(Ashok Malik is a columnist and writer living in Delhi)
Few world leaders are such gripping communicators and have as advanced a masterly ability to exploit every possible media and public moment as Barack Obama and Narendra Modi.
The two men are different in many ways. Obama is a studious, professorial sort. If he hadn't been in politics, he may still have been in a university, teaching Law. Modi is much more demonstrative, the 24/7 politician who was educated as he went along, a case study in experiential learning.
Yet, the two have much in common as well. Both perceive themselves as removed from traditional elites and power establishments in their capital cities. Both won elections (Obama in 2008, Modi six years later) positioning themselves as outsiders who would fix a rotten, incestuous capital city and rescue a broken economy.
Modi used his underprivileged background to devastating impact during the campaign and his biography as a tea vendor's son became a badge of honour. On January 27, at his Town Hall address in New Delhi, Obama not only referred to Modi's childhood but spoke of his (Obama's) grandfather having worked as an ordinary army cook, and of racial prejudice that people of his colour sometimes still face in America.
Yet, like Modi, there was no victimhood or defensiveness to such references. Rather, Obama sought to talk up his audience, painting a happy picture of a "defining partnership" in the 21st century between two democracies committed to "fundamental freedoms". In his crisp and yet expansive address, he brought in a variety of subjects - climate change, terrorism, diversity, social discrimination, religious liberties, economic hope, jobs and aspirations, defence and security challenges.
Each of the names he mentioned - Swami Vivekananda, "who brought Hinduism and yoga" to America, Mahatma Gandhi, who inspired Martin Luther King Jr, Mary Kom, Shah Rukh Khan, Kailash Satyarthi, Milkha Singh, Mary Kom - was telling of the diversity and richness that makes India so special. In a sense, Obama was seeking to convey that it was this multiplicity of India that made it a democratic miracle. To constitute this unexceptionable comment, this cautionary homily to a nation and a society that has by and large retained its equanimity in a region torn apart by religious and sectarian violence, as a rebuke to Narendra Modi and his government is ridiculous. Visiting presidents are not as unsubtle, undiplomatic and as abusive of hospitality as professional BJP baiters who use every platform and every television studio to chant their favoured propaganda.
As a performer, Obama was mesmerising. Whatever one may say about his years in the White House, he is one of the seriously gifted political communicators of our time.
On Tuesday morning, Obama freed himself from the shackles of protocol and came into his own. He was what he was first noticed for - talking to ordinary people as if he were addressing each one in the crowd individually. Over the past two days, he had played second fiddle to Modi right from the airport, where his dark suit was outshone by Modi's telegenic orange shawl.
Perhaps this was to be expected. Obama was the guest, and Modi was the host and star batting on his home turf. It was his first Republic Day as Prime Minister; Obama was only the chief guest. Nothing could rain on Modi's parade, not even rain itself.
Obama is a quiet, reserved man. He came in as a transactional president, without too much of a grand strategy. Even so, he has made a huge effort with both his visits to India. In 2010, he came to a country that he thought was destined for great things and for a longer economic boom. He reached out to India, promised to help it become a member of everything from the United Nations Security Council to the Nuclear Suppliers' Group. Of course, he was betting on an Indian economic growth that would also benefit American companies and job creation.
India let him and itself down. It used the very moment to reverse its economic course. Financial year 2010-11 ended an eight-year run that saw an average of 8.3 per cent GDP growth per year. In 2010, Obama was enthusiastic, but Manmohan Singh, the Indian Prime Minister, was tiring and ageing, his political capital having run out.
This visit has been a contrast. Obama is ending a two-term presidency and looking to a post-presidency that is never easy to define or adjust to. He is tired and as he told his Sir Fort Auditorium audience on January 27, has more grey hair than when he started. In New Delhi, he renewed some of his pledges of 2010, in the last-chance optimism that India finally has a leader, a government and a popular mandate to deliver on the bets the America of the early 2000s made. On the other hand, Modi was clearly the more energetic interlocutor in the past three days. He is at the beginning of his term and hoping to lay the foundations of his legacy.
That is why this meeting of two quality communicators - one the most left-wing of recent US Presidents, the other the most right-wing of Indian Prime Ministers - was so compelling. It wasn't quite what Kipling had in mind, but made for a unique Ballad of East and West.
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