In the weeks and days leading up to Narendra Modi’s state visit to Washington this week, US officials have been outdoing one another with words of adulation that have delighted the Indian leader’s supporters and made his critics cringe. “He is the most popular world leader for a reason,” commerce secretary Gina Raimondo said at an India House event in Washington in April, wearing a green and yellow sari and gesturing expansively. “He is unbelievable, visionary, and his level of commitment to the people of India is just indescribable.”
Eric Garcetti, the US ambassador who arrived in New Delhi last month, has called Modi India’s “guru-ji” and Ajit Doval, the prime minister’s hard-boiled national security adviser, “not only a national treasure but an international treasure”.
Local media reported that at a Quad meeting on the sidelines of last month’s G7 summit in Hiroshima, President Joe Biden told Modi that he was running out of tickets for next Thursday’s state banquet at the White House because the Indian leader is “too popular”.