I write to convey my extreme disappointment at the decision for US ambassador to
India, Nancy Powell, to meet officially with Narendra Modi this past Thursday,
on Mr Modi's home turf of Gandhinagar.

As you know, Mr Modi has since 2005 been denied a visa to enter the United
States, having been under a cloud of suspicion for direct or indirect
involvement in inciting the 2002 Hindu anti-Muslim riots in Gujarat.
Although accusation and circumstance do not establish active complicity,
what is clear is that Mr Modi was at the very least passively complicit in
failing to lend his influential voice to help stop the violence.

As you also know, Mr Modi's right-wing nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party is
about to contest a national election which will determine control of Parliament.
Elections in India are decided by a poorly educated electorate highly
susceptible to demagogic rhetoric and imagery.  The publicity that has
surrounded Mr Modi's meeting with Ms Powell has lent him legitimacy, and
therefore votes.  In this way, the United States has influenced the outcome
of what ought to be a purely internal Indian election.  It would have been
all very well to have met with Mr Modi and engaged with him if and when he
were to become prime minister -- but this attempt to prepare and to hedge
against such an outcome actually has rendered that outcome more likely.

The inescapable conjecture, therefore, is that American business interests
perhaps wanted exactly this effect, and the American Department of State
obliged.  If this conjecture is true then the American agreement to meet
Mr Modi is a shameful prioritisation of the United States' trade interests
over its democratic ideals of liberty and equality.  If the conjecture is
false, then the meeting is merely foolish and ill-considered.  Either way,
the meeting was a terrible idea and out of step with the policy that has
excluded Mr Modi from the United States.