Updated: November 19, 2020 7:15:53 am
Joe Biden called Prime Minister Modi on Tuesday night.
During his telephone conversation with Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Tuesday night, United States President-elect Joe Biden spoke about “strengthening democracy at home and abroad,” words that are seen to implicitly refer to the current situation in India and in various other parts of the world.
While the Biden-Harris transition team’s reading of the phone call said that Biden raised the issues of “strengthening democracy at home and abroad,” the Indian government statement said that “Modi warmly congratulated the president-elect. Biden for his election, describing it as a testament to the strength and resilience of democratic traditions in the United States. “
The mention of America’s “democratic traditions” is an indirect reference to the electoral process in the United States, where President Donald Trump has so far refused to budge.
The difference of emphasis, where the president-elect makes a reference to democracy abroad, and not just in the US, while the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MEA) does not mention that part of the conversation at all, acquires importance in the context of Biden’s campaign highlighting “shared democratic values: free and fair elections, equality before the law, and freedom of speech and religion.”
“These fundamental principles have endured throughout the history of each of our nations and will continue to be the source of our strength in the future,” said Biden’s campaign document.
Read | MEA statement omits reference to ‘democracy abroad’
A former Indian member in the Obama-Biden administration, who has been working with the Biden campaign and now with the transition team, told The Indian Express: “The focus of the Biden campaign has been quite clear: that the world’s two oldest and largest democracies have to live by example. “
During the campaign, Biden had expressed his “disappointment” with the implementation of the National Citizens Registry (NRC) in Assam and the passage of the Citizenship (Amendment) Act into law, and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris (when she ran for the Democratic presidential nomination) had said “we are watching,” and “part of the values of who we are as a nation is that we speak out about human rights abuses and, when appropriate, intervene.”
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Yet the South Block feels that the world has changed in the last two decades, and that the US administration has also “evolved” under Trump, and that Washington realizes that New Delhi does not like to be preached. nor that they criticize him.
Indian government sources also noted that the Biden administration, which will take office in January 2021, will also find an India and geopolitical situation very different from that of January 2017, when the Obama-Biden administration left office. With an aggressive and ascending China, Washington needs New Delhi in its corner.
Biden’s focus on “democracy abroad” would also include China.
In that context, New Delhi is relieved that China “is not blameless”, and Prime Minister Modi and President-elect Biden spoke about cooperation in the Indo-Pacific. The problems of the Covid-19 pandemic, vaccines and the global economic recovery, all of which have strong Chinese overtones, also appeared in the phone conversation between the two leaders.
During the phone conversation, Modi referred to his two previous meetings with Biden in 2014 and 2016. Diplomats said it was a “very warm conversation.”
The MEA said: “The Prime Minister warmly recalled his previous interactions with Joseph R Biden, including during his official visits to the United States in 2014 and 2016. Biden had chaired the Joint Session of the United States Congress which was chaired by the Prime Minister during his 2016 visit ”.
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