Its the US definition of renegades!

Raju Korti

PM Modi: Sketch courtesy my DNA friend Bhagvan Das.

So the man whose office is routinely advertised as the "most prestigious and powerful in the world" was clueless about the storm over the visa ban on Narendra Modi until April this year.
It now transpires, if reports are to be believed, that President Barack Obama had "apparently" no inkling whatsoever that Modi, who expectedly strode to power, was at the center of a raging controversy.
The President "apparently" caught on to the riot act only after several United States lawmakers, on the urging of their Indian-American constituents, over the past few years were writing to then secretary of state Hillary Clinton and her successor John F Kerry, calling on the US State Department to lift the visa ban on the then Gujarat chief minister, while other groups like the Coalition against Genocide convinced yet another group of lawmakers to pressure the State Department not to acquiesce to this request.
If you understand the penchant of the American administration to sauté diplomacy with PR, you will also get the import (!) of its official communiques declaring "US and India as world's greatest democracies." The only hitch in such an unequivocal assertion is a reality check.
To begin with, its is absurd to believe that Obama didn't know or wasn't apprised about a leader who on either sides of the Indian spectrum was either hero-worshipped or rabidly vilified. Surely, the American administration with all its purported intelligence -- in its own country and elsewhere in the world -- knew that a certain Mr Modi was on the verge of tipping scales.
According to reports, some long-time Indian-American fundraisers and major contributors to Obama's presidential campaigns and the Democratic Party met with Obama at a small fundraiser of a select few well-heeled donors. When they brought up Modi's visa ban with Obama and told him that Modi was more than likely to be India's next prime minister and that the controversy would be anathema to a defining partnership with India as he had always professed, Obama had said he had no idea about this visa ban. Even at that juncture, there is  fair ground to believe that the American administration was probably playing the 'wait and watch' game, wanting to see how events unfolded after the Indian elections. The tide changed only after Modi was elected with a thumping margin and it became clear to Washington that despite the former's "tainted Godhra record" it just could not afford to blank him out.
Obama's ignorance of the issue is a classic case of right hand not knowing what the left was up to. That the State Department and the Presidential office were not plugged into each other is incredible and untenable given that the US is as much tuned in to events outside its country all the time. In fact, there is every reason to believe that Obama didn't want to ruffle feathers before Modi arrived on his big moment for the only plausible explanation that it would have been tantamount to interference in India's democratic process.
The stink raised by the visa ban turned out to be worse than what the Americans anticipated. All the right noises that the presidential office sought to make, including extending an invitation to Modi for a meeting in the White House reduced the angst that built up, but only just. To make matters worse, a Congressional hearing on the issue seemed bent on putting the blame in the State Department's basket. The problem had compounded more so because the same ruse had been handed out while denying visa to Modi sometime in 2006 when the man was confronted by "liberal and leftists" from his own country.
The angst was brushed under the carpet on the perceived understanding that if Modi had been denied permission to visit US, it was on the basis of what the situation obtained then and America's policy on the issue before the country's highest court gave him (Modi) a clean chit.
The most surprising dimension to the story is the Coalition against Genocide, a ragtag bunch of leftists and liberals from 40 outfits based in US and Canada. It is interesting to note that the only cause that this organization espouses is that of Godhra when human rights are being blatantly trampled elsewhere in the world. Even if one concedes its right to be wedded to a cause of their choice, it is befuddling that the State Department chose to be led on by the protest of an outfit whose own credentials were under cloud.
If diplomacy and make-shift compulsions demanded that peace had to be made with a dispensation dominated by extreme right-wingers, the American administration could have always exercised a more practical approach in being non committal right through rather than being made to run for cover the way it had to.
When good intentions are not backed up by suitable action, theatrics is all that happens. The face-saving tactics on the grant of visa to Modi is a PR disaster. In the past, Americans have not given a very exemplary account of themselves, shaking hands with despots like Pol Pot in Cambodia and Gen Pinochet in Chile whose record in human right violations makes Modi a pygmy in comparison, and when I say this, I do not hold any brief for Modi in case there is an attempt to perceive me as his sympathizer. To the Americans, South East Asia is a gainful employment and if you zeroed in on that, you understand their proclivities as well. Modi isn't the first and he won't be the last either.