U.S. President Joe Biden and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi hold a meeting during the Quad Leaders Summit at Kantei in Tokyo, May 24, 2022. (Photo by SAUL LOEB / AFP) (Photo by SAUL LOEB/AFP via Getty Images)

While Americans and Indians share strategic and economic interests, and both value democracy, the two hold diverging values and perceptions on important issues, writes Hudson Distinguished Fellow Walter Russell Mead. His latest column in The Wall Street Journal provides insight into areas of friction, and warns that both sides must tread lightly to avoid derailing the U.S.-India partnership at this critical time.

Key Insights

1. Hindu-Nationalist Foreign Policy Resents Western Arrogance

Nationalist India wants to increase and develop Indian power, not submerge Indian sovereignty in Western-designed international institutions. The more that American Wilsonians talk about a values-based international order, the more that Indians worry about Western arrogance. As a result, many Indians want a strong Russia and, within limits, a strong China precisely to help guard against the kind of world order President Biden and many of his advisers want to build. Therefore, India does not see Russia’s attack on Ukraine as a threat to world order, and Indians resent the West’s attempt to rally global support for what many see as a largely Western problem in Ukraine.

2. The Hindu Nationalist Movement’s Domestic Agenda Threatens Religious Minorities

Seeking to put Hindu civilization back at the center of Indian cultural and political life, nationalists want the government to defend India’s Hindu civilization and culture from Islam, Christianity, and Western secular liberalism. Tough restrictions on the ability of foreign organizations to fund civil-society groups in India threaten to disrupt the activities of American charities ranging from the Ford Foundation to the Catholic Church. American human-rights groups have responded to these developments with increasing concern, and last week Secretary of State Antony Blinken named India as a country “where religious freedom and the rights of religious minorities are under threat.”

3. Indians and Americans Need to Deepen Ties to Avert Derailment

These conflicts aren’t going away and will likely get worse over time, and statements like Secretary Blinken’s do more to trigger anticolonial and anti-Western sentiments than to relieve minority communities. However, building deeper ties between the two societies will help maintain this critical relationship, as will quiet, low-key conversations aimed at preventing blowups before they occur. Both sides need this relationship, and both need to focus on making it work.

Quotes may be edited for clarity and length. 

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