NEW DELHI—It’s a friendship between two powerful men that transcends politics, transcends diplomacy.
It certainly looked like genuine affection when Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi pulled President Barack Obama into a bear hug as he stepped off Air Force One last year. An intimacy seemed to envelope the two as they sat in the garden of an old royal palace, smiling and chatting.
There are the gushing comments: Modi “transcends the ancient and the modern,” Obama wrote in Time magazine. “Barack and I have formed a bond, a friendship,” Modi said.
It’s a friendship that will almost certainly be on display when Modi arrives Tuesday at the White House for his seventh meeting with the U.S. president.
Except, well, maybe they aren’t actually friends.
“It’s politics. It’s pure politics,” said Mihir Sharma, a writer and editor with the Business Standard newspaper and a longtime follower of Modi’s career.
It’s a refrain heard repeatedly among India’s political analysts, who see calculation instead of genuine affection, with an Indian leader carefully shaping the country’s political narrative by putting himself at the center of any diplomatic achievement.
Foreign leaders have willingly played along, appearing with the prime minister in choreographed private moments, whether it’s Modi taking a selfie in Shanghai with Chinese Premier Le Keqiang or pouring tea for Obama in New Delhi.
“The Americans have realized that one of the ways that you can get something out of Mr. Modi is to emphasize his personal charm,” said Sharma. “It’s in the interests of pretty much every country he visits to stress the warmth of the personal relationship between their leader and the Indian prime minister.”
