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'Our goal is to leave this relationship in a fundamentally different place than it was when President Obama took office and when Prime Minister Modi took office and we believe that we have a unique moment of opportunity to have that kind of breakthrough.'
Aziz Haniffa/Rediff.com reports from Washington, DC.
United States President Barack Obama was pleasantly surprised at Prime Minister Narendra Modi's unprecedented gesture of inviting him as the chief guest for India's Republic Day celebration -- an honour never extended to any US leader -- according to senior White House officials previewing Obama's visit.
In a teleconference with journalists, Benjamin J Rhodes, Deputy National Security Adviser for Strategic Communications, acknowledged, "It took us by some surprise."
While "there is great affinity between the United States and India, and our people," Rhodes said, "there is also a history that is complicated and that would have made it seem highly unlikely that the US President would be sitting with India's leaders at their Republic Day ceremonies as chief guest."
"So, President Obama was personally honoured to receive that invitation," Rhodes said. "He saw it as building on a successful summit with Prime Minister Modi (in September 2014 in Washington, DC) and I think he sees this potentially as a transitional if not a transformational moment for the relationship."
This was "a very strong and clear indication from India's leadership that they want to elevate our bilateral cooperation and our global cooperation," the White House official added.
"The president signalled this priority when he took office and he did a lot of good work with prime minister (Dr Manmohan) Singh and now, this invitation has great symbolic importance and a lot of these events symbolically are very important to the Indian people," Rhodes said, adding, "but also sets the table for deepened bilateral and people to people ties."
Phil Reiner, Senior Director at the National Security Council for South Asia, spoke of how "first and foremost the excitement on our side when we first received the invitation was palpable."
This, he added, was reinforced by the "excitement that we also had the opportunity to come and elevate the nature of this strategic partnership."
"This is a day that is incredibly important not just to the Government of India, but to the people of India, and this is a day in which they celebrate their Constitution -- the founding document of their democracy," Reiner explained.
"Again, which we are very excited to be a part of, to help them celebrate something we actually take great pride in our own Fourth of July ceremonies," he added.
"So, we are very much looking forward to not only participating in the working engagements, but also the pageantry as the well deserved celebration that the Indian people engage in a day like Republic Day."
"This is enormously important for the Indian people and for President Obama to be invited as the first US president to attend as the chief guest, sends a very important message to the world as well as to the American and Indian people about our commitment to embrace the potential of this relationship," Rhodes said.
"hat we want to do is turn that potential into concrete benefits for our people, and so this trip, comes at a time when we have a growing agenda with India and a lot of what the president wants to get done over the next two years will interact greatly from closer cooperation with India," he added in his opening remarks.
"Our goal is to leave this relationship in a fundamentally different place than it was when President Obama took office and when Prime Minister Modi took office," Rhodes said, adding, "and we believe that we have a unique moment of opportunity to have that kind of breakthrough."
"It goes without saying that it is a seminal moment for the bilateral relationship," Reiner said, "and that the extension of this invitation by the prime minister continues to set a different tone for our reinvigorated partnership."
"This is both a trip aimed at achieving specific objectives," Rhodes asserted, "but also an investment in the relationship."
"There is not a habit ingrained in the US-Indian systems to the extent that there should be and so, in addition to what we can accomplish on this trip," he said, "we also want to set the stage for the United States and India to cooperate further in these areas of climate, clean energy, trade, defence, counter-terrorism over the next couple of years."
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Image: National Cadet Corps during a rehearsal for the Republic Day parade on a winter morning in New Delhi.