Obama, Singh personal bond, rapport will take India-US ties forward: NYT

New Delhi, Nov.9 (ANI): The long and complicated relationship between the United States and India has veered from warm embrace long before independence to the uneasy frostbite of the Cold War to the reconciliation of recent years, built on shared democratic and multicultural values and a desire to balance the influence of a rising China.

Experts say that even as broad historical forces have shaped the relationship, a personal bond appears to be forming between the leaders of the world's two largest democracies, Barack Obama and Dr. Manmohan Singh.

Both, according to the New York Times, have developed an easy rapport in their numerous international meetings and have now thrown state dinners for each other on reciprocal visits.

Obama has called Singh his guru, and Singh has called Obama "a personal friend and a charismatic leader who has made a deep imprint on world affairs."

"The personal equation is very important," the NYT quoted India's former envoy to the United States Ronen Sen, as saying.

Lalit Mansingh, another Indian envoy to Washington said: "In the height of the cold war, because of personal chemistry, India and the United States managed to create a thaw in their frozen relations."

Sunanda K. Datta-Ray, an Indian journalist who has written a book about relations between the United States and India, said he, too, was surprised by the rapport between the two men and had asked Dr. Singh about it.

According to the NYT, Obama and Singh have found common ground and both are better at the intricacies of policy than at the glad-handing of politics.

Both enjoy adulation on the global stage that seems to have eluded them at home.

Obama has called the relationship between India and the United States "the defining partnership of the 21st century, but the relationship between the two men has evolved into something of a friendship as well. (ANI)