When Barack Obama heads to India this weekend to meet Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, he will be both the first U.S. president to attend as Chief Guest and the first U.S. president to visit India twice during his term of office.
But despite Obama’s warm rhetoric and talk of U.S.-India ties being a “defining partnership of the 21st century,” the man of the hour when I was visiting India last month was a different world leader: Vladimir Putin.
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Most Indians, and a large number of Americans, were not even alive when the Soviet Union and India were the best of friends — an era the United States and India should be working to put behind them by looking to a future in which U.S. and Indian school children will recognize their respective nations as best friends.
For this to happen, the U.S. and India must act accordingly.
