The Centre for Social and Economic Progress hosted a Flagship Seminar with Meenakshi Ahamed, on her new book, “A Matter of Trust: India-US Relations from Truman to Trump.”

Often described as indispensable and strategic partners today, we often forget the long and rocky road that India and the United States (US) travelled to reach the current moment of convergence. In A Matter of Trust, Meenakshi Ahamed reveals the personal prejudices and insecurities of American and Indian leaders, and the political imperatives that so often cast a shadow over their relationship, from President Truman and Prime Minister Nehru to President Trump and Prime Minister Modi.

Drawing on a unique trove of presidential papers, newly declassified documents, memoirs and interviews with officials on both sides, this book offers an illuminating account of the US-India relationship that has far-reaching implications for the changing global political landscape. This seminar will assess the past trajectory of US-India relations and also examine their current state and future potential, as well as possible challenges under the new Biden administration: will India and the United States further deepen their economic and security cooperation based on shared values, from trade and technology to China and the Indo-Pacific?

About the Author:

Meenakshi Narula Ahamed has had a varied career as a journalist and, prior to that, as a development consultant. She has worked at the World Bank in Washington D.C. as well as for the Ashoka Society. In 1989, she moved to London and became the foreign correspondent for NDTV. Among the leaders she interviewed were Nelson Mandela, John Major and Bill Clinton during his presidential campaign. She covered the race riots in London and reported on the rise of Indian entrepreneurs in the US in the mid-nineties. After returning to the US in 1996, she worked as a freelance journalist with articles published in Asian Age, Seminar, Foreign Policy, Wall Street Journal and the Washington Post. She has served on the board of Doctors Without Borders, The Turquoise Mountain Foundation and Drugs for Neglected Diseases.

Discussants:

Alyssa Ayres is Dean of the Elliott School of International Affairs at George Washington University. She is an award-winning author with senior experience in the government, non-profit, and private sectors. Previously, she was Senior Fellow for India, Pakistan, and South Asia at the Council on Foreign Relations, where she remains an adjunct senior fellow. Her work focuses primarily on India’s role in the world and on US relations with South Asia in the larger Indo-Pacific. She recently published her book on India’s rise on the world stage, titled Our Time Has Come: How India is Making Its Place in the World (2018). She served as Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for South Asia from 2010 to 2013.

Shivshankar Menon is a Distinguished Fellow at CSEP and Visiting Professor at Ashoka University. Previously, he served as the National Security Advisor to the Prime Minister of India (2010-2014) and as Foreign Secretary of India (2006 – 2009) Currently, he is Chairman of the Advisory Board of the Institute of Chinese Studies. He is the author of Choices: Inside the Making of Indian Foreign Policy (2016) and his forthcoming book, India and Asian Geopolitics; The Past, Present is likely to be out this year.

Navtej Sarna is a former Indian diplomat, who served as Ambassador to the United States from 2016 to 2018. His long career in the Indian Foreign Services spans almost four decades, including as Spokesperson in the Ministry of External Affairs, Ambassador to Israel, High Commissioner to the United Kingdom, and Secretary to the Government of India. He is a notable author and columnist. He has published various works of non-fiction and has a monthly column on foreign policy in The Week magazine. An independent member of the National Broadcasting Standards Authority, he also advises the upcoming Kautilya School of Public Policy and is a member of the Governing Council of the Shriram College of Commerce, Delhi University.

Moderator: Constantino Xavier is a Fellow in Foreign Policy and Security Studies at CSEP, where he leads the Sambandh Initiative on Regional Connectivity, and a Non-resident Fellow with the Foreign Policy program at the Brookings Institution. He holds a Ph.D. in South Asian Studies from the Johns Hopkins University and his research has been published in various journals and books, including Asia Policy, the Oxford Handbook on Indian Foreign Policy, and the Routledge Handbook of China-India Relations.

All content reflects the individual views of the speakers. The Centre for Social and Economic Progress (CSEP) does not hold an institutional view on any subject.