“Ultimately, the question of where politics and the question of democratic institutions go in India is going to be determined within India by Indians. It’s not going to be determined by the United States,” a White House official said.
A file photo of Narendra Modi and Joe Biden. Photo: The White House, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
New Delhi: Amidst calls from United States lawmakers to raise human rights issues and democratic backsliding in India with Prime Minister Narendra Modi, the White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan told the media on Wednesday, June 21, that US President Joe Biden “will not lecture” Modi on the subject.
“Ultimately, the question of where politics and the question of democratic institutions go in India is going to be determined within India by Indians. It’s not going to be determined by the United States,” Sullivan said, according to the news agency Reuters.
President Biden is under pressure from his fellow Democrats to bring up human rights with Modi.
In a letter, 75 Democrats elected to either house of the US Congress had said, “As longtime supporters of a strong US-India relationship, we also believe that friends can and should discuss their differences in an honest and forthright way. That is why we respectfully request that — in addition to the many areas of shared interests between India and the US — you also raise directly with Prime Minister Modi areas of concern.” The legislators are led by Senator Chris Van Hollen and Representative Pramila Jayapal.
The lawmakers noted that US President Biden had made “made respect for human rights, press freedom, religious freedom, and pluralism core tenets of American foreign policy”. “In order to advance these values with credibility on the world stage, we must apply them equally to friend and foe alike, just as we work to apply these same principles here in the United States,” the letter said.
“From his record as the chief minister of Gujarat, where he incited deadly riots against Muslims, to his actions as Prime Minister, which include jailing protesters, censoring journalists, and seeking to erase religious minorities from the civic and cultural fabric of India, Modi is reshaping the nation from a secular democracy into a rightwing Hindu nationalist state,” the statement further added.
Although Modi had already been to the US as prime minister five times since 2014, this is his first state visit to the US. A number of rights groups in the US have called on the Biden government to raise the deteriorating human rights situation in India under Modi.