[The Print] President Donald Trump’s visit to India marks the culmination of the process of transforming India’s relations with the United States into what then-President Barack Obama described as ‘the defining partnership of the twenty-first century.’
The process began two decades ago, but it needed the latest ‘love fest’, as some described the Trump trip, to overcome several psychological barriers created by earlier encounters.
India’s adulation for Trump in February 2020 was in stark contrast with the reservations encountered during the December 1959 journey of Dwight Eisenhower, the first US president to visit the subcontinent officially.
THE EISENHOWER VISIT
Although hundreds of thousands of Indians turned out for Eisenhower’s public address in the Ramlila Maidan in Delhi, India was less than enthused by then-burgeoning US alliance with Pakistan.
Eisenhower travelled to Pakistan, Afghanistan, and India though he wrote in his memoirs that India was the magnet that drew him to the region.
At that time, India’s ties with China had begun to deteriorate, and nonalignment notwithstanding, India had worked with the Americans to support the Tibetan revolt led by the Dalai Lama’s supporters.
By visiting both countries on the same trip, Eisenhower sought to build bridges between India and Pakistan. He hoped that he could persuade both countries to become America’s partners in containing communism. |