President Barack Obama (Official White House photo by Pete Souza)
President Barack Obama will attend a reception hosted by his Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in honor of the visiting External Affairs (Foreign) Minister S. M. Krishna of India on June 3. This simple gesture is fraught with deep diplomatic meaning in the bilateral ties between India and the United States. Or so we are told by those who watch such choreographed spontaneity.
The now familiar theme that Obama is too clinical and professorial who is unable to show genuine empathy or anger or friendship seems to have affected even Washington’s relations with New Delhi. The perception that US-India relations have lost the momentum they acquired under President George W. Bush has only intensified in recent months. While most of that perception stems from Obama’s preoccupation with Afghanistan and Pakistan, there are those in India who believe that Obama singularly lacks the effusiveness of his predecessor. And hence the importance of Obama attending the reception in honor of Krishna, who under a tight-assed diplomatic protocol would not qualify for an august presidential presence.
All of this is ridiculous of course, but that is how the rarefied world of global diplomacy functions. It is a world where everybody stands on ceremony even as they look for that elusive personal touch. As a democracy of a billion plus people, not to mention one of the greatest civilizations unbroken for over 5,000 years, it is unbecoming for India to look for vindication and reassurance from any country, including the United States. Admittedly, perceptions such as this one that holds that Obama is cold towards India unlike Bush, are largely a media creation which acquire a life and legitimacy of their own. Hence even a simple gesture like the one Obama is making to Krishna, evidently to scotch the very perception, the very media reads deeper meanings into it.
Great civilizations ought to be greater than the sum of the people whom make them and free from their frailties and needs.