it seemed clear to everyone in this town that Modi was involved in the riots. Now the picture is fuzzier, and many are intrigued by Modi.” Now Modi is the declared prime ministerial candidate of India’s main opposition party. There was really no doubt about whether the US would have to reconsider its visa ban. The only question was when and how. In fact, had Modi himself applied to go to the US in recent years, the US would have been forced to confront the issue head-on then. But he did not. “Modi has not applied for US visa since 2005. My personal advice also has been that he should not apply for a US visa,” Arun Jaitley said in 2013. It suited Modi’s image to have the ban in place, playing neatly into a victimhood script. If he received a visa, he was just another Indian chief minister addressing a group like hotel and motel owners in a cavernous conference room in some hotel in Georgia or Texas. But it was more newsworthy and dramatic to be addressing NRIs in America via video conference, in a sort of hologrammic defiance of the ban, helping burnish the Modi-against-the-world image. So Modi never applied and the visa ban was renewed as if on auto-pilot with State Department officials saying “he is welcome to apply for a visa and await a review like any other applicant.” The US obviously has little moral high ground for the ban no matter what happened in 2002. Its record, as is always the case with realpolitik, has been selective. It has invited plenty of proven despots and mass murderers to the United States and given them grand receptions. As the Times of India points out, Barack Obama just invited his Kenyan counterpart Uhuru Kenyatta to a US-Africa summit in August although he has actually been charged by the International Criminal Court over violence after the 2007-08 election. King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia, one of the United States’ closest allies, is hardly the poster boy of any International Religious Freedom Act. Now with the Indian elections coming up, the ban is really moot. Narendra Modi is not Devyani Khobragade. Not even Modi’s most fervent opponents believe that the US can afford to shut the door on him if he became India’s Prime Minister. It would not be about Narendra Modi any more. It would be about the Indian Prime Minister. In 2005, David Mulford had tried to wriggle out of the situation by resorting to convenient legalese. Modi, he explained, was denied a diplomatic visa to visit the United States because his coming to America to address the Asian American Hotel Owners Association was not a “purpose that qualified for a diplomatic visa.” What the State Department had denied him under Section 212 (a) (2) (g) of the Immigration and Nationality Act was a tourist or business visa. But of course the Prime Minister of India needs neither a tourist nor business visa to go to the United States on a state visit. And given that the US will roll out the red carpet for the next Indian Prime Minister, Modi, should he ascend to that post, can savour it as his great conquering hero moment. Actually Nancy Powell reaching out to meet the man who might be India’s next Prime Minister is not news. What would really make news, and a statement, is if Narendra Modi snubbed Powell now and said “Thanks, but no thanks.”