FORGING TRUST WITH INDIA

FORGING TRUST WITH

INDIA
The Dramatic Story of Achieving the
US-­India Civil Nuclear Agreement

David C. Mulford

H O OV ER I N S T I T U T I O N P R ES S
Stanford University | Stanford, California
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Reproduced from Packing for India: A Life of Action in Global Finance

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Contents

Preface vii
1 Writing a New History with India 1

2 ­Going the Distance 59

About the Author 107

Preface

The US-­India civil nuclear initiative, launched in July 2005 during

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s state visit to Washington, marked
a pivotal moment in diplomatic relations between the United States
and India. The initiative was a complex and controversial undertaking,
requiring years of focused effort, patience, and faith.
During the years it took to reach a deal between the United States
and India, our countries forged a lasting bond and trust for a new era,
and we learned how to approach and accomplish difficult and g­ reat
­things together on the world stage. Its accomplishment in 2008 was
historic and stands as the cornerstone of modern US-­India relations
as we advance into the twenty-­first ­century. The significance of this
agreement in shaping the trajectory of US-­India relations cannot be
overstated.
The publication of the two chapters of my book Packing for India:
A Life of Action in Global Finance and Diplomacy provides a definitive
personal account of the negotiation of the US-­India Civil Nuclear
Agreement over the period 2005–2008.1 This account of negotiating a

1. ​David Mulford, Packing for India: A Life of Action in Global Finance and
Diplomacy (Lincoln, NE: Potomac Books, 2014), https://­www​.­nebraskapress​.­unl​
.­edu​/­potomac​-­books​/­9781612347158/

vii
viii Preface

transformative US-­India treaty that forms the foundation of relations

between two ­great power democracies ­today is vital to understanding
the f­ uture evolution of the twenty-­first ­century.
In early 2005, the United States took the initiative by expressing
its willingness to engage with India to establish India’s access to the
world of civil nuclear commerce and technology, from which India
had been isolated since 1974 by its unwillingness to sign the Nuclear
Non-­Proliferation Treaty of 1974 and the development of its own
strategic nuclear weapon.
This signaled the beginning of the personal leadership of President
George W. Bush and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. This was
followed by support for India in the US Congress, the International
Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), and major countries worldwide as a
country that could be trusted to observe the rules of nuclear nonpro-
liferation and possess access to the civil nuclear technology so vital to
its ­future economic development.
This signal of trust in India and recognition of its global impor-
tance transformed the US-­India relationship and set the stage for the
challenges that lay ahead. Each phase of a negotiated change was ac-
complished step by step in the US Congress, including by the amend-
ment of the US Atomic Energy Act of 1954, the endorsement of
wide-­ranging changes by the IAEA, and the ­acceptance of India’s
possession of civil nuclear technology by the unan­i­mous consensus of
the forty-­five-­nation Nuclear Suppliers Group.
India is rapidly emerging as a world power. Its population of
1.4 billion has passed that of China. The average age of India’s popu-
lation is ten years youn­ger than China’s. India, which continues to
achieve above-­average annual growth, now has a clear path to becom-
ing the world’s number three economy by 2030.
As a trusted partner and an internationally recognized responsible
nuclear power, India secured access to advanced nuclear technologies,
scientific expertise, and collaboration between scientists and research-
ers. While the initial focus was nuclear collaboration, it has resulted in
greater access to technology and advanced equipment across a number
 Preface ix

of sciences, technologies, and industries, including defense, space, and

manufacturing.
India secured access to a ­future of energy security through nuclear
power, which w ­ ill be essential to its economic development while pro-
tecting the environment. Nuclear energy ­will take billions of dollars
and ­decades to develop. However, the Indians are committed to the
potential of having a diverse energy mix that includes renewables, fos-
sil fuels, and nuclear energy.
The world’s oldest democracy and its largest democracy are joined
by wide-­ ranging social, cultural, and economic interests reaching
back in time, and ­today share a key strategic, ­political, and economic
partnership.
India has a rich and remarkable history. Its strategically impor­
tant position in Central/Southeast Asia has always been a historic
real­ity. India’s ­independence in 1947 a­ fter more than three hundred
years of colonial domination marked the beginning of its modern
transformation.
India’s opportunity to fulfill its global destiny and its stunning eco-
nomic rise, partly ­because of its access to the world of nuclear technol-
ogy, are helping India build a globally competitive economic foundation
for its rise to world power and influence.
The growth and size of India’s economy ­will require massive energy
supplies. This was already known in 2005, when the civil nuclear deal
was announced. One outcome of the deal was to give India the ­legal
ability to draw on civil nuclear technology to answer the burgeoning
demands to modernize and for its p ­ eople to prosper.
While India and the United States have not realized their full po-
tential in partnering on the commercialization of nuclear energy ­after
fifteen years, they have become major trading partners across almost
­every sector, with the United States becoming India’s largest trading
partner, at nearly $130 billion in 2023, growing from around $25 bil-
lion in 2007. Defense trade alone ­rose from near zero when I arrived
to be US ambassador to India in 2005 to over $20 billion in 2020,
highlighting the defense cooperation between the two countries. This
x Preface

is just scratching the surface of the transformation in both the eco-

nomic and p ­ olitical relationships resulting from the deal.
Fi­nally, we should remember India’s neighbor to the north, China.
While the civil nuclear deal was indeed about partnering with India on
their energy needs, strategically it set the two countries on a path t­ oward
strategic cooperation in the Indo-­Pacific, across several industries—­
including defense—­enabling our two countries to work together to off-
set rising Chinese power and maintain shared and balanced power in
the region.

* * *

I wish to express my appreciation to the Hoover Institution ’s Huntington

Program on Strengthening US-India Relations and the Hoover Press
for recognizing that t­ hese two chapters are the definitive account from
an insider of what was required for the United States and India to
achieve this landmark agreement. I also wish to express my apprecia-
tion to the University of Nebraska Press for allowing t­ hese two chap-
ters to be republished by the Hoover Institution.
I have described my highly diverse life’s work and experiences in
my book Packing for India, and readers may be interested in learning
more about my previous experiences. I was in Saudi Arabia during the
1970s and early ’80s, investing early historic oil revenues. I spent nine
years at the US ­Treasury in the 1980s and ’90s as under secretary for
international affairs and US G-7 deputy, dealing with international
economic and monetary issues and crises such as restructuring Latin
American debt and maintaining financial stability during the dissolu-
tion of the Soviet U­ nion. And in the 1960s, I documented the rise of
democracy and ­independence in Zambia while completing my doctor
of philosophy degree at Oxford University.
My book also includes my global experiences with my wife, Jeannie,
and her leadership in advocating for cancer awareness in India.
1
Writing a New History with India

­ ere are times when one has to be completely honest with oneself.
Th
How often have we heard some public figure overdramatize a new ap-
pointment or opportunity with the words, “Every­thing I have done and
experienced in my life up to now has prepared me for this moment.”
Outbursts like this have always struck me as excessive and prob­ably
inaccurate. The truth, however, is that when I became US ambassador
to India in January 2004, that very thought took shape in my own con-
sciousness. Fortunately, I made no statement except to my wife, Jeannie,
who had herself come to the same conclusion. In fact, she went further,
saying “You must write a book about your unique life, and I already have
the title: ‘Packing for India.’”
No doubt India was poised to emerge as a ­great nation. When I
was approached in the summer of 2003 about serving as US ambas-
sador to India, I was sure of India’s rise. The surprise turned out to
be that it happened so quickly and dramatically in the succeeding
years. President George W. Bush’s appraisal was right on the mark:
one-­sixth of humanity, over one billion ­people, living peacefully in a
successful democracy. This has to be impor­tant for the United States.
Secretary Colin Powell called on a Saturday after­noon in June 2003
to ask on behalf of President Bush if I would be willing to serve

1
2 Chapter 1

as US ambassador to India. I had been outside vacuuming the car

when Jeannie rushed out, shouting, “Turn off the vacuum, the secre-
tary of state is calling!” Jeannie listened with alarm to my side of the
conversation:
“I have never thought of being an ambassador before, in fact I’ve
never wanted to be an ambassador.”
“You know, Colin, that I do not have an ambassadorial personality.
I am the less-­flexible ­Treasury type of person, as you know from our
past dealings.”
“If I ­were to be an ambassador the only countries that I would be
interested in are India and China.”
Luckily for me, as Colin put it, it was India the president had in
mind, and he wanted an answer by the following Tuesday morning.
Apparently, the president wanted someone with extensive govern-
ment and business experience, ­because he believed this was what was
needed now in India.
Following the call, Jeannie and I sat at the kitchen ­table and within
the hour had made the easiest big decision in our twenty-­five years
together. We had both visited India in the 1990s on business and as
tourists. We called it the country of kaleidoscopic diversity—­color,
action, confusion, pathos, politeness, convictions, and huge aspira-
tions. India was so much more than a large, exotic land. Indian culture
had occupied the same space of the subcontinent for five thousand
years. It had been conquered and ruled by many dif­fer­ent rulers, but it
had captured its rulers and co-­opted them into its own ethos, remain-
ing t­ oday a country uniquely representative of its cultural and religious
roots.
To me, the modern miracle of India was that in its first fifty years
as an ­independent nation it had overcome the tragedies of partition
and massively destructive communal vio­lence ­after ­independence to
become a lively, secular, multicultural, multireligious, multiracial, multi-
ethnic, multicaste, multilingual, multiregional democracy. India was
diversity personified, but its governance was a settled m ­ atter ­under a
comprehensive, much-­amended constitution. In a world in which the
 Writing a New History with India 3

United States professed to teach democracy to many nations with only

minimal success, in just sixty years India established itself as a g­ reat
functioning democracy. In fact, democracy for India was the means by
which it had created itself, governed itself, and become a ­great nation.
Relations between the United States and India in ­those first fifty
years ­were a very up and down affair. ­There was affection and admiration
between the two democracies but l­ittle in the way of sustained common
interests. India ran a planned economy modeled on the Soviet ­Union,
which was also India’s chief supplier of weapons. India’s economy was
characterized by extensive government intervention, high protective
tariffs, prohibitions against foreign direct investment, and a smothering
bureaucracy inherited along with the ­English language from British
colonial government. This model, essentially an import substitution
economy with heavy government intervention, constrained India’s
growth during its first forty years of i­ndependent nationhood. India’s
growth remained mainly 2–4 ­percent, never exceeding 5 ­percent for any
sustained period, while the population exploded from about three hun-
dred million at the time of ­independence to over one billion ­after the
turn of the c­ entury. India’s agricultural sector, which occupies the ­great
majority of India’s population, seldom grew beyond 2.5 ­percent per year.
Burdened with a rising population and low growth, India generated
massive poverty and most of the ills that go with it.
Among the poorest developing nations, India nominated itself as
the leader of the developing world, head of the movement of osten-
sibly nonaligned states. No won­der that in the 1980s at ­Treasury I
found that India took a contrary position to virtually all international
economic and financial policies of the United States, particularly in-
cluding in the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank,
which remained through the period one of India’s only large sources of
external capital. The same pattern of opposition to the United States
characterized India’s positions in the United Nations.
Two major developments in the early 1990s brought fundamental
change to India and began a ­process that started moving India’s inter-
ests closer to ­those of the United States. One was the tearing down
4 Chapter 1

of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the Soviet empire. The second
was the near-­bankruptcy of India in 1991 that marked the beginning
of India’s reform p ­ rocess and gradual opening to the global economy.
Suddenly, the Soviet economic model had collapsed, not only in the
Soviet ­Union but across the ­whole of Eastern ­Europe. Just as abruptly,
India virtually ran out of foreign exchange and was on the brink of
economic disaster. This was when Prime Minister Manmohan Singh,
then acting as India’s finance minister, instituted India’s emerging eco-
nomic reform program, which gradually pulled India back from the
brink. The implications of the Soviet collapse took more time to filter
through India’s intelligent­sia, but within two to three years India realized
that it was in its interests to seek stronger relations with the world’s
now-­sole superpower.
It is impor­tant to understand the unique nature of the economic
reform ­process in India. Throughout the 1990s India was governed by
a series of multiparty co­ali­tion governments. Therefore, it is fair to say
that since 1991 the vast majority of Indian ­political parties have been
part of a government co­ali­tion that at one time or another engaged in
advancing the p ­ rocess of economic reform. Indian politics can be col-
orful and divisive, but achieving broad consensus on economic transfor-
mation has been a priority in the p ­ olitical ­process. Thus, while reform
in India and its movement ­toward opening to the global economy
has been frustratingly slow (compared, say, with China), reforms once
established have stayed in place. Despite changing governments t­ here
has not been backward movement or major reversals of reforms al-
ready put in place. This, it seems, is a tribute to India’s consensual
approach to change as it put in place during the 1990s the founda-
tions that l­ ater would promote stronger growth. Of course, the outside
world sees India as slow and disor­ga­nized, both accurate assessments
to some extent, but what is not so vis­i­ble is the steady movement for-
ward without major ­political blowups. India conducts reforms gradu-
ally, ­under the ­political radar. Rarely are ­matters brought to a truly
divisive confrontation that results in retaliatory backward movement
or a collapse of the co­ali­tion government.
 Writing a New History with India 5

As the ­decade of the 1990s advanced, US-­India relations improved

and attention was given to modestly reducing the role of government
in India’s economy. India’s version of privatization, known in India
rather strictly as “disinvestment,” visualized the sell down of govern-
ment positions in state-­owned enterprises but nowhere near levels that
might threaten government control. At one point in the mid-1990s,
for example, Credit Suisse First Boston, my investment banking firm,
and Goldman Sachs won the mandate to lead-­manage a share offer-
ing (disinvestment) to the public of 10–15 ­percent of the Indian Oil
Corporation. ­Under subsequent co­ali­tion governments, the stock of-
fering never went forward.
Two exceptions to state control emerged in the 1990s, however,
that over time would have a profound effect on India’s transformation.
One was liberalization in the telecommunications sector, including
new startup opportunities and privatization of government entities.
The second was the unimpeded rise of India’s information technology
sector, which was to show the way forward for an industry outside the
grip of government owner­ship or the excessive reach of government
bureaucracy.
­There was also growing evidence of pro­gress, both on the ­political
and economic fronts, in relations with the United States. My assess-
ment of the reform p ­ rocess in India at that time was that despite its
slow and uneven pro­gress, the reform impulse was genuine and enjoyed
significant p­ olitical support. India had accepted that it could no longer
afford its respectable socialist, slow-­growing, import-­substitution eco-
nomic model.
Once again, two major events intervened near the end of the nine-
ties to set back India’s pro­gress and its improving relations with the
United States. The first was the Asian financial crisis of 1997 and the
second was India’s decision in 1998 to test a nuclear weapon in direct
contravention of the Nuclear Non-­Proliferation Treaty of 1974, which
India had never signed. The currency crisis that washed across Asia in
1997 was a short and destructive wakeup call to the global financial
community, but India, thanks to its tightly regulated financial markets
6 Chapter 1

and its capital and exchange controls, was for the most part protected
from the turbulence of international markets. Liberalization of India’s
financial markets as a part of its further opening to the global economy
was now on the back burner and would remain so for years to come.
The nuclear test of 1998 was also a costly setback to India’s global
opening aspirations. India developed its modest nuclear capacity for
energy and nuclear weapons to defend against its two nuclear-­armed
neighbors, Pakistan and China, but for this India was ostracized world-
wide and punished for its strategic nuclear program. The United States
and most other members of the nuclear suppliers’ group of nations,
signatories to the 1974 treaty, imposed sanctions on India that dis-
rupted India’s economy. The Clinton administration, which had seemed
friendly to India’s overtures for closer relations, suddenly became the
key disruptive influence to India’s economy and its sense of military
security. The fact that India was not a signatory of the 1974 treaty and
had developed its nuclear capacity without inward or outward prolif-
eration counted for nothing. India’s isolation from nuclear commerce
was deepened and fortified, while modest military equipment pur-
chases ­were disrupted with painful and deeply resented implications
for India’s perceived military security.
US sanctions lasted fewer than four years before they ­were lifted by
President Bush ­after the 9/11 attacks. Still, the negative fallout from
sanctions on US-­India relations has been long lasting and even t­ oday
is still only gradually being overcome by US defense suppliers.
Shortly ­after the lifting of US sanctions Pakistani terrorists at-
tacked India’s parliament in a blatant and destructive effort to un-
dermine Indian democracy and ­political stability. Suddenly the world
at large was focused on the terrifying real­ity of two mortal enemies,
sharing a border, armed with nuclear weapons, and inexperienced in
nuclear diplomacy, locked in a high-­stakes confrontation. The poli-
ticians and global investors who might have seen India as a nation
with prospects ­were severely rattled, even a­ fter the zenith of poten-
tial nuclear confrontation had passed. The subcontinent was now seen
as a more dangerous place; at the same time, the near-­miss nuclear
 Writing a New History with India 7

experience seemed to have had a sobering effect on the rhe­toric of

both nations. By 2003, economic growth had picked up in both coun-
tries. This is how ­things stood at the opening of 2003, the year I use
to date the emergence of India’s modern high-­growth economy. In
December 2003 the Senate confirmed my appointment as ambassa-
dor, and I was in New Delhi in early 2004.

* * *

Jeannie and I arrived from London in the ­middle of the night and
­were taken directly to Roo­se­velt H ­ ouse, the official residence and
our new home in India for the next five years. The full staff of eleven
and the residence man­ag­er greeted us with a brief candlelit Hindu
ritual of welcome. Delicious Roo­se­velt ­House soup was served, and as
we waited for our bags to arrive from the airport, we could see out into
the deep, softly lit garden and pool area. The night was deliciously cool
with a pungent haze of fog from the settling coolness and the smoke
of fires in the sleeping dwellings and encampments of road workers
and police strung along the roads of Delhi.
It was Sunday, so we had a day to rest and prepare for the first busi-
ness day at the embassy. Winter mornings in Delhi are invariably hazy
or even shrouded in heavy fog. When we arose, soft, filtered sunlight
filled the garden of large, exotic trees, some covered in bright orange
blooms, and a wide variety of brightly colored flowers. But what struck
us first that day in the garden, and e­ very day for the next five years, w
­ ere
the brilliant green parakeets and other birds that formed what we came
to call the “magic kingdom.”
Stepping directly into a major diplomatic post is not easy, especially
for a ­political appointee who had never before been in an embassy, ex-
cept as a visitor. My arrival had been anticipated for months, in both the
country and the embassy community. When we arrived, the US mis-
sion in India numbered more than two thousand employees, of which
approximately six hundred ­were American citizens, with the balance
being Indian nationals, many of whom ­were loyal and long-­standing
8 Chapter 1

employees. In our years in India, the mission became the largest civil-
ian mission in the American system and also the most diverse in its
repre­sen­ta­tion of US government departments and agencies. A num-
ber of US embassies have large groups attached to them, such as the
US Agency for International Development (AID) contingent in Cairo,
but in India the diversity of repre­sen­ta­tion reflected the broad interface
between India and the United States, which touched virtually e­ very
field of ­human activity one could imagine.
Roo­se­velt ­House stood in its own garden next to the main chancery,
both buildings designed by the American architect Edward Durrell
Stone in the early 1950s and now categorized as preserved buildings
by the United States. The full compound covered forty acres, three city
blocks, and included a chancery annex where the large visa operation
was ­housed, garden-­type housing units, a recreation center, medical
clinic, the marine barracks, a baseball field complete with lights, sup-
port buildings, and the American School of some fifteen hundred
students and teachers. Delhi city streets surrounded the compound
and cut through in two different places, one separating the school
and causing a significant security challenge, and the other separating the
marine barracks from the chancery and exposing the annex, where visa
applicants waited in long lines.
In the State Department training for new ambassadors and their
spouses, which takes place in Washington for two weeks, one is con-
stantly reminded that your first duty as ambassador is the security of
the embassy and all its staff at all times and u ­ nder all circumstances.
This is no empty challenge. The marine detachment (ours was eleven
at full complement) is ­there to protect the embassy from intrusion and
to secure the communications facilities and interior of the embassy
from attack. The setback of buildings from the surrounding streets,
as well as the walls and gates giving access to the embassy, have to be
protected and kept u ­ nder constant surveillance for signs of pos­si­ble
attack. One needs only to read the daily intelligence traffic to know
that it is not an empty threat that Amer­i­ca ­faces around the world.
 Writing a New History with India 9

The inspector general of the State Department had informed me

before leaving Washington of the serious morale prob­lem that existed
in the US mission in India. This had apparently arisen from a combi-
nation of ­factors stretching back over the years of disrupted relations
as well as from the management approach of my p ­ redecessor. Deputy
Chief of Mission Robert Blake had been sent to Delhi pending my
arrival to begin to address the local situation. Bob was a competent
and respected Foreign ­Service officer who by the end of 2003 had
improved the situation, but with no sitting ambassador pre­sent morale
remained a significant prob­lem when we arrived.
The job challenge for an ambassador in the American system is very
much a team challenge for the ambassador and his or her spouse. An
American mission is a f­ amily community that responds to a leadership
approach that is based on the recognition and practice of f­ amily values.
The sense of ­family, though dif­fer­ent from one ­family to the next, is an
impor­tant binding force for workers and dependents working for the
United States in distant places, often ­under difficult circumstances.
Therefore, Jeannie and I began day one at the embassy meeting
­people, one by one, in their place of work. We did not hold a large town-
hall meeting but instead greeted and shook hands with virtually ­every
employee in the embassy, first in Delhi, then in Mumbai, Chennai,
and Kolkata. We made this our priority of the first two weeks, and it
worked well with both American and Indian employees.
One of the chief benefits from this ­process was that it gave me the
opportunity to meet a large group of friendly, able, in­ter­est­ing ­people
and to gain an early understanding of how diverse and far reaching
our contacts and working relations ­were with the Indian community.
To understand the magnitude of the transformation in US-­India
relations that followed over the next five years, it is essential to recap-
ture the cross-­currents and sensitivities in play between the two coun-
tries at the beginning of 2004. The 9/11 attack in New York had deeply
shocked India, and many Indians and Indian Americans had been
killed. ­There had been an immediate outpouring of sympathy for the
10 Chapter 1

United States, but more than two years ­later, ­there was a mixture of
alarm and opposition to the US response in Iraq. India, ­after all, had a
Muslim population of nearly 150 million, some two-­thirds of whom
­were Sunni Muslims. Four months ­after 9/11 India suffered a bloody
attack on its parliament building in New Delhi, the symbolic and op-
erational heart of Indian democracy. The United States had, of course,
declared itself outraged by the attack and expressed its deepest sym-
pathies with the ­people of India. From India’s point of view however,
the attack, carried out by Pakistani terrorists against India’s parliament,
went unpunished by the United States in its relations with Pakistan.
When the State Department issued booming statements that all ter-
rorism anywhere in the world was equally unacceptable, where was the
evidence of that conviction in Amer­i­ca’s continuing close relations with
the perpetrators of India’s own 9/11? No won­der that even at ­senior
levels of society, Indians believed that Amer­i­ca, despite its strong words,
had a double standard when it came to terrorism in India, especially ter-
rorism spawned from Amer­ic­ a’s friend and ally to the northwest.
Meanwhile, the lingering resentments from the 1998–2001 sanc-
tions, the sense of injustice caused by thirty years’ isolation from the
world of civil nuclear commerce, the denial of full access to sophisti-
cated space and defense technologies, and India’s rising concerns about
Amer­ic­ a’s entry into Iraq and its presence in A­ fghanistan complicated
relations. Fi­nally, among India’s intelligent­sia, media leaders, academ-
ics, think tank communities, foreign s­ervice personnel, and many re-
tired bureaucrats, ­there remained a legacy of mistrust and suspicion of
the United States reaching back to the US support of Pakistan in the
Indo-­Pakistani War of 1971.
India, I discovered, was not alone in having such lingering suspicions
and resentments. They ­were also pre­sent in the US State Department
and Foreign ­Service as well as in the US defense establishment and
the CIA. In fact, while ­going through my brief period of orientation at
the State Department in Washington, I was told I faced a very tough
job in India and that I would no doubt have trou­ble recruiting Foreign
­Service officers to serve ­there. Two years ­later I had fifteen to twenty
 Writing a New History with India 11

keen applicants for any s­ enior embassy or consulate position opening

in India. So much for lingering suspicions and resentments!
My first three to four months in India made a deep and lasting im-
pression on me and set the basis for my approach to India over the next
five years. Our widespread visits throughout the US mission also gave
us the opportunity of meeting Indians around the country. This per-
mitted us to begin gathering a wider sense of Indians’ attitudes away
from embedded views of the ­political community in New Delhi. As
midwestern Americans who understood the limits to how Washington
represents the ­people spread across Amer­ic­ a, we assumed, correctly as
it turned out, that the same was to some extent true in India.
Many of the ­people we met had c­ hildren or relatives in Amer­i­ca
or had visited Amer­ic­ a themselves. We found that the United States
was ­popular, admired, and respected. This did not mean that every­
one agreed with our policies or supported what we w ­ ere ­doing in the
world. It did mean, however, that they admired what I called the ethos
of Amer­i­ca, our basic values, the clear sense that Amer­i­ca was a land
of opportunity, where a person’s prospects ­were not constrained by the
multitude of limitations and complexities of Indian society. Many of
the ­people we met had relatives, offspring, or acquaintances who had
made t­hese opportunities a real­ity. We w ­ ere also seen as a generous
nation and high expectations w ­ ere held for our willingness and capac-
ity to stand up for the right ­things in the world. Most saw Amer­i­ca’s
involvement in Iraq as a m ­ istake. The removal of Saddam Hussein
was considered a positive result, but perhaps at too high a cost. Many
thought our support for Pakistan was unconditional and therefore
viewed as a sign of Amer­i­ca’s traditional naiveté and a barrier to the
establishment of a relationship of full trust between our governments.
Yet despite the traumatic events since 9/11 in the United States, it was
clear that India’s large Muslim population was not radicalized. Islamic
opposition to the United States had simply not taken root in India.
India’s Muslims, it seemed, ­were Indians first and Muslims second.
The three key conclusions I drew from ­these early experiences in India
­were, first, that an enormous reservoir of goodwill existed t­ oward the
12 Chapter 1

United States among the ­great majority of citizens of India. Americans

enjoyed dynamic and friendly relationships with Indians that ­were
separate from and in my opinion more impor­tant at that moment
than our official bilateral relationship.
The second conclusion was that Indians’ attitudes t­ oward Pakistan
­were not at all uniform. Whereas the common view of the State
Department in Washington was that Indo-­Pak issues dominated all
aspects of our relationship, this was not the case on the ground in
India, even in Delhi. To be more precise, I found as I moved around
India and became acquainted with youn­ger ­people in Delhi consider-
able variation in the strength of views about Pakistan. In the south
of India I did not feel Pakistan mattered very much to ­people. The
young w ­ ere not particularly interested in Pakistan; they ­were much
more engaged with issues to do with education and opportunities to
get ahead. India’s young parliamentarians ­were also much less engaged
on Pakistan issues than ­were their elders. Their focus was on India’s
­future, its rise in the world, and the opportunities for modernizing
India’s position in the global economy. The high-­tech and business
communities likewise had other priorities. In the final analy­sis, it was
the “mandarin” community in Delhi that felt the strongest and seemed
to obsess the most about Pakistan. This included India’s think-­tank
community and many of its academic leaders and media ­people.
Pakistan was also a dominant issue among the Muslim communities
of the north (an impor­tant voting bloc in state elections) and also
especially among India’s older generation and their descendants who
had suffered through partition and its aftermath.
The third conclusion was perhaps the most impor­tant. The wide range
of subject ­matter and issues that came forward to me, together with the
variety of p­ eople and programs in the embassy, impressed upon me the
far-­reaching diversity of Amer­i­ca’s growing interface with India. The US
mission in India was on its way to becoming the largest civil mission
in the system, but also the most diverse in terms of departmental and
agency repre­sen­ta­tion on the ground in New Delhi. In addition, India
was now second only to Mexico in the issue of visas to the United States,
 Writing a New History with India 13

and it was far and away number one in the world in the issue of H-1B
foreign worker visas.
For me, all of this underlined that the ­future of US-­India relations
would be driven more by our civil socie­ties, private sectors, and person-­
to-­person relations than by the official bilateral core of the relationship.
The range of engagement was truly comprehensive, touching virtually
­every area of ­human endeavor. In addition to the highest-­priority ar-
eas of ­political and economic relations, the United States was engaged
in science; health care and disease control (through the Centers for
Disease Control in Atlanta); agriculture; space; education; transporta-
tion; civil aviation; US AID; all branches of the military; defense sales;
­human trafficking; religious freedom; public diplomacy; FBI and ­legal
affairs; intelligence; counterterrorism; and commercial ­services, for which
­there w­ ere seven branch offices.
­These many areas of engagement promised to generate a steady
flow of government, NGO, and private-­sector visits. As ambassador,
and given the kind of broad-­based relationship I could see develop-
ing between the United States and India, I de­cided to give attention
to ­every type of program interface with India that was pre­sent in the
mission community. This would not only build morale in the mission,
it would also recognize the par­tic­u­lar areas that I saw building in our
relations. In short, I de­cided that I needed to approach the ambassa-
dor’s job as a chief executive officer managing about twenty divisions
instead of simply a traditional ambassador focusing on the high-­level
aspects of bilateral diplomatic relations. In the end I was able to do
both. In fact, the ambassador role and the hands-on CEO approach
­were mutually reinforcing throughout my five years in India and ac-
count for the success I feel I achieved ­there.

* * *

In early 2004 the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government was nearing
the end of its five-­year term. Elections had to be held by May, and the
BJP believed itself well placed to win the general election comfortably.
14 Chapter 1

The Indian economy had reached growth levels of approximately

8 ­percent in recent quarterly reports, and the BJP ­adopted the campaign
slogan for the election of “India shining.”
An Indian general election is a major demo­cratic event by any stan-
dard. India’s approximately 650 million registered voters turn out in
force on specified dates during a roughly five-­week period of voting
in sequentially designated areas of the country. All voting in India is
electronic. The results are stored u ­ ntil the designated day for the an-
nouncement of results—in this case May 15, 2004. Exit polling is not
permitted by India’s formidable election commission.
In the lead-up to the election the pundits, media, and the mandarin
community in Delhi ­were strongly of the opinion that the BJP would
win the election without difficulty. In fact, the retiring BJP government
had pledged that it would lift the foreign equity owner­ship cap in the
insurance industry from 26 ­percent to 49 ­percent in the first twenty-­one
days of its new government. But it was not to be. The BJP was defeated
despite India’s stunning growth rec­ord, and the Congress Party, long out
of government, was given the opportunity of forming a new co­ali­tion
government.
It was hard to say who was more surprised. The BJP had not ex-
pected to lose, and the Congress had not expected to win. The next
few weeks produced high drama. Mrs. Sonia Gandhi, the leader of
the Congress Party and the natu­ral choice in India’s parliamentary
system to become prime minister and form a new co­ali­tion govern-
ment, withdrew from the invitation issued by the president of India.
­There was strong opposition to her becoming prime minister, b ­ ecause
she was foreign born and had entered elective politics only as the
­widow of Rajiv Gandhi, who was assassinated in 1991. Nevertheless,
Mrs. Gandhi was and remains the leader of the Congress Party. Her
withdrawal was seen as a g­ reat act of selflessness, which in Indian poli-
tics virtually sanctified Mrs. Gandhi. She proposed Manmohan Singh
as prime minister, and the Congress set about the complex task of form-
ing a co­ali­tion government. This required the support of India’s leftist
parties, the Communists of West Bengal and the state of Kerala. In the
 Writing a New History with India 15

end, the Communists supported the formation of the government but

declined to take responsible cabinet positions in the new government,
thus preserving their freedom to oppose specific policy initiatives and
to withdraw their support from the government at any time.
In the next weeks the consecration of the new United Progressive
Alliance co­ali­tion required the negotiation of a common minimum
policy agreement binding the co­ali­tion partners together and setting
the broad policies for the new government. The diversity of the parties
made this a difficult and time-­consuming task. The leftist parties that
­were essential to the formation of a government but which had elected
not to serve as responsible ministers in that government ­were particu-
larly difficult negotiating partners. Certainly, they would not sanc-
tion a provision in the common minimum policy agreement asserting
the importance of a “strategic partnership” with the United States.
We could therefore only wait through the weeks of negotiation, and
then, when the common minimum policy document was finalized, we
waited through the many days required to hand out ministerial posts
among the co­ali­tion partners. For many weeks t­ here was no clear signal
as to ­whether the new Congress-­led government would move for-
ward with the US strategic relationship or return to the policies of
Congress’s past.
Prime Minister Singh was not one of the large beasts of Indian
politics. He was considered a technocrat but also as an honest politi-
cian who led India’s opening reform efforts in 1991, a challenge of ex-
treme difficulty he had met with intelligence and authority. It was said
that he did not have his own p ­ olitical constituency but enjoyed the full
personal trust of Mrs. Gandhi. It was perhaps this last consideration
that set Manmohan Singh apart. He brought a gracious and sturdy pa-
tience to the sensitive complexities of establishing a new government
in India. Beyond the formation of the co­ali­tion and the assignment
of ministerial portfolios, Prime Minister Singh was burdened with the
out­spoken criticisms of the opposition, waiting in the wings for the co­
ali­tion p
­ rocess to collapse, that he was not prime ministerial material,
that he was a mere functionary of Sonia Gandhi, and that inevitably
16 Chapter 1

he would be neither capable nor empowered to run the w ­ hole govern-

ment of India.
Prime Minister Singh survived ­these attacks and many more like
them over the next five years. As time passed, t­hese challenges w ­ ere
shown to be well wide of the mark. Prime Minister Singh consistently
demonstrated patience and re­spect in dealing with colleagues, caution
regarding inflammatory ­political issues, and capability—­all integral in
dealing with this unique format for parliamentary government—­all
while being a prime minister separate from the leader of the govern-
ing party, who held no official position in government. ­These became
the distinguishing features of leadership by Prime Minister Singh.
­There was, therefore, no ­grand announcement that India would con-
tinue its strategic partnership efforts with the United States. Instead,
­there was an informal message, quietly given and without detailed
definition. By September it was clear that the relationship with the
United States was on track, tentatively perhaps, and without the bene-
fit of formal public confirmation. With plenty of other issues to occupy
the new co­ali­tion government and the Indian media, formal recogni-
tion of renewed US-­India relations could only be counterproductive.
Prior to the general election the effort to build a closer strategic
relationship between the United States and India was already ­under
way. Relations with India’s BJP government in early 2004 ­were good.
An initiative that had been given the awkward name of Next Steps
Strategic Partnership (NSSP) was launched at the beginning of 2004.
Its purpose was to bring together ele­ments of the two bureaucracies
to identify and if pos­si­ble to eliminate regulatory and administrative
barriers that prevented India and Amer­i­ca from working more closely
together. The target of this collaboration was the debris left over from
sanctions that discouraged or prevented the expansion of trade rela-
tions in sensitive fields such as high-­tech exports, defense or space-­
related products, and missile defense technologies. We expected that
significant pro­gress could be achieved in t­ hese and other areas without
having to make changes in US legislation. The initiative was aimed
 Writing a New History with India 17

at deepening ­political relations with India and improving prospects

for India’s recently launched peace initiatives with Pakistan. Prime
Minister Vajpayee was seen by the United States in a very favorable
light, and his national security advisor, Mr. Brajesh Mishra, was seen
as the chief visionary both for the peace initiative and the effort to
strengthen US relations.
NSSP, despite its cumbersome name, marked an impor­tant step in
the new beginning. Although it operated chiefly at the technical level
and in the end bridged two dif­fer­ent governments in India over the
space of ­little more than a year, its pro­gress was both immediate and
­measurable. Approximately 26 ­percent of high-­tech US exports in 2003
required burdensome export licensing procedures left over in many
cases from the 1998 sanctions. A year l­ater exports requiring licensing
of this type ­were reduced to only 1 ­percent of the total. Raytheon, a
major American defense contractor, concluded a small but impor­tant
radar contract with the Indian Ministry of Defense, and confidential
briefings ­were started between our two governments on missile defense
technology. Efforts ­were also made to improve our interface with India
in the defense sales field generally.
On the other hand, NSSP revealed the magnitude of the challenge
we faced in overcoming the past. Before leaving Washington I had
been alerted to the extreme sensitivity of Indo-­Pak issues, as they ­were
termed in the State Department. Once in India I began to make my
own appraisal of Indo-­Pak relations. I had learned long ago that stan-
dardized, prepackaged philosophies seldom hold up on the ground.
It was not a question of Pakistan being unimportant to the United
States. Obviously, it was very impor­tant, and t­ here ­were clearly m
­ atters
of ­great sensitivity in Indo-­Pak relations. Nevertheless, it was clear to
me Pakistan was not the dominant issue: India did not need to see
­every issue through the prism of its relationship with Pakistan. I
believed that we should work to dehyphenate Indo-­Pak and make
clear to the Indian government and to the Indian public that the
United States perceived its relationship with India as a freestanding
18 Chapter 1

bilateral relationship and was supportive of India’s vision of becoming

a world power. Our relationship with Pakistan was also a freestanding
relationship with an impor­tant ally, but the vision was regional, not
global in scope.
Initially, this evolving approach had ­limited traction. Rumors that
Congress would consider selling new or upgraded F-16s to Pakistan
­were front-­page headline news in India. The terrorism double stan-
dard and the United States’ apparent unwillingness to exercise cred-
ible conditions on its aid to Pakistan in order to force a reduction in its
hostility to India continued to be major complaints in Delhi.
­There was a particularly graphic example of ­these sensitivities in
March 2004 when Secretary of State Colin Powell visited New Delhi.
India had announced its general election to be concluded in May of
that year. The secretary’s visit was warmly welcomed, and Secretary
Powell did an outstanding job of conveying the warmth and support
of the United States for India. He was due to visit Pakistan follow-
ing India and was pointedly asked by the Indians not to say or do
anything in Pakistan that would upset the ongoing election ­process
in India. The next day in Pakistan, the secretary announced that the
United States would give major non-­NATO ally status to Pakistan,
giving Pakistan easier access to certain types of military equipment.
A firestorm of rage swept through Delhi in the next few days. The
concession granted to Pakistan was not particularly significant, and
we at the embassy, with Secretary Powell’s approval, immediately ac-
knowledged that the secretary’s announcement had been an inadver-
tent error and would not in practice pose any significant disadvantage
to India. But the damage had been done, and the outrage was some-
thing to behold.
Yet within the first few months of India’s new government becoming
operational, an overture was made to me that provided an impor­tant
opening for ­future relations. One ­evening in November a ­senior official
asked to see me informally at the residence. Over a cup of tea on the
veranda, he explained that India wished to expand its business rela-
tions with the United States, but that within the Indian government
 Writing a New History with India 19

it was felt that impor­tant US companies did not show the top-­level
interest or commitment that India expected. He cited as an example
the Boeing Com­pany’s approach to Air India’s current interest in the
tender for sixty-­eight wide-­body airliners as a part of India’s plan to
transform its airline industry. India and the United States, a­ fter years
of fruitless dialogue, had agreed ­after brief negotiations in 2003 to es-
tablish the world’s most liberal bilateral open skies agreement. In late
2003 India had agreed to buy forty-­three single-­aisle Airbus aircraft
­after a contentious tender competition between Airbus and Boeing, in
which Boeing believed it had not been treated fairly. Boeing raised its
case with the secretary of state in late 2003 and asked the US govern-
ment to intercede on its behalf with the government of India. Secretary
Powell had declined to make an approach to the Indians, and I likewise
had advised Boeing’s representatives in India against taking steps in
court to try to force Indian Airlines, India’s domestic carrier, to rebid
the contract. Boeing’s representatives claimed that the com­pany could
have improved its price by approximately 20 ­percent but ­were not given
the opportunity to do so. My advice, based on extensive experience
with similar situations, was to refrain from starting a fight they ­were
unlikely to win. The best strategy would have been to pre­sent their
most competitive price the first time around and be prepared to im-
prove marginally if that ­were required to win the business.
In any case, the Air India purchase would be for large, long-­distance
aircraft that could perform nonstop ­service between India and the
United States. India perceived that it was losing its most impor­tant mar-
ket, the United States, to other airlines flying routes through Singapore,
Dubai, and Frankfurt, and to recover that market ­under the new US-­
India open skies agreement it would need a fleet of the most com-
petitive long-­distance aircraft. The value of such a transaction would be
approximately $9 billion.
Hence, when my visitor mentioned Boeing as an example of the
kind of US com­pany India would like to develop a relationship with,
it is not hard to imagine how alert I became. Essentially, the point the
Indian official made was that Boeing did not proj­ect a broad vision for
20 Chapter 1

India from the top leadership of the com­pany. Its representatives ­were
lower-­level local sales representatives whose sole preoccupation was to
market airplanes to Air India, neglecting the fact that Boeing was a
major American corporation manufacturing a wide range of products
applicable to India’s ­future for air travel and defense. As a businessman,
the official felt certain I would understand the point he was trying to
make, and indeed his message was clearly understood.
A few days l­ater I telephoned Harry Stonecipher, CEO of Boeing,
in Chicago. The tender deadline for the sixty-­eight aircraft was set for
December 24, and it was now late November. When Mr. Stonecipher
took the call, I explained the approach I had received and suggested
that he should make a visit to India in the next two weeks to meet
with India’s top ­political leadership. His agenda should be to proj­ect
Boeing’s vision for India above and beyond the forthcoming tender.
He should be as broad as pos­si­ble in product terms and emphasize
what Boeing could bring to India as a business committed to India’s
own development. I explained that I had on my desk a letter from
the secretary of state to the prime minister advocating on behalf of
Boeing, which I would feel much more comfortable sending forward
if I knew Mr. Stonecipher would visit India’s top leaders in the next
two weeks. Mr. Stonecipher came to India, paid visits to its leading
ministers, including the prime minister (all meetings I attended), and
successfully projected Boeing’s broad vision for India. The following
year Boeing won the order for sixty-­eight new airplanes and went on
over the next three years to sell some $25 billion of aircraft to India.
­Later still, its defense business made impor­tant breakthroughs as the
entire scale of its commitment to India changed.

* * *

The year 2005 marked the beginning of our g­ reat breakthrough with
India. President Bush had won his second term. Condoleezza Rice was
our new secretary of state, and she was succeeded in the White H
­ ouse
as national security advisor by her number two, Stephen Hadley. As far
 Writing a New History with India 21

as I was concerned, this was in e­ very way a winning team. In the presi-
dent’s first term, his national security assessment had singled out India
as a top foreign policy priority for the United States. The NSSP nego-
tiation, which marked the first step t­ oward a new strategic partnership,
had made good pro­gress.
Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld ­stopped in New Delhi in
early December 2004 on a tour through the area that also included
Pakistan. This was an impor­tant visit, b ­ ecause it provided the secretary
his first opportunity to assess India’s new co­ali­tion government. ­There
is nothing like face-­to-­face contact to see and feel India’s dynamism.
The visit helped repair the hurt feelings and lingering suspicions of the
major non-­NATO ally fiasco the previous March. This was also the
first high-­level defense visit since India had announced that it planned
to refurbish its air force with the purchase of 126 multi-­role fighter
aircraft. I appealed to Secretary Rumsfeld to reconsider the Defense
Department’s irritating decision not to display any high-­end fighter
aircraft at India’s second biannual Bangalore Air Show. Happily, within
a month ­after his visit, Secretary Rumsfeld authorized the presence of
two US F-15 fighters, which stole the show in Bangalore.
Secretary Rice’s first visit to India was set for March 2005. The
thoughtful preparation of this visit and the secretary’s deft p ­ resentation
of a new initiative for India caught the Indian government by surprise.
With the NSSP ­process nearing completion, the visit was defined by
the need for a new, ambitious initiative with India. In a surprisingly
visionary statement, President Bush declared that the United States
was prepared to support India’s vision of becoming a ­great economic
power. India’s annual growth had surged to near 9 ­percent, which, if sus-
tained over a period of years, would raise India to be one of the world’s
top three economies and at the highest levels of economic power.
In my public speeches and private conversations with Indian officials,
I set out what India needed to become a g­ reat economic power. If India
­were to sustain growth in the range of 9–10 ­percent consistently over
the next ten to twenty years it would achieve its global vision and sub-
stantially alleviate its vast poverty. ­There existed, however, four major
22 Chapter 1

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice speaking at Roo­se­velt H ­ ouse,

March 16, 2005, during a visit to India to convey President Bush’s willingness
to engage in negotiations between the United States and India on a pos­
si­ble civil nuclear agreement. Also pictured are Ambassador David Mulford
and Jeannie Mulford. US Embassy New Delhi/CC BY-­ND 2.0

constraints that India would have to overcome to reach its destination.

The country would have to build world-­class infrastructure across the
full range of its economy, diversify its energy base to enhance its capac-
ity for growth, reduce its dependence on imported oil and domestic coal,
and transform its rural economy, home to some seven hundred million
­people, to raise growth levels substantially in its agricultural sector. Each
of ­these broad constraints ­were, of course, composed of many macro-­
and microeconomic and social themes, but I believed that grouping the
constraints into broad challenges would render India’s task more man-
ageable and easier to portray in p­ olitical terms.
For the United States to become a credible strategic partner for India,
we would need to make a vital and concrete contribution in one of the
 Writing a New History with India 23

three broad areas of constraint. Obviously, US companies could and

would be investors in India’s infrastructure proj­ects, but we would
be one of many in a complex field that requires private-­sector com-
mitments of long duration. The United States had already played an
impor­tant part in India’s “green revolution” in its agricultural sector,
but transforming India’s rural economy was a challenge far exceeding
just agriculture. Dozens of other challenges relating to this vast enter-
prise ­were well beyond the reach of the United States.
This left the diversification of India’s energy base, where it might
be said that the United States held the “magic key.” This key was civil-
ian nuclear energy, a field of high priority in India but one in which
India had been isolated from the world for more than thirty years by
its unwillingness to sign the 1974 nuclear nonproliferation treaty and
by its nuclear tests. The sanctions imposed by the United States against
India as a result of its 1998 nuclear test had increased India’s isolation
from the world. This meant that India was ­limited in its ability to scale
up its industry by its inability to attract investment and technology
from outside the country, and also by its lack of any sizable uranium
supplies within India, which had handicapped but not prevented India
from developing its own ­limited civil nuclear capacity. In 2005 nuclear
power generated approximately 2.5 ­percent of India’s total supply of
electricity. India might be hampered in its efforts to expand its civil
nuclear industry, but it was not rendered powerless to gradually ex-
pand its domestic production. India had also developed its own stra-
tegic nuclear weapons as a deterrent against both Pakistan and China.
India’s nuclear capabilities w­ ere accomplished without inward or out-
ward proliferation, and so in spirit India had complied with many of
the rules of the 1974 treaty without being a signatory. Signing the
treaty would have prevented India from developing its own nuclear
weapons and required it to give up its existing weapons if it had elected
to sign the treaty ­after 1998. Given the tensions with its two neighbors,
Pakistan and China, both nuclear powers, this was out of the question.
India’s exclusion from the world’s nuclear nonproliferation regime
meant that India’s l­imited but growing civil nuclear facilities w
­ ere not
24 Chapter 1

covered by International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) safeguards

that applied to other signatories of the treaty. Thus, if the United States
­were to make an exception for India in US nuclear nonproliferation
policy, India would be in a position to significantly diversify its energy
base away from heavy dependence on foreign oil and dirty domestic
coal supplies. The growth needed for India to achieve its goals of eco-
nomic development and a rising economic status in the world at large
would require a huge increase in electric power over the next twenty
years. If coal ­were its chief resource for electric power, India would
become one of the world’s g­ reat economic powers and also the biggest
polluter of the environment.
An expression by the United States of its willingness to consider al-
tering its nuclear nonproliferation policy would be a radical departure
from US nuclear policies of the previous fifty years, something not re-
motely expected in India from the approaching visit of Secretary Rice.
Condoleezza Rice was in e­ very way a figure who appealed to Indians.
She was self-­made, accomplished in several fields, elegant, optimistic,
charming, incisive, and highly intelligent. She received a warm wel-
come, including from the US mission, where she made a special effort
to meet embassy staff and their families in Roo­se­velt ­House garden.
Instead of the usual get-­acquainted visit that reviewed existing
policies without breaking new ground, Secretary Rice had prepared
carefully for this visit. She understood that if the United States w ­ ere
to genuinely convince India of its intention to help it achieve a place
among the leading world powers, we would require a concrete, forward-­
looking agenda. Moreover, she understood that our agenda needed to
be visionary, optimistic, and play to India’s own unique sense of destiny.
Secretary Rice’s proposal that we should consider working together
to address India’s isolation from the world of civil nuclear technology
so that India could diversify its energy base over time and expand the
scale of its civil nuclear industry took the Indians completely by sur-
prise. Secretary Rice issued an invitation for discussions on behalf of
the president, not a finished proposal. This invitation, which created a
vision for a ­future achievable only with the sponsorship of the United
 Writing a New History with India 25

States, utterly disarmed the Indians of their habitual doubts and suspi-
cions. Indeed, two days ­after Secretary Rice had left India one had the
impression that the implications of this surprising proposal ­were only
just beginning to sink in. We had clearly changed the tenor of relations,
and try as the Indians might to retain their usual detachment ­there was
a genuine and unmistakable enthusiasm that they could not suppress.
Preparations began for Prime Minister Singh’s July 2005 state visit
to Washington. Both India and the United States began to reflect on
how such a nuclear initiative might be carried out. On India’s side t­ here
would have to be a willingness to separate its civil nuclear activities
from its strategic nuclear defense program. This was no easy m ­ atter,
since civil and strategic nuclear development in India was one and the
same. Also, although India had a clean rec­ord of nonproliferation, it
did not follow the established regime of international safeguards on
nuclear facilities or conform to the standards within the group of forty-­
five member states making up the Nuclear Suppliers Group. India was
not open to IAEA inspections or potentially intrusive US demands for
compliance in highly technical areas of civil nuclear activities.
The president understood and accepted that t­ here was no possibility
of India giving up its nuclear weapons and signing the nuclear nonpro-
liferation treaty of 1974 in order to gain better access to civil nuclear
technology. India had developed its own nuclear weapons and modest
civil nuclear industry itself. Its nuclear science community occupied a
special place of re­spect and financial support within the Indian gov-
ernment. Accommodating this mandate would, we believed, require a
change in US law, which would call into question the sanctity of the
world’s nuclear nonproliferation architecture. ­These possibilities raised
deep prob­lems for the United States, which had sponsored, developed,
and defended that architecture since the 1950s. The US bureaucracy
and the staff of relevant members of Congress had spent their entire
­careers building, perfecting, and enforcing the world’s nuclear nonpro-
liferation regime.
Still, the discussion between the United States and India proceeded. I
was blessed with certain members of my staff who ­were knowledgeable
26 Chapter 1

​ rrival ceremony on the White ­House lawn for the state visit of Prime
A
Minister Manmohan Singh, July 18, 2005. On this day the United States
and India announced the launch of the Civil Nuclear Cooperation
Initiative. Official White ­House photo by Lynden Steele, courtesy of
George W. Bush Presidential Library

on nuclear subjects, and from them I was able to glean a valuable edu-
cation. We had discussed the civil nuclear area before the secretary’s
visit to India as a means to help meet India’s energy requirements, but
once the subject was opened for serious consideration the potential
complexity for resolving major ­political and ­legal prob­lems became
evident. Nevertheless, we engaged with the Indians to determine
­whether any such vision could realistically be framed for the state visit
to Washington of the prime minister in July.
As we worked, a new ­political dimension took shape in India. Indian
intellectuals, some retired foreign policy officials, the large population of
New Delhi think tankers, and the leftists in the ­political arena began to
raise the sinister possibility that the new US-­India civil nuclear initiative
was a plot by the United States to entice India into an arrangement that
would cripple or remove India’s strategic nuclear capability. This was
 Writing a New History with India 27

the “back door” through which the United States would subvert India’s
strategic nuclear weapons program. They argued that the American
strategic partnership proposal was designed to bind India helplessly to
the United States. This theme gradually took hold in some quarters in
India and ­later became a serious threat to the entire enterprise.
But first we had to reach a preliminary agreement that would per-
mit the long and complicated negotiation that must follow to move for-
ward. Not surprisingly, the turning point came at the state visit by Prime
Minister Singh to Washington on July 18. ­After weeks of discussion
and negotiation we had reached an impasse around midnight the night
before the beginning of the state visit. The two sides left the meeting
resigned to failure. At six the following morning, the Indians called to
propose one last effort. Two hours ­later the final issue was resolved, and
work began on a brief vision statement to be issued by President Bush
and Prime Minister Singh announcing that the United States and India
would move ahead with the negotiation of an agreement that would
open the world of civil nuclear commerce to India. Final preparation of
an agreed text was still in pro­gress as the two leaders stood before the
assembled media in the White ­House East Wing.
Reaction was mixed. The vision statement was read with much en-
thusiasm in India, but to many in the US media, Congress, and the
US bureaucracy, the statement raised more questions than it answered.
Chief among them was, why had the United States taken such a radical
step into a field that for many observers was fraught with complexities,
poorly understood by politicians and the public, and possibly danger-
ous for global security? The questions and arguments that had surfaced
in India a­ fter the visit of Secretary Rice ­were now raised in the United
States. It would be many months before the vision outlined in the joint
statement would be tested between the two countries and placed for a
vote before the US Congress.
However, before we could make a serious beginning, we had to
clear another hurdle. Following a worldwide diplomatic effort by the
United States in August and September 2005, a vote took place in the
IAEA in which for the first time India voted with the United States
28 Chapter 1

President George W. Bush (front left) and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh
(front right) meet in the White ­House Oval Office on July 18, 2005.
Among ­those pre­sent are (­behind the president, seated left to right)
Vice President Dick Cheney, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice,
Ambassador David Mulford, and ­Under Secretary of State Nicholas Burns.
They sat with members of the India del­e­ga­tion, including Ronen Sen,
India’s ambassador to the United States (seated furthest back on
the right). Official White ­House photo by Eric Draper, courtesy of
George W. Bush Presidential Library

and ­others to refer Iran to the United Nations Security Council for
consideration of a resolution on sanctions.
The IAEA vote was a major foreign policy decision for India. Its
relations with Iran went back over thousands of years. The Mughal in-
vasions of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries had come from Persia
and had left a pervasive influence on India’s life and culture, including
India’s nearly 150 million Muslims. India invariably exercised extreme
care in its dealings with Iran. On ­Iranian nuclear ­matters India’s po-
sition had been that Iran, having signed the nonproliferation treaty
(India had not), should honor its obligations ­under the treaty. India
 Writing a New History with India 29

also indicated that it did not ­favor Iran developing nuclear weapons.
­These general expressions had never resulted in India actually taking
positions against Iran in international forums. On the contrary, India
was distinctly soft on Iran.
One could understand why—­Iran was impor­tant in India’s politics.
Apart from historic and cultural links, India’s large Muslim popula-
tion was deeply sensitive to issues that appeared to disadvantage Iran or
pushed the government of India to take steps unfriendly to Iran. A large
portion of India’s Muslim population was Shiite, with sizable concentra-
tions in northern India, where despite still being a minority they could
exercise very considerable electoral influence. It was common to hear
­people declare that India had a relationship with Iran g­ oing back five
thousand years, whereas India’s relations with the United States w ­ ere
only a few years old. ­Others, while acknowledging the long-­standing
relationship, felt that ­little in the way of concrete benefits had come from
Iran. Additionally, at the time of the campaign for an ­Iranian sanctions
vote, a ­grand energy proj­ect was taking shape on India’s northern hori-
zon. This was the Iran-­Pakistan-­India gas pipeline proposal, which visu-
alized massive supplies of ­Iranian gas being piped across ­Afghanistan to
Pakistan and India. Despite the obvious practical and p ­ olitical difficulties
of such a venture, t­ here was no doubt that the vision had strong p ­ olitical
appeal. Pakistan would require new sources of gas within a few years
to feed its domestic utility industry, while India was looking for ways
to reduce its dependence on imported oil. Beyond the diversification of
India’s energy base, t­here was the dream by some of a vital cooperative
venture that would bring the principal countries more closely together.
Opposition to this proj­ect carried significant ­political costs in Indian
politics, and not just in the Muslim community. Alternatively, support-
ers of the pipeline enjoyed a costless ­political boost unlikely ever to
be put to the test of geographic and operational practicality. Incon­ve­
niently, however, US legislation in the form of the Libya and Iran
Sanctions Act of 1996 required the United States to impose sanctions
on any investment proj­ect that provided significant assistance to Iran
in the development of its natu­ral resources. This legislation, which had
30 Chapter 1

never been employed, was used in India as an example of the arrogant

extraterritorial reach of US law into the domestic affairs of other sov-
ereign nations. On the other hand, some members of Congress argued
that the law might need to be applied to any such pipeline if India w ­ ere
to become too cozy with Iran, needlessly creating resentment in India
and a distraction from the US effort on sanctions. The IAEA vote to
refer Iran’s case to the Security Council brought ­these ­matters into the
foreground in both countries. The United States was considering a his-
toric change in its nuclear nonproliferation policy that would provide
India with a unique global position in the field of civil nuclear com-
merce, while permitting de facto recognition to India’s nuclear weapons.
The pipeline initiative, which appeared to ­favor Iran in the energy field
and might very well violate existing US legislation, was bound to be
resented in Congress. Failure by India to stand with the United States
on an issue as sensitive as ­Iranian sanctions would draw attention to the
pipeline and clearly undermine support for India’s civil nuclear initia-
tives, both in the administration and in Congress. “Playing footsie” with
Iran at this point in time was simply unacceptable to many members of
Congress, no m ­ atter how many centuries of friendship India had shared
with Iran.
Critical and threatening comments from members of Congress, to-
gether with reminders that u ­ nder US law Indian companies could face
sanctions if they w ­ ere to advance the gas pipeline with Iran, w
­ ere held
up in India by opposition politicians and even members of the co­ali­
tion government as unacceptable interference in Indian domestic af-
fairs. This, they argued, is what a strategic relationship with the United
States would lead to. The civil nuclear agreement was portrayed as
nothing less than the thin end of a US wedge that would subvert
India and lead to a “backdoor attack” by the United States on India’s
strategic weapons program.
The task of navigating ­these complex and emotional issues with-
out provoking a rupture in relations fell to me. It was vital to strive
for clarity on t­hese ­matters with the Indian government so that the
risks, which could not be controlled by the administration, would not
 Writing a New History with India 31

overwhelm the basic interests on both sides. However, as frequently is

the case with parliamentary governments, ­there is a tendency to forget
or refuse to recognize the realities of the US form of government. The
power of the executive in the United States is l­imited in its ability to
direct or discipline the Congress. An administration might ­favor a par­
tic­u­lar policy initiative but find that congressional opposition makes
it impossible to realize. Hence, some Indians might well believe that
an administration that has agreed on a certain policy direction with
India would subvert that policy by secretly encouraging opposition in
Congress or using its influence to make Congress its stalking h ­ orse for
the negotiation of concessions or simply to interfere in India’s domes-
tic affairs. ­There was virtually no limit to the range of interpretations
and allegations of bad faith applied to the United States in India’s
media, in its think tanks, and in the parliament. Leftist parties, in
par­tic­ul­ar, seized on the most extreme arguments to attempt to derail
both the civil nuclear negotiation and the growing strategic relation-
ship with the United States.
In the Foreign Ministry and the prime minister’s office, relations
remained polite and essentially constructive, but one could not say rela-
tions ­were comfortable and happy. In my many meetings with Foreign
Secretary Shyam Saran I tried simply to explain in the clearest terms the
risks India would be r­ unning if it ­were to abstain or to vote against sanc-
tions on Iran. Reports of arm twistings portrayed in the press ­were un-
fair. The under­lying realities for India may have been unpalatable at the
time, but it was essential that they understand and believe the downside
they would face ­going forward on the civil nuclear initiative if India
­were unwilling at this critical point in time to stand up for sanctions on
Iran. Once that message was firmly and convincingly conveyed to the
Indian government, it was my view that they ­were likely to make the
right decision; but, more impor­tant, it had to be their decision and their
decision alone. This strategy was ­adopted by Secretary Rice and in turn
by President Bush when he met Prime Minister Manmohan Singh at
the UN meetings in New York in September 2005. ­Whatever the twists
and turns of Indian politics, the prime minister could not have been
32 Chapter 1

­ nder any illusions about the importance of the test India faced in the
u
UN vote.
In September India voted for sanctions on Iran for the first time
and thereby strengthened its credibility on nuclear affairs with both
the administration and Congress. This was not an easy decision for
India. I came away more convinced than ever of India’s serious inten-
tions to stay the course on civil nuclear commitments and to continue
building a strategic partnership with the United States.

* * *

A second initiative launched by President Bush and Prime Minister

Singh at India’s state visit in 2005 has survived from one administra-
tion to the next. This is the CEO Forum, which brings together ten
CEOs from each country to form a business council to determine and
seek to resolve the five or six most serious barriers to expanding eco-
nomic relations between the United States and India.
I had de­cided to run a mission in India that was open to and sup-
portive of US business. Many American companies w ­ ere already rep-
resented in India, but the rules and regulations that governed foreign
direct investment made entry and operation difficult. Some compa-
nies, such as General Electric, had large and successful investments in
India, but other companies ­were engaged in disputes with joint ven-
ture partners or faced ­political ­resistance to growing their businesses.
India’s lack of a comprehensive infrastructure was a major deterrent
to investment and development. Without intellectual property protec-
tion, clear ground rules for the settlement of disputes, and transparency
and fairness in dealings with state governments and the bureaucracy in
general, foreign direct investment was constrained. My idea of a CEO
Forum involved more than simply bringing businessmen together. I
had seen other such business groups in Saudi Arabia, ­Europe, and
China, and in e­ very case the fact that the forum or commission was run
by governments rendered them largely in­effec­tive over time. The level
of corporate participation tended to decline, ­because governments had
 Writing a New History with India 33

India-­US CEO Forum meeting at the State Department, September 22,

2011. Seated at back, left to right, are Suneeta Reddy, managing
director of Apollo Hospitals Group, India; Anjalit Singh, founder and
chairman of Max Group, India; Timothy Geithner, US secretary of the ­
Treasury; William J. Burns, US deputy secretary of state; Pranab Mukherjee,
finance minister of India; and Geoffrey R. Pyatt, US principal deputy
assistant secretary for South and Central Asian affairs. US Department
of State

l­ittle feel for the kinds of commercial and p­ olitical challenges faced by
businesses, challenges often designed or imposed by the governments
themselves.
I therefore sought to form a group open only to CEOs responsible
for leading the entire com­pany, the final arbiters of global strategy and
allocation and deployment of the com­pany’s global capital. I stood
firm on the princi­ple that we accept no substitutes for attendance at
meetings, no ­matter how august that replacement person’s corporate
title might be. A chairman drawn from each country was responsible
for ­running the forum. Ministerial-­level government officials ­were in-
vited to take part in meetings, but government bureaucracy should
34 Chapter 1

not manage the meetings or the ­process leading up to the meetings.

Fi­nally, American participants ­were chosen selectively and invited to
join by the American ambassador, instead of issuing an open invita-
tion to companies at large. Preparations and secretariat functions w ­ ere
carried out by the private-­sector leaders, not by US or Indian officials.
In this way the meetings encouraged f­ree, frank, and off-­the-­record
exchanges of views. I believed that if we achieved ­these objectives, nei-
ther businessmen nor government ministers would feel constrained or
feel exposed by the group’s deliberations.
­After a good deal of irritating wrangling with our own government
officials and l­awyers in Washington, we w ­ ere able to achieve virtually
all our objectives, avoiding the bureaucratization of the forum. The
kickoff meeting at the White ­House in July 2005 brought the twenty
invited members together to become acquainted and to see the serious
attention given to the forum by the two heads of government. William
Harrison, CEO of JPMorgan Chase, and Ratan Tata, chairman of the
Tata Group in India, w ­ ere the first chairmen of the group. Afterward,
the forum convened approximately ­every nine months. Three ­senior
cabinet ministers from each side attended each meeting and engaged in
the kind of informal dialogue that captured the attention of the CEOs
and made it pos­si­ble to air sensitive business issues between the United
States and India. No compromising reports appeared in the press. CEOs
on both sides w ­ ere able to get better acquainted, which advanced rela-
tions more effectively than formal dialogue.

* * *

The US-­India civil nuclear initiative, launched in July 2005 during

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s state visit to Washington, was a
complex and controversial undertaking that would require years of fo-
cused effort, patience, and faith. By the end of 2005, it was clear to me
that we had embarked on a historic enterprise whose magnitude and
intricacy constantly seemed to unfold before us. In autumn, when visit-
ing Washington, I called on a number of members of Congress whose
 Writing a New History with India 35

support was needed for the expected legislative p ­ rocess. I was discour-
aged to find that the most common reaction to my visit was, “Why
on earth have you done this?” To t­hose with knowledge of the nuclear
nonproliferation regime the United States had championed for over
fifty years, it seemed inconceivable that the administration should be
willing to give de facto recognition to India’s nuclear weapons and at the
same time provide India full access to the world of civil nuclear com-
merce. A ­ fter all, apart from the Big 5 nuclear powers, all other signato-
ries of the 1974 treaty had agreed to deny themselves nuclear weapons
in order to have full access to civil nuclear technology and commerce.
­Those views ­were fueled by Washington’s nuclear nonproliferation
“establishment,” ­whether in congressional staff, the executive depart-
ments, or in the think tank community. ­These ­people had both passion
and extensive in-­depth knowledge of nuclear materials, weapons, tech-
nologies, and the history and intricacies of nuclear diplomacy. To many
of them, President Bush’s civil nuclear vision for India was a dangerous
misadventure.
We faced a formidable challenge to explain and justify to Congress
the president’s proposed change to the world’s nuclear nonprolifera-
tion architecture. The task of gaining support in the US government
and among the Nuclear Suppliers Group of nations was divided into two
stages. The first was to lay out the case for India to be brought into
the world’s nuclear nonproliferation regime. India was clearly a ris-
ing nation whose population represented approximately one-­sixth of
humanity. It had its own homegrown community of nuclear scientists
who had developed both a modest civil nuclear industry and sophis-
ticated nuclear weapons. India had not engaged in nuclear prolifera-
tion activities and was acknowledged to have observed the standards
of the 1974 Nuclear Non-­Proliferation Treaty, despite being isolated
for some thirty years for its failure to sign the treaty. Nor had India, the
world’s largest democracy, shown itself to be militarily aggressive be-
yond its borders. China and Pakistan, India’s two nuclear-­armed neigh-
bors, both of whom fought a war with India in the past fifty years, ­were
still regarded as major threats to India’s security. ­There was no realistic
36 Chapter 1

prospect that India would give up its nuclear weapons capability to

gain access to the world of civil nuclear commerce, especially since
­doing so would require India to accept IAEA nuclear safeguards on its
domestic nuclear industry. Fi­nally, India had a clear need to enhance
and diversify its energy base. Over time India would clearly become
one of the world’s leading economies. If it w ­ ere to depend entirely on
its national supplies of coal to generate the power it would need for
development, India would also become the world’s largest polluter.
In the face of ­these realities, our conclusion was that keeping India
isolated from the world was both unrealistic and a threat to the world’s
pre­sent nonproliferation regime. If isolated, India’s nuclear industry
would develop its growing body of reactors without being covered by
IAEA safeguards. Better to have India’s f­uture civil nuclear reactors
covered by international safeguards than to leave all of India’s nuclear
facilities entirely outside the system. India had already demonstrated
that its strategic nuclear program had been kept to a scale sufficient for
deterrence purposes as opposed to being a growing arsenal for foreign
aggression. In ­future, India’s nuclear science community would clearly
be able to make an impor­tant contribution in global nuclear affairs,
which t­ oday in its isolation was beyond reach.
In the face of ­these arguments, we posed the following question: If
you acknowledge that India is a major nation of rising world impor-
tance, and you d ­ on’t like this plan, what is your proposal for dealing
constructively with India? The response to this question was usually
silence or, sometimes, to keep India outside the system, b ­ ecause the
risks and costs of entry ­were just too high.
The second step was to educate Congress on the procedures and
specific conditions required of India in order to be granted the excep-
tion that would incorporate them into the world’s nuclear nonprolif-
eration regime. The first requirement would be that India negotiate a
credible arrangement to separate its civil nuclear industry from its stra-
tegic nuclear program. This needed to be framed into a formal separa-
tion agreement between the United States and India that Congress
could approve as part of the ­process to amend the Atomic Energy Act
 Writing a New History with India 37

of 1954. The separation agreement would specify, among other ­things,

that Indian reactors already built and operating, as well as ­those to be
built in the f­ uture, would be covered by international nuclear safeguards
to be negotiated and implemented between India and the IAEA.
­Because India’s nuclear industry had been developed by its scientific
community as a single united industry, separating the civil and strategic
ele­ments of the industry was both complex and very costly. The divi-
sion within the industry had to be verifiable, as would the application
of nuclear nonproliferation safeguards. The application of safeguards
also had to follow nuclear fuel and spent fuels to safeguard against po-
tential leakage from the civil to the strategic side of the industry.
Once the separation agreement was completed the next step was to
approach Congress for an amendment to the Atomic Energy Act. This
change would permit the United States to conduct civil nuclear com-
merce with India, provided that certain other actions ­were completed.
The first of ­these was the US-­India Section 123 Agreement, which
would be a bilateral agreement providing for the implementation of
US-­India nuclear cooperation. In addition, following the completion
of the 123 Agreement, India and the IAEA in Vienna would negoti-
ate a freestanding bilateral safeguards agreement that would set the ar-
rangements for the introduction of safeguards into India’s civil nuclear
industry. Fi­nally, the forty-­five nations of the Nuclear Suppliers Group
needed to agree by full consensus to recognize and accept the excep-
tion granted to India by the change in US law. Bear in mind that many
of ­these countries had denied themselves nuclear weapons in order to
access civil nuclear technologies. India, on the other hand, which had
never signed the 1974 treaty, would gain access to civil nuclear com-
merce without giving up its nuclear weapons. Thus, the amendment of
the Atomic Energy Act of 1954 would represent only the beginning of
ap­ rocess which, if completed in full, would allow the United States to
ratify the agreement permitting India full access to the world of civil
nuclear commerce.
Setting out ­these rigorous and lengthy steps, which required many
months of vigorous negotiation and in the ­later stages very considerable
38 Chapter 1

international diplomacy, brought a m ­ easure of comfort to many of ­those

who ­were skeptical of the president’s civil nuclear vision for India. Yet
most participants and observers did not believe an agreement could be
accomplished. A number of times, often for long periods, the vision
seemed to be impossible to achieve. The detractors w ­ ere then out in
force in India, Amer­i­ca, and the international community at large.
Altogether, the negotiation ­process for the US-­India civil nuclear
initiative required nearly four years. It was a constant and continuous
part of my life as ambassador, since most of the ongoing discussion
and much of the negotiation took place in New Delhi. President Bush
visited India in March 2006, Congress had its first votes on the amend-
ment of the Atomic Energy Act of 1954 in July and December 2006,
and we negotiated the US-­India 123 Agreement for most of 2007. Not
­until the m ­ iddle of 2008, when many thought the opportunity to com-
plete the agreement had been lost, did we move t­ oward the conclusion.
Meanwhile, in the period from 2005 to 2008 it would have been a
­mistake to place too much weight on the US-­India civil nuclear initia-
tive, ­because for most of that period it was doubtful that the agree-
ment could be successfully completed. Past efforts to negotiate similar
agreements with Japan and China had taken up to ten years and did
not involve the magnitude of policy and ­legal changes that the Indian
deal required. In India, one had to face the real­ity that the left parties
in the co­ali­tion government w ­ ere deeply hostile to the initiative. Media
commentators and think tank pundits w ­ ere suspicious of US motives.
The debate went on, rising in intensity at each small step forward. For
me it was vital that this standoff not dominate our relations. ­There was
too much to do, too many challenges, and too much dynamism in our
growing relationship to let civil nuclear power issues interfere.
The rich diversity in US-­India relations became more apparent with
each passing month. Visitors streamed in from the United States: con-
gressional del­e­ga­tions, officials from virtually all the major departments
and agencies of the US government, business leaders, presidents and
trustees of American universities, philanthropists, artists, and enter-
tainers. The flow of Indians to Amer­i­ca also multiplied dramatically as
 Writing a New History with India 39

more business leaders and their employees visited the United States.
India’s student population in Amer­i­ca r­ose to seventy-­five thousand
and on to ninety-­four thousand, the largest foreign-­student commu-
nity in the United States by a substantial margin. Government officials
traveled to Washington frequently, and many Indian families chose
Amer­ic­ a for their holiday travel. Visas pro­cessed by the US mission
climbed to a peak in excess of eight hundred thousand per year, second
in the US system only to Mexico, with whom we had a common bor-
der and long-­standing economic relations. India was also the world’s
leading user of H-1B employment visas.
India was getting broader and more frequent coverage in the US
and international press. Tourism began booming as millions discov-
ered “Incredible India.” The stage was set for a program to educate
Americans about rising India. It seemed to Jeannie and me that the
world was coming to India. At the embassy and Roo­se­velt ­House we
met with countless del­e­ga­tions and visitors of all kinds and gave per-
sonal briefings to hundreds of visitors. I discovered that in the more
than sixty congressional del­eg­ a­tions I met with over five years, the vast
majority of members of Congress, even t­ hose who had served multiple
terms, had never visited India before. Most visitors ­were struck by
India’s dynamism and by its potential as a serious friend and partner of
the United States. As time passed and the list of influential visitors grew
larger, I realized that a campaign for a better understanding of India
in the United States would be critical to winning support for the US-­
India civil nuclear initiative, not to mention support for foreign direct
investment and institutional investment flows, defense sales, and co-
operation in education, science, and technology. As 2005 turned to
2006 ­there seemed to be no limit to the opportunity to expand and
deepen US-­India relations.
The other purpose in cultivating support was to maintain the flow
of funds for US AID’s widespread and effective social and economic
programs. I was a long-­time skeptic of US AID, which remained a for-
midable bureaucracy. However, I found that in India AID programs in
the fields of agriculture, power, ­water, ­women’s rights, and health were
40 Chapter 1

effective and valuable, especially from social and economic returns on

the relatively small amounts invested. I also found AID’s p ­ eople in
India to be of high quality and committed to their proj­ects.
AID’s proj­ects ­were effective b
­ ecause they addressed innovative ne-
cessities in India’s economy. AID promoted and provided minimal
financial support to, for example, a proj­ect to provide a farming com-
munity with insulated, antitheft electric power lines (a large amount
of electricity in India is stolen directly from power lines), and finan-
cial support for the purchase of modern w ­ ater pumps. With insulated
power lines, a constant supply of electricity was assured so that the
­water pumps could be turned on and off as needed, instead of being left
on day and night in case electricity became available. Throughout rural
India, in areas where f­ ree electricity was promised by politicians, elec-
tricity was available only from time to time. In the rural AID scheme I
visited near Delhi, the steady supply of electricity had to be paid for by
the farmers, who also financed their own new pumps. Contrary to the
common belief that ­people would not pay for electricity, ­these farmers
paid 99 ­percent of their billings for the certainty of electric power and
the ability to control their watering of crops. Beyond the improve-
ments offered to the farmers for watering crops, their village was also
electrified. When I visited in ­midafternoon, the ­women of the village
­were gathered in a classroom learning to read and write. Before the
new electric program the after­noon hours of daylight would have been
used for ­house­hold chores. Now ­these ­were done in the ­evening ­under
electric lighting so they could go to class in the after­noon. Electric
bills in the village w­ ere paid 99 ­percent of the time. This obviously
impor­tant demonstration proj­ect showed that electric power could be
commercialized at the village level and rendered eco­nom­ically and so-
cially effective. Instead of embracing this successful model, large parts
of India’s agricultural sector remain steeped in poverty and illiteracy,
waiting for f­ ree power that never comes.
I regarded programs of this type as outstanding investments that
gave the AID staff a place at the t­ able for planning and financing such
proj­ects, often conceived by AID itself. India was a country “on the
 Writing a New History with India 41

feed” for such ideas, and yet the State Department chose this moment
to cut funding drastically on all proj­ects apart from health care proj­
ects mandated by Congress. The AID ­budget fell from $150 million to
approximately $80 million in two years. Large numbers of irreplace-
able AID employees ­were terminated just as they ­were in demand as
never before for proj­ects in which minimal financial outlays could be
leveraged by the rising interest of a population of entrepreneurs.
I lobbied members of Congress to understand that the State
Department’s rationale for cutting funds for AID proj­ects in India
based on the fact that India’s economy was growing at 9 ­percent made
no sense, ­because the growth level was confined mainly to urban areas,
and India’s seven hundred million rural inhabitants remained desper-
ately poor. I also highlighted the potential for promoting impor­tant
structural changes in India’s economy.
My colleagues and I ­were successful to some extent in reversing a
modest amount of funding. For my success, however, I was reprimanded
in writing by the seventh floor of the department for appearing to be
working ­counter to the purposes of AID’s ­senior management. The
quality of leadership at AID in Washington was abysmal and out of
touch with their ­people in the field. They promised to consult their
field officers and promptly failed to do so. We found active support
among many members of Congress, and by 2011, two years ­after I had
left India, AID ­budget levels in India ­were restored. It was depressing,
however, to find that ­senior State Department officials in the Bush ad-
ministration ­were ignorant about how growth and structural economic
reforms are accomplished on the ground and why they are so impor­tant
in a country thirsting for pro­gress.
Other policy areas ­were equally challenging. I found it was neces-
sary to engage ministers directly, bringing with me key staff members
responsible for any particularly difficult policy area, to ensure the ac-
cess we needed at lower levels of the bureaucracy to carry our business
forward. This meant, for example, raising the sensitive issue of India’s
poor rec­ord on ­human trafficking and child ­labor directly with the
minister of home affairs. It meant seeing the minister of health on the
42 Chapter 1

campaign to eradicate polio in India and talking to the agricultural

minister about US wheat sales and barriers against importing US
almonds and other agricultural products. It also meant working with
the agricultural minister to allow Indian mangoes into the United
States ­after twenty-­five years of futile effort. The defense minister was
essential to building confidence in the United States as a supplier of
military equipment and weapons following the damaging fallout from
US sanctions in 1998. The minister of aviation was key to negotiating
and implementing the US-­India open skies agreement and the sale of
US commercial aircraft to India. The minister of h ­ uman resources, ef-
fectively the minister of education, and the foreign secretary ­were vital
to resolving prob­lems we experienced with the Fulbright Program in
India. ­These followed equally impor­tant challenges with the minis-
tries of foreign affairs, science and technology, finance, the Reserve
Bank of India, and India’s space program, where once again the dam-
age wrought by the 1998 sanctions had to be repaired.
In any case, t­here was no substitute for a direct personal visit by a
US ambassador well informed on the relevant policy issue and ready
to follow up with the full resources of the US mission. Nor was t­ here
any better tonic for raising morale and commitment among the em-
bassy staff than to be supported by the ambassador and launched at
the ministerial level into the Indian government bureaucracy.

* * *

I thought I was d­ oing an impor­tant job for my country and that I was
also an impor­tant person in India. A sense of pride and accomplish-
ment was with me e­ very day. Then I learned true humility and profound
admiration for the courage, dignity, and humanity of another person.
This person was my wife, Jeannie Mulford, Madame Ambassador, the
keeper of Roo­se­velt ­House and the love of my life.
In April 2005, during a visit with ­family in Phoenix, Arizona, Jeannie
was discovered to have breast cancer. A young ­woman of picture-­
perfect lifetime good health was struck by the most dreaded and most
 Writing a New History with India 43

frightening disease we could imagine. We remained in the United

States and took immediate steps to confront the disease. At Memorial
Sloan Kettering in New York, Jeannie de­cided to take aggressive action,
despite the cancer not being in an advanced stage, electing to undergo
a double mastectomy and breast reconstruction, followed by chemo-
therapy and Herceptin treatments. We consulted the cancer surgeon
and the plastic surgeon who together would carry out the surgeries
over the coming months. They w ­ ere joined by Jeannie’s oncologist, and
surgery was set for May 19.
We did our best to prepare. Jeannie’s two s­ isters came to New York;
Jeannie and I took an apartment and made the decision that we would
stay the course in India. ­After the surgery, I would return to New Delhi,
Jeannie’s s­isters would share staying in New York with Jeannie, and I
would return regularly to visit during the chemotherapy treatments.
Over the next nine months, Jeannie’s ­sisters, Kathleen in Arizona, and
Randee in Colorado, made the incredible and loving commitment to
never leave Jeannie alone in New York. They became her guardian angels.
It was not long before the doctors and nurses at Memorial Sloan
Kettering knew they had a very special patient: always smiling, un-
afraid, never a harsh or unkind word, courage and faith beyond imag-
ining. When the surgery was over, Jeannie recovered quickly, and
we discovered a maker of wigs for theater and film in Greenwich
Village who would take Jeannie’s long blond hair and fashion it into
a shoulder-­length wig. The day Jeannie’s long hair was to be cut, the
day before the chemo treatments w ­ ere to begin, it was agreed I would
leave for Delhi, as she set off to the hair salon for her first significant
haircut since the age of eight. When she saw the result, she broke
into laugher while her s­ister burst into tears, and from the photo I
received she did indeed look chic and beautiful.
Twenty-­four hours l­ater, when I was back in New Delhi, I received
a phone call from Jeannie, who said the chemotherapy had not gone
forward. Instead, the cardiology doctors had focused on a heart anomaly
Jeannie had had from birth that was thought to be basically benign. The
cardiologist, however, believed that chemotherapy could put a strain on
44 Chapter 1

Jeannie’s heart anomaly that could impose a significant risk to her life. It
was recommended that Jeannie proceed immediately to the Cleveland
Clinic to see a prominent surgeon specializing in heart anomalies.
A day or two l­ater we w ­ ere on a conference phone call with the sur-
geons at the Cleveland Clinic, weighing and discussing the results of tests
Jeannie had under­gone. The decision was that Jeannie would need to un-
dergo immediate open-­heart surgery to correct the anomaly. The date was
set for June 28, the day a­ fter my birthday, which Jeannie insisted on cel-
ebrating at an Italian restaurant in Cleveland the night before her surgery.
All the doctors had agreed that ­there was no time to lose in complet-
ing the heart surgery some forty days ­after the breast cancer surgery, so
that chemotherapy could be started by a date in August within ninety
days of the original surgery. We stayed together in Cleveland for two
weeks, and once again doctors and nurses t­here saw a kind, calm, and
fearless w­ oman face a second g­ reat surgical intrusion in the space of a
month. A few days ­later, Jeannie was walking fourteen-­minute miles
with me in the cool July Fourth weather along Lake Erie.
We left Cleveland for Washington, DC, on July 14. Four days l­ater,
Jeannie attended the full day of events at the White ­House for the state
visit of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. That ­evening she was seated
at President Bush’s ­table for the state dinner, looking stunning in a long,
high-cut gown with her short, chic hair style. She gave no hint of pain or
fatigue and neither asked for nor received special treatment of any kind.
I knew that night, as I had known for two months, that Jeannie
was and is the most extraordinarily brave and composed ­woman I ­will
ever know. She stood through that day and e­ vening for me, for our
president and first lady, and for our nation—­truly a lady from the g­ reat
heartland of Amer­i­ca.
Chemotherapy began in August and would not finish u ­ ntil mid-­
January 2006. Jeannie’s s­isters had never left her alone in New York.
I came back from India as often as I could, and together we faced the
transformative effects of chemotherapy. We went together to the chemo
treatment center, where again it was clear to me that Jeannie’s steady
kindness and good humor had made her every­one’s favorite patient.
 Writing a New History with India 45

State dinner honoring Dr. Manmohan Singh, prime minister of India, and
his wife, Gursharan Kaur, on July 18, 2005. Left to right are Ambassador
David Mulford, Mrs. Kaur, Laura Bush, Prime Minister Singh, President
George W. Bush, and Jeannie Mulford. Official White H ­ ouse photo,
­courtesy of George W. Bush Presidential Library

In August a serious infection required surgical removal of one of her

breast inserts. Chemotherapy treatments continued through the fall and
lasted to January 18, Jeannie’s birthday and also the beginning of the
Herceptin treatments, which ­were to last for a full year. ­These she vowed
to complete in India, where she was determined she would return prior
to the state visit of President and Mrs. Bush at the end of February.
My job was to find a hospital in New Delhi that could safely ad-
minister Herceptin, a relatively new cancer drug. Jeannie’s job was
to find and transport a supply of Herceptin, refrigerated and stable,
all the way to India. Jeannie came to New Delhi in mid-­February,
nonstop through London, carry­ing the Herceptin, and ready to begin
the preparations for the state visit. A few days l­ater, the ambassador,
46 Chapter 1

with his eight-­member armed security detail, accompanied Madame

Ambassador to the Ganga Ram hospital for her treatment, the arrival
witnessed by hundreds of Indians gathered around the hospital for
outpatient treatment ­services.
Jeannie carried her supply of Herceptin with her from the embassy
clinic for mixing and application at the hospital. A private room was
arranged, with a doctor and nurse in attendance. The treatment ses-
sion was less than perfect the first time, but Jeannie’s patience and the
re­spect and kindness she always showed to ­those around her brought
forth the effort to get the treatment ­process just right.
Every­one was glad to see Jeannie back at post. In part this was b
­ ecause
it was by then understood that unlike most previous ambassadors’ wives,
Jeannie had no personal agenda removed from the mission, no private
business interest, no social set she maintained in Delhi. Jeannie was
entirely devoted to the mission community and the task of leading and
managing Roo­se­velt ­House. It had been a lonely place for me and the
staff without her for ten months, but now “Jeannie Madame” was back
and we would soon be visited by President and Mrs. Bush.
President George W. Bush and First Lady Laura Bush made their
state visit to India for three days, beginning February 28, 2006. Advance
planning had begun in late 2005 and picked up in intensity in the
opening months of 2006. Planning and working with the White H ­ ouse
staff, the State Department, and the Secret ­Service, as well as with
all their counter­parts in India is a challenge of the first order for any
ambassador. In the case of India, the challenge rises to perhaps new
levels of complexity and sensitivity. State visits by American presidents
receive intense scrutiny from all ele­ments of government and from
India’s large and extremely active media. Pre­ce­dents from previous
presidential visits are dug up and carefully analyzed and India’s com-
plex bureaucracy engages across the board, giving, as I discovered, an
American presidential visit that subtle mix of top priority attention
with defensive efforts not to create or feed “American exceptionalism.”
The sheer magnitude of the US advance team and subsequent of-
ficial del­eg­a­
tion surrounding the president was overwhelming. The
 Writing a New History with India 47

presidential party took over the entire Sheraton H ­ otel in New Delhi,
two dozen vehicles and limousines ­were brought into India, together
with ­helicopters and backup aircraft positioned at key points around the
nation in the event that a rapid or other­wise unusual exit by the presi-
dent was required. All motor routes expected to be used by the president
during his visit ­were given a close inspection by a ­helicopter manned by
American military a day or two before the visit. Each of ­these activities
conducted in the sovereign state of India needed to be negotiated and
approved down to the last detail.
­There ­were moments of entertainment and frustration in the prepara-
tion ­process. When the US Secret S ­ ervice personnel impressed upon the
Indians their sensitivity to the prospect of large crowds gathering,
the Indians turned the ­faces of the US agents pale with the observation
that getting a crowd of one million together in India could be accom-
plished almost anywhere in a few minutes. On the other hand, selecting
an in­ter­est­ing location for President Bush’s main speech in India and
obtaining permission for using such a site was a sensitive and frustrating
affair up to the very day of the speech. I was intent that the president
not speak in a h ­ otel ballroom or other closed site. He should speak out
of doors at a site easily recognizable on ­television as India. We chose
a park encompassing a view of the ruins of an ancient Mughal palace.
Still standing, as a backdrop, ­were the ancient walls and Indian-­style
turrets and rows of fulsome palms lining an ave­nue ­running back to
the outer wall and forming the vision before which the president would
stand at a single lectern. To the side w ­ ere views of a Hindu t­ emple, and
in the foreground an ancient mosque. This place called Purana Qila was
perfect for the vision we wished to convey.
The Foreign Ministry took the position that we could not be per-
mitted to use a national ­treasure like Purana Qila without setting an
uncomfortable pre­ce­dent for other head-­of-­state visits. Eventually, it
was determined that we could apply to the Indian Department of
Antiquities for permission to use Purana Qila, provided the event was
­organized and sponsored by India’s two leading business associations,
the Confederation of Indian Industry and the Federation of Indian
48 Chapter 1

Commerce and Industry. When it came to issuing invitations to the

selected crowd of some five hundred ­people, the two Indian federa-
tions took the view that only the American ambassador could send
out invitations in the name of the United States of Amer­i­ca. When
the Foreign Office learned that I had designed and sent out the in-
vitations ­there was a mighty explosion, with accusations of bad faith
on our part and the threat that the event would have to be canceled,
now just two days before the specified date. Explanations that it was
the Indian federations who declined to send out the invitations, defer-
ring instead to the American ambassador, ­were brushed aside. Several
hours ­later, cooler heads prevailed, and it was explained to me that
the Foreign Office would now send out a duplicate batch of invita-
tions that would render my batch inoperable, ­because an ID number
would be printed in one corner without which the invitee would not
be permitted through security at this climactic event. I agreed to this
new procedure without difficulty, but at a meeting with Foreign Office
officials shortly before the event I could not resist reminding them to
be sure to bring the right invitation with the correct number so as not
to be excluded at the gate. This raised a constrained laugh. The event
itself was a major success.
The other event that proved sensitive to arrange for the president
in India was his request for a meeting with Indian religious leaders.
Despite India’s diversity of religions, the president, as a leader with
strong convictions of faith, knew that India is a country of widespread
religious belief. When President Bush visited China he attended a
Christian church ­service, which caused some modest controversy in
China. It was recognized that in India, where a number of major and
minor religions are represented, attending a religious ­service was out
of the question. Instead, I proposed that I would bring together a
group, if necessary at the embassy, that would be composed simply of
influential religious leaders from the vari­ous communities. The pro-
posal was met by strong ­resistance from the Indian Foreign Office on
the grounds that such a meeting would be sensitive for them to ar-
range, and in any case the main religions of India—­Hinduism, Islam,
 Writing a New History with India 49

(Far side of ­table, left to right) Ambassador David Mulford, President

George W. Bush, and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice meet with
­religious leaders in New Delhi, March 2, 2006. Official White H
­ ouse
photo by Eric Draper, courtesy of George W. Bush Presidential Library

Buddhism, Sikhism, Chris­tian­ity, and Jainism—­generally do not have

a single head figure who would widely be seen as the correct and legit-
imate leader of that faith. Any attempt by the Indian government to
bring together such a group would entail endless bickering and possi-
bly strong emotional outbursts. Instead, I proposed that I would bring
together a group at the embassy if necessary that would be composed
simply of influential religious leaders from the vari­ous communities.
This the government could not prevent, nor did they try to block such
an initiative when they understood that we at the embassy would take
the responsibility and would avoid attempting to select the supreme
head of one or other of the groups in India.
When the meeting was held it was successful beyond my expecta-
tions and I believe beyond t­ hose of President Bush. Eight individuals
­were invited to meet the president: two Hindu leaders; two Muslim
50 Chapter 1

leaders (one Sunni and the other Shiite); a Protestant; a Roman

Catholic; one Sikh; and one Buddhist. The t­ ables for the meeting ­were
arranged in a U shape with the president, Secretary of State Rice,
and me seated across the top of the U and the religious leaders down
each side.
When the religious leaders had been introduced and seated, most
of them clutching notes or texts from which to speak, the president
preempted any comments from their side by speaking first. He spoke
without notes and in a highly personal vein about the importance of his
faith in giving him the strength to carry the burden of the presidency.
The frank and unguarded passion with which President Bush spoke
took the group by surprise, rendering their prepared statements to rather
passionless commentary. The president listened patiently and t­here fol-
lowed a brief informal discussion. What I recall in par­tic­u­lar from that
gathering was the concluding remarks of several leaders to the effect that
no previous head of state of any country had ever sought them out for
a meeting of this kind and how unique and much appreciated was this
gesture by President Bush. In my mind’s eye I would have been willing to
wager that before the meeting, each leader would have ranked as highly
improbable any meeting of this nature with President Bush. No such
meeting had occurred before with a foreign head of state, and it was
generally understood that the schedule for President Bush’s visit would
be crowded with meetings and events. When the gathering took place,
they ­were shocked by his candor and faith and deeply moved by the
consideration he had given them.
The president’s official bilateral meetings with the prime minister
and other ­senior ministers at Hyderabad ­House ­were in all re­spects
friendly and constructive. The purpose of ­these meetings, which at
times ­were formal gatherings and somewhat stilted, was to highlight
the broad interface of engagement between the United States and
India. In the run-up to the visit we had nearly completed negotiations
with the Indian government on India’s nuclear separation agreement,
which would divide India’s civil nuclear industry from its strategic weap-
ons program. Several key issues remained to be resolved, the most
 Writing a New History with India 51

difficult of which was the need to meet India’s demands for assurances
or guarantees from the United States concerning supplies of nuclear
fuel to India over the medium to long term. The United States was
unwilling and unable ­under US law to guarantee ­future supplies to
India ­under all prevailing circumstances. If India ­were to violate, in
the opinion of the United States, ­future nuclear safeguards applied
to India, US cooperation with India would cease immediately. India’s
fear was that in such circumstances the United States would use its
global influence to once again isolate India from fuel supplies, even
if the rest of the world had not reached the same judgment as the
United States. At Hyderabad ­House on a sunny and pleasant day the
president approved the final draft language, which would be inscribed
in the separation agreement and in subsequent agreements to imple-
ment US-­India civil nuclear cooperation.
At the press conference in the garden of Hyderabad H ­ ouse, the
prime minister led off with the announcement that US-­India agricul-
tural cooperation, which had powered India’s “green revolution” in the
1960s and ’70s, was to be restored, with a focus on new technologies.
The civil nuclear initiative received intense interest from the media in
India and from overseas. By putting cooperation in agriculture first on
the press conference agenda, at the request of the prime minister, we
had avoided making the civil nuclear initiative the dominant theme and
possibly causing division within the co­ali­tion. The overall impression
following the meetings was that the outcome reflected wide and diverse
cooperation between our two countries.
The president’s small, informal meeting with Sonia Gandhi, leader
of the Congress Party and in effect India’s most influential leader, was
warm and on policy issues extremely positive. This had not always been
the case over the many years of contact between the United States and
the Gandhi ­family.
On the final day of the visit, President and Mrs. Bush flew to
Hyderabad for the day. Jeannie and I accompanied them on Air Force
One and Marine One for the w ­ hole day, and as during the entire visit, the
president and first lady could not have been more friendly and gracious
52 Chapter 1

Nicholas Burns (left), US under secretary of state for ­political affairs, and
Ambassador David Mulford during a press conference in New Delhi,
December 8, 2006, the day ­after the US Congress completed final
legislation for a landmark civilian nuclear deal with India, removing
contentious provisions that had raised objections by the US and Indian
governments. Manpreet Romana/AFP via Getty Images

to their Indian hosts and to us. We had selected Hyderabad for the one-­
day visit away from New Delhi b ­ ecause it is a major city in the south of
India in one of India’s largest and most populous states, Andhra Pradesh.
Hyderabad has developed a diverse and rapidly growing economy (espe-
cially agriculture, IT, and phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals). Its population is 41 ­percent
Muslim (although Andhra Pradesh is only 13 ­percent Muslim, which
is the national average for India), and Hyderabad is home to India’s
most prestigious modern business school. That e­ vening the president
announced that the United States would open a full-­service consulate in
Hyderabad, the fourth such consulate in India and the first full-­service
consulate established by the United States in more than twenty years.
This proj­ect had been developed over a number of months and involved
 Writing a New History with India 53

the sensitive decision of selecting Hyderabad over Bangalore as the loca-

tion of the new consulate. The thousands of citizens of the city selected
who applied for US visas would no longer need to travel to Chennai in
Tamil Nadu to make their application.
In the morning the president visited one of India’s premier agri-
cultural universities, including a walk through the fields and conver-
sations with the agricultural workers, and in the after­noon he had a
highly active two-­hour seminar with successful entrepreneurs ­under
the age of thirty-­five in the courtyard of the business school. ­These
outings gave the president an opportunity to gauge the dynamism of
India, away from the capital, and to meet with India’s youthful popu-
lation of aspiring entrepreneurs.
Fi­nally, ­there was the style and elegance of the visit. The presi-
dent’s speech at Purana Qila was a masterpiece of atmosphere and
­presentation. In the soft cool of the ­evening, and with the effective
lighting on the palm tree ave­nue, the ancient walls ­behind the presi-
dent, the Hindu t­emple, and the sixteenth-­century mosque, the elite
and discriminating audience was deeply and visibly impressed by the
president’s uplifting speech, his forceful delivery, and the genuinely
friendly demeanor that he so effectively conveyed.
In a single paragraph President Bush perfectly captured the essence
of the relationship he and his administration had created with India:

For many years the United States and India w ­ ere kept apart by
the rivalries that divided the world. That’s changed. Our two
­great democracies are now united by opportunities that can lift
our ­people and by threats that bring down all our pro­gress. The
United States and India, separated by half the globe, are closer
than ever before, and the partnership between our ­free nations
has the power to transform the world.

Likewise, the state dinner set that ­evening in the Mughal gardens
­behind the Imperial Palace, now known as Rashtrapati Bhavan. This vast
and elegant building, designed by ­English architect Edward Lutyens
54 Chapter 1

in the 1920s in the ­great imperial style of India, provided the setting
for a spectacular gathering of elegantly dressed Indian glitterati, India’s
­music, and fireworks. It was of course ­after dark, but the lights that
played on the surrounding flowers and flows of ­water exactly ren-
dered the atmosphere of mystery and romance that lies at the heart
of India.
When it came time to see the presidential party off, the president
told Jeannie and me that of all the places they had traveled, India was
the country they had most wanted to visit and that this had been the
best of all their visits. What came through to us and remains with us
­today from the president’s meeting with embassy staff in the garden of
Roo­se­velt ­House to the state dinner at the Rashtrapati Bhavan was the
down-­to-­earth, genuine kindness and goodwill of the president and
first lady t­ oward ­every person and situation they encountered in India.

* * *

The next phase in the follow-up from the president’s state visit to India
was the campaign to move forward with the civil nuclear initiative. With
India’s separation agreement now concluded, we turned to the next and
most difficult challenge: the need to amend the US Atomic Energy Act
of 1954 to permit India to enter into civil nuclear commerce with the
United States. This involved not only a careful review of the separation
agreement by both ­houses of Congress but also a legislative strategy on
the part of the administration that would permit a united front to be
presented to Congress. ­There had always been opposition within the
executive branch and among staff of both parties on the Hill t­oward
any concessionary change t­ oward India in the global nuclear nonprolif-
eration architecture. Despite the formally declared policy of the Bush
administration, we knew we would face internal opposition and acts of
­resistance in the legislative ­process.
Congress would support the necessary change in US law only if it
­were satisfied that the separation agreement we had negotiated with
India would effectively separate India’s strategic nuclear weapons
from its pre­sent and f­ uture capacity to develop and operate a program
 Writing a New History with India 55

of civil nuclear commerce, subject to the application of international

nuclear safeguards. The separation agreement would have to be viewed
as water-­tight by Congress and ­later by the IAEA and all forty-­five
members of the Nuclear Suppliers Group.
Draft legislation and the plan for approaching Congress developed
over the next three months. The first and most impor­tant legislative is-
sue to resolve was w ­ hether the proposed legislation that would amend
the Act would be India specific or criteria based. The former approach
would make only one exception from the global regime by isolating and
naming India. The criteria-­based approach would lay out the criteria to
be met by any country in the f­uture that might seek to be given an ex-
ception without requiring a specific change in US law for that country.
I was appalled by the second option, ­because it was the utterly unique
nature of India’s nuclear history, its track rec­ord of nonproliferation, and
the fact that it was the world’s largest democracy that to me made India
the only case for exception in the world, both now and in the ­future.
­There w ­ ere arguments on both sides of the issue, but in general officials
in the administration favored the single named exception approach. The
other approach would lead to unfortunate possibilities for slippage in
the f­ uture as other countries with support among groups in Congress or
the executive sought to extend India’s special and well-­deserved advan-
tage to themselves. In the end, the legislation named India as the only
country in the law to be provided with a special status.
This, of course, made India’s case easier to sell in the Congress, b­ ecause
India stood on its own. ­There need not be speculation about any other
country being given special treatment by virtue of a f­ uture bureaucratic
decision that a country had somehow met the terms of a body of speci-
fied criteria. For any other country to be granted an exception u ­ nder
which it could have a strategic nuclear weapons program, engage freely
in civil nuclear commerce with the world, and not be required to sign
the 1974 Nuclear Non-­Proliferation Treaty, the Congress would have
to pass a new law. Surely this was better protection for Amer­i­ca and the
world than leaving such a m ­ atter to the decision of a f­ uture administra-
tion, or worse to a f­ uture secretary of state without requiring the formal
consent of Congress.
56 Chapter 1

The wording of the legislation also proved to be controversial when

brought to bear against the existing wording in the Atomic Energy
Act concerning prohibitions against nuclear leakage or proliferation.
Legislation in the H ­ ouse was submitted in May; hearings w ­ ere held
but floor action was delayed. Fi­nally, in July, as the congressional sum-
mer recess approached, the legislation was voted out of the committee
and went to the floor for the vote. This took place on July 26, 2006,
and the legislation was carried by 359 votes to 68 votes, a most re-
markable triumph by any ­measure. Members had given India a stun-
ning bipartisan majority, recognizing India’s critical importance in the
world, its special priority for the United States, and the faith Amer­
i­ca had in India’s capacity to contribute positively to the evolution of
the world’s nuclear nonproliferation architecture. I was proud of the
unity achieved in our ­House of Representatives, its far-­sighted capacity
for leadership, and the fact that we had successfully transformed early
skepticism into an understanding of India’s importance to the United
States and the world at large.
The ­House vote was only the first step, however. We still faced the
challenge in the Senate, where conditions for passage would be much
more unpredictable and our time clock would be that much more ad-
vanced. ­There w­ ere also the forthcoming midterm congressional elec-
tions that would dominate the agenda ­after the summer recess and carry
us through November. President Bush’s declining approval ratings and
the ­bitter partisan atmosphere promised for the elections seemed to
blight prospects for a statesmanlike focus on the case that had to be
made to move the US-­India civil nuclear initiative forward to the next
stage. The Senate’s version of the bill was similar to the bill passed by
the H­ ouse in July, but Senate procedures posed a far greater risk of de-
structive amendments being introduced from the floor, or other amend-
ments that might be well intended but would be unacceptable to India.
The climax of the midterm congressional election campaign in
September–­October 2006 saw the full force of partisan politics break
onto the scene. Any chance of Senate action on the H ­ ouse bill or any-
thing resembling it before the election proved n ­ onexistent. Indeed, we
 Writing a New History with India 57

could hardly imagine any basis on which Republicans and D ­ emocrats

could find common ground to consider and debate a foreign policy
issue as sensitive as altering the world’s nuclear nonproliferation ar-
chitecture to accommodate India in a world of rising concerns about
North ­Korea, Iran, and Iraq. Even if the legislation could theoretically
be raised ­after the election in a “lame duck” session, t­ here would hardly
be time for hearings and a vote before the end of the 109th Congress
in January 2007. Time was slipping away, and we had not even begun
to think about how a 123 Agreement could be negotiated w ­ ere we to
succeed in overcoming the Senate legislative hurdle.
Thanks to the skill of the State Department’s legislative affairs
­people, the active support of the White ­House, and the leadership of
National Security Advisor Steve Hadley and Under Secretary of State
Nick Burns, the legislation was brought forward in the December ses-
sion that followed the midterm election. In the course of floor debate
eight potentially damaging “killer amendments” w ­ ere proposed and
defeated. Significantly, several of ­these amendments ­were supported
by then senators Obama of Illinois and Clinton of New York. When
the amendments ­were defeated and the dust settled, both senators then
joined the eighty-­two other senators who voted in f­ avor of the Indian
civil nuclear initiative. From the distance of New Delhi, and without
personal contact with ­either of the senators, it was impossible to know
­whether their motivation was to derail the nuclear deal with India or
simply to deny President Bush what, if ultimately successful, would turn
out to be an impor­tant part of his foreign policy legacy. ­Whatever one’s
final judgment, the Indians ­were aware at the time and remain aware
­today of the reluctant, last-­minute support that both ­these impor­tant
Demo­cratic Party leaders recorded for the cornerstone initiative of the
US-­India strategic partnership. It is not surprising to me ­today that the
warmth in relations between the United States and India from 2003 to
2009 has cooled significantly ­under the Obama administration.
Thus, as the year 2006 drew to a close, Congress had amended the
Atomic Energy Act of 1954 to permit India to become the sole ex-
ception in the world’s nuclear nonproliferation regime: namely, to be
58 Chapter 1

acknowledged de facto to be a state with nuclear weapons (as opposed

to a nuclear weapons state) that would be permitted full access to the
world of civil nuclear commerce without signing the 1974 Nuclear
Non-­Proliferation Treaty or giving up its nuclear weapons. By the ac-
tion of Congress, we ­were authorized to move forward with India to
negotiate the 123 Agreement that would set out the bilateral arrange-
ment between the United States and India that would govern our nu-
clear cooperation. This agreement, if it could be achieved, would also
serve as the basis for approaching the IAEA for approval of India’s
nuclear nonproliferation safeguards and for the comprehensive con-
sensus that would have to be achieved with all forty-­five members
of the Nuclear Suppliers Group (all signatories of the 1974 treaty).
Fi­nally, Congress would have to approve the 123 Agreement and all
the other arrangements before its legislative action could come into
full force.
The Senate vote on the civil nuclear initiative marked the turning
point in the US-­India civil nuclear initiative. This was the moment
when the opponents in the administration knew that they would have
to cooperate in the effort to complete the agreement or be forced into
open opposition. ­Until now, they had had the luxury of hiding b ­ ehind
the prospect that Congress would reject the change in law or place
it on long-­term hold. Instead, the impressive post-­election bipartisan
majority that materialized in the Senate meant that we would move on
immediately to the next phase of negotiation with India of the formi-
dable 123 Agreement.
2
­Going the Distance

The American ambassador enjoys a very special position in India that

brings with it almost unlimited opportunities to make a real impact
on day-­to-­day relations between the two countries. The combination
in one position of ambassador plenipotentiary and chief executive
officer of the United States in India comes to mind again. One is
almost never alone, never beyond the reach of colleagues, or most
government officials, or the multitude of Indians who accord to the
American ambassador the most remarkable re­spect and admiration.
This is not a personal ­matter for which one can or should take credit,
but truly a phenomenon inherent in the office and in Indian society.
Amer­i­ca is deeply respected and greatly admired in India, and its am-
bassadors are seen, rightly or wrongly, as impor­tant ­people who are
the personal representative of the president of the United States. It is
a sobering real­ity and takes some getting used to. It is also humbling
and sometimes deeply and unforgettably moving. As time passed, I
became more aware of the importance of living up to ­these expec-
tations and trying to use the re­spect and goodwill inherent in my
position to maximize the impact I could make on the overall US-­
India relationship. ­There seemed no end to the daily opportunities
for pro­gress.

59
60 Chapter 2

I grew to love India, or I should say Jeannie and I grew to love

India together—­the ­great ­human kaleidoscope, the place of perpetual
activity, color, movement, pathos, chaos, beauty, and reverence for the
Creator, the gods of all t­ hings, and the exotic mysteries of life. India’s
seasons ­were part of its charm, even the blinding heat of the days that
would soften in the ­evening or the chill and fogs of winter. Then ­there
­were the perfect days—so many sunny, comfortable days—­and India’s
diverse and exotic wildlife and plants, trees, and flowers, and especially
the birds. And also the ­music, so often bringing peace, and the danc-
ing, ­whether classical or passionately traditional, was also a part of
daily life in India.
We traveled widely in virtually e­ very region and found the p ­ eople
invariably kind, considerate, and polite. At times, I hardly knew how
to respond to the re­spect shown to us, the representatives of Amer­i­ca.
At country ­hotels or rest stops, I would often be asked to review the
local guard, drawn up in lines, armed with old r­ifles and commanded
by energetic officers shouting out the command to pre­sent arms. Or
­there would be ­people at airports, relatives or friends of the airport
man­ag­er, who had requests usually associated with visa aspirations. On
one occasion at Udaipur airport a young w ­ oman dancer in full costume,
who was a member of a traditionalist dance troupe invited to perform
at Car­ne­gie Hall in New York, asked that I intervene at the embassy to
change the date of her visa interview appointment, b ­ ecause it conflicted
with the date set for her computer science final. She presented photos
of herself dancing with live fire lanterns balanced on her head.
Jeannie and I developed the humorous phrase between us that “in
India it’s all about visas.” In fact, by late 2006 the visa p
­ rocess as con-
ducted by the US mission in India had become a significant prob­lem
with negative fallout for our image in India. Ambassadors are admon-
ished by the State Department to stay out of the visa business, which
as a general rule is sound. For an ambassador to intervene personally
in the visa ­process on behalf of an individual is frowned upon, and I
was told, illegal. In India, however, the huge demand for visas to the
United States had generated serious prob­lems we needed to address.
 ­Going the Distanc  61

By the summer of 2006 the backlog for the visa applications, each
of which required a face-­to-­face interview with a US consular officer,
had reached the point where applicants faced a wait of 187 days to be
interviewed. For Indian citizens needing to go to the United States
for business meetings, weddings, funerals, or school this was an im-
possible situation, and in many cases it was deeply resented. Despite
an express program for certain designated businesses and an effort to
move students to the front of the line, the continuing pressure was
such that applicants ­were calling the embassy, including the ambas-
sador, for preferential treatment or paying visa agents with whom the
embassy had formal working relationships for earlier-­priority inter-
view appointments. In fact, the visa agents w ­ ere buying blocks of visa
appointments and selling them to desperate applicants who could
not wait six months for an interview. It was easy to see the scope for
abuse or influence in the management of the interview appointments
­process.
The consular department, however, faced genuine prob­lems that
weighed heavi­ly on their ­people, many of whom w ­ ere young, first-­
assignment Foreign ­Service officers. When one considered that the mis-
sion through the embassy in New Delhi and its consulates in Kolkata,
Mumbai, and Chennai was pro­cessing some eight hundred thousand
visa appointments per year, ­simple math conveys the burden that t­ hese
officers w­ ere carry­ing. On ­every business day some thirty-­five hun-
dred visa applications had to be pro­cessed, each requiring a brief face-­
to-­face interview conducted through the bulletproof glass of a cubicle
manufactured and imported from the United States. The pressure on
young officers conducting in some cases over a hundred interviews per
day ­after reviewing each applicant’s online application was clearly very
challenging, especially when it is understood that it was the responsi-
bility of the young officer to accept or reject each application and to
affix his or her signature on the bottom line reflecting that decision.
This requirement alone tended to encourage a risk-­averse attitude, es-
pecially among young, inexperienced officers, with the result that rejec-
tion rates could often run quite high.
62 Chapter 2

As the delays for pro­cessing visas grew longer, I became more uncom-
fortable with a program that seemed to function in isolation from the
rest of the mission and was both defensive and protective of its apparent
prerogatives. Admittedly, visa fraud and security legitimately impact the
consular department’s mandate, but it seemed unreasonable to me that
the visa backlog should have built up so dramatically and that reducing
it to more reasonable waiting times should be beyond our capabilities.
I therefore took an interest in this specialized field, which few
ambassadors pay any more than fleeting attention to, and even then
usually on an individual-­case basis. To me, the issue of visas to the
United States was a s­ ervice business. We charged each applicant an
upfront fee of $130 to apply, which was not refundable w ­ hether the
applicant obtained a visa or not. Amer­i­ca is an open society, and so
long as our security is protected and we are satisfied the applicant
does not intend to remain illegally in the United States, we should
welcome visitors without imposing excessive bureaucratic constraints
on legitimate visitors. Making all applicants wait 187 days to have
the interview and receive the final decision seemed to me to fly in the
face of our claim that Amer­i­ca is an open society.
I began to watch the visa operation—­for example, how many win­
dows ­were open and in use how much of the time? Could we get addi-
tional help from Washington in the form of temporary officers? Could
we enlist assistance from other qualified officers in dif­fer­ent depart-
ments in the mission to pitch in and help the consular ­people? And
fi­nally, could we break the systemic practice among agents to hoard and
subsequently sell blocks of visa appointments?
In September I convened an offsite meeting in Jaipur for all ­senior
leaders and consular officers in the mission. The idea was to recognize
the serious challenge we faced and to expose and discuss solutions to
­these prob­lems. We also needed to show our young officers that we
­were concerned about the burdens they ­were working ­under and their
need to be exposed to other types of work in the mission in order to
avoid a condition popularly referred to as “visa burnout.” Above all,
we needed to make a mission-­wide commitment to removing the visa
 ­Going the Distanc  63

backlog and maintaining the waiting period in f­uture at some more

reasonable level. I was surprised by the level of support this initiative
received. ­People clearly felt unhappy and defensive about the position
we had put ourselves in with the Indian public. We concluded the off-
site with a mission-­wide commitment to defeat the visa backlog and
named the enterprise the “visa blitz.”
Through a combination of ­measures, extra support from the State
Department in Washington, assistance from competent officers from
other areas in the mission, and the discovery that by putting out more
aggressively a significantly larger number of visa appointments, we
broke the back of the visa backlog. This breakthrough was b ­ ecause visa
application appointments w ­ ere usually arranged by applicants through
a visa agency. The long backlog of visa appointments had resulted in
agents booking blocks of appointments r­ unning into the f­ uture, which
they apparently could sell at a markup to visa applicants desperate for
an ­earlier appointment than the 187-­day wait generated by the em-
bassy system. Once we expanded and accelerated our own appointment
schedule, we found that “no shows” for appointments r­ ose sharply, thus
showing that the system was being gamed and immediately shorten-
ing the backlog.
Within three months, the wait for a visa application was down to six
days throughout India. In the balance of my time as ambassador the
waiting period only rarely exceeded fourteen days. I received a weekly
report and graph of the visa application situation, which if deterioration
occurred we immediately discussed among colleagues to determine the
­causes of any change in the visa backlog.
The response from the Indian public was perhaps the most satisfy-
ing aspect of the campaign. Positive messages flowed into the mission,
and in thanking my colleagues I pointed out that money c­ ouldn’t buy
positive publicity like this for Amer­ic­ a. The State Department also
responded by sending out messages to other missions in the world
saying, “If they can do this in India, why ­can’t you?”

* * *
64 Chapter 2

­ ere was another rewarding experience of quite a dif­fer­ent kind

Th
that brought unexpected results still pre­sent in India ­today. ­After the
president’s visit Jeannie returned to New York for additional surgery.
When she came back to New Delhi she was invited to speak at the
New Delhi ­Women’s Press Club with two other prominent Indian la-
dies who had not spoken ­earlier about their cancer. ­Until then we had
not considered Jeannie’s ­battle against cancer as anything other than
our personal affair. At the ­Women’s Press Club that day in a room
filled with TV cameras and press, Jeannie opened a w ­ hole new and
very surprising world.
By all accounts afterward, Jeannie’s deeply personal and emotional
remarks “literally took the oxygen out of the room.” That such remarks
should be given in the Press Club by the wife of the American ambas-
sador in such a s­ imple and direct manner amazed the gathered crowd.
We soon understood the reason. Cancer, and breast cancer in par­tic­ul­ar,
is virtually a taboo subject in India for public conversation. ­Women in
India with symptoms of the disease feared to reveal it, e­ ither ­because
health prob­lems of other members of the ­family ­were given priority by
most ­mothers or ­because w ­ omen feared to be ostracized by friends or
their extended families.
The nature of marriage in India, especially dowry marriages in rural
India, made ­women particularly vulnerable to adverse health develop-
ments that make them a liability to the f­amily. Worse still is talk of
families rejecting a w ­ oman with breast cancer as a person afflicted in
this life with the sins of previous lives.
­W hatever the reasons, the outcome was, as we discovered, that
­women in India do not take preventative steps to detect breast cancer
early, and when afflicted with physical signs of cancer they seek to
avoid revealing their malady. The result is that stage four breast cancer
is all too common, with very high death rates, which in turn strikes
fear into the general population, contributing further to the veil of
secrecy surrounding this potent disease. An impor­tant contributor to
this shameful situation, where men in par­tic­u­lar can be ­either insensi-
tive or hostile to w
­ omen’s afflictions, is the shortage of equipment and
 ­Going the Distanc  65

clinical facilities for mammogram checkups and other cancer-­related

­services throughout India.
Shortly a­ fter the Press Club event, Jeannie was invited to be inter-
viewed on NDTV’s 60 Minutes program. In a ten-­minute segment,
with quiet, elegant composure, Jeannie spoke to an audience estimated
at forty million ­people spread across India. ­Here again was the wife of
the American ambassador speaking openly and with quiet confidence
on this very personal and sensitive subject. Afterward, Jeannie received
personal handwritten letters from ­women in the remotest parts of India,
thanking her and blessing her for speaking out on their afflictions. She
was invited to be the keynote speaker opening several medical confer-
ences on cancer. She was asked to repeat her testimonial as a breast
cancer survivor to the audiences of doctors and technicians, and at each
gathering I watched this beautiful, composed w ­ oman describe the seven
surgeries and chemotherapy treatments she had endured and her plea
for greater efforts for social transparency and early detection throughout
India. Whenever she spoke t­ here was perfect silence. Doctors and tech-
nicians learned that she was not afraid, that she practiced a constant op-
timism in all phases of the treatments, that she took aggressive ­measures
by choice to combat the disease, that she had no medical advice to give
beyond focusing ­women on self-­examination and early preventative
­measures, and fi­nally that if by speaking she could help one ­woman in
India to successfully defeat breast cancer, her prayers would be answered.
Afterward, she was surrounded by doctors and technicians telling her
she had given the most impor­tant speech of any medical conference.
Among the doctors pre­sent at the First Annual Asian Breast Cancer
Conference was Jeannie’s surgeon from Memorial Sloan Kettering in
New York, Dr. Hiram Cody, and an Indian doctor, Dr. Rajeev Ram,
of Hyderabad. Jeannie was invited to commemorate the opening in
Hyderabad of Dr. Ram’s digital mammography center, the first in
southern India. She was also asked to open a large pop m ­ usic con-
cert at Hyderabad’s new convention center. I ­will never forget Jeannie
bathed in moving strobe lights, giving her personal testimonial to
thousands of young ­people before the ­music was permitted to begin.
66 Chapter 2

Lastly, in February 2008, Jeannie was asked to lead the first-­ever

breast cancer Walk for Life in New Delhi, ­organized by CanSupport, an
Indian NGO headed by Hermala Gupta. Prime Minister Manmohan
Singh’s wife, Mrs. Gursharan Kaur, and Jeannie launched this event to-
gether on a chilly sunny morning, accompanied by some five thousand
walkers dressed in white and yellow ­T-shirts. Since then, Jeannie and
Mrs. Kaur have kicked off seven consecutive “Walks for Life” in New
Delhi, each with a growing number of participants who make the four-­
kilometer early-­morning walk.
This was the surprising and uplifting outcome from Jeannie’s strug­gle
with breast cancer. We have both been marked by the wondrous and un-
expected consequences of her personal experience and by the fortuitous
circumstances that placed her in India at that time, as the wife of the
American ambassador, performing a personal gesture of courage, faith,
and humility before the countless millions of friendly ­people in India.

* * *

Perhaps the broadest challenge with implications for India’s social and
economic pro­gress over the next d ­ ecade centers on education. Part of
the case for India sustaining high growth over the next thirty years
rests on its claim to have the largest young population (55 ­percent
of Indians are ­under the age of twenty-­four) among all the major
countries of the world. Moreover, India’s young ­people have high as-
pirations, are desperately keen to obtain an education, are comfort-
able with technology, and in general are fluent in ­English. Thus, while
China, Rus­sia, Japan, ­Europe, and even the United States ­will suffer
in the near f­uture from declining populations of young p ­ eople, India
­will have the largest, most productive, and youn­gest workforce in the
world at just the right time to propel India’s economy forward. This
optimistic projection assumes that India successfully educates this bulge
of young workers and provides them with jobs and adequate health
care. Other­wise, an aspiring body of frustrated young ­people might
prove to be a p
­ olitical liability.
 ­Going the Distanc  67

The real­ity in India t­ oday is that India’s primary and secondary edu-
cation systems are sadly lacking in both scale and quality. It is true that
education is a top priority for families and that India’s elite schools and
universities produce large numbers of brilliant students who we see in
Amer­ic­ a in large numbers. But tens of millions of young ­people are left
­behind in the Indian education system, and the government’s pre­sent
policies, although improving the situation somewhat, lack the scale and
commitment necessary to accomplish the education of this young gen-
eration, which w ­ ill be entering India’s workforce in the next few years.
While serving as ambassador I received more than sixty visiting
American university presidents, provosts, chancellors, deans, and del­
e­ga­tions of boards of trustees who came to India to explore accessing
India’s ­giant education market. A group of progressive ministers in
the government advocated greater change and the opening of India to
foreign universities, which at pre­sent are not permitted to enter India
on a fully accredited basis to offer their degree programs in-­country
to Indian students. Although education is a state subject ­under India’s
constitution, the federal government plays an overriding role in India’s
national education policy. The minister of ­human resources, who was
in charge of education at the federal level, successfully resisted the
reform efforts by youn­ger ministers during the full term of my ­service
with the result that only now, u ­ nder the new Congress-­led govern-
ment, is India beginning to consider legislation to open India to for-
eign direct investment in education. ­Unless India opens more fully to
the outside world and expands its own existing education system it
seems doubtful that it can scale up quickly enough to educate millions
more of its young ­people.
My relations with India’s minister of h ­ uman resources w­ ere gener-
ally unproductive. Minister Arjun Singh was an impor­tant but ag-
ing ­political figure who was also a cultural nationalist who strongly
opposed entry to India by foreign educational institutions. He also
seemed to be opposed to the US-­India Fulbright Scholarship Program
set up by treaty between the United States and India in 1951 ­under
the leadership of Senator William Fulbright.
68 Chapter 2

India’s Fulbright Program had been a major success story over many
years. Between the two countries t­here ­were thousands of Fulbright
alumni, and the program continued to enjoy the prestigious reputation
it enjoyed in other parts of the world. Yet major prob­lems appeared
­under the then current government. ­These ­were of two kinds: one
was inordinate delays in obtaining the necessary visas for American
Fulbrighters coming into India; the other was the fact that some
12 ­percent of the study programs of foreign Fulbright scholars w ­ ere
denied without explanation. As ambassador, I began receiving let-
ters of complaint from Fulbright participants and in some cases from
their families. ­These complained of delays that greatly incon­ve­nienced
Fulbrighters who had resigned from positions, given up appointments
or scholarships, or had other­wise put themselves in circumstances
incon­ve­nient to them and their families to accept a Fulbright grant
in India. I discovered that of the approximately one hundred students
and faculty awarded Fulbright scholarships in 2007 more than three-­
quarters had waited up to a year for a visa and some longer. ­Others
had had their study proj­ects rejected without explanation or appeal.
One group of ­English language teachers had already waited for visas
beyond the term of absence agreed with their home school, as well
as beyond the portion of the Indian school year during which they
­were supposed to teach.
When I looked more fully into the prob­lem, I was struck by the
casual injustice of the system in India. At the embassy we issued vi-
sas to Indian Fulbright students g­ oing to Amer­i­ca in a single after­
noon and did not examine or question their study proj­ect in the United
States. When I reviewed the American study proj­ects the Indians had
rejected, I could see no justification for such sensitivity and the blatant
interference with academic freedom. Contrary to the agreed-on time-
table that was to govern the program—­awards in April and visas to
be pro­cessed by June—­our ­people ­were waiting up to nine months for
visas and in some cases longer. My staff, who w ­ ere charged with press-
ing the Indians to act more quickly, w ­ ere forced to shut­tle between
the Ministry of ­Human Resources and the Ministry of Home Affairs
 ­Going the Distanc  69

to discover where the delays w ­ ere being generated. In the p­ rocess, I

discovered that both the students and my staff ­were not being treated
with the re­spect and goodwill one would assume should apply to a
jointly agreed academic program between two major democracies. Fi­
nally, I discovered (as most anyone in the State Department already
knew) that since 1951 the United States had itself paid for the entire
US-­India Fulbright Program, whereas in virtually all other countries
with a Fulbright Program the host country contributed up to half of
the funds required to operate the program.
­After months of effort with the Foreign Ministry as well as with
the two ministries charged with ­running the program, it was clear
that without firmer action we would not clear the visa backlog and
resolve the interference by the Indians with the content of the study
programs. I also found a distinct lack of willingness in our own State
Department to push the Indians more aggressively.
We had reached a point where determined action was required. Such
action brought forward by the ambassador might succeed in resolving
the prob­lem, or it might seriously strain relations between the two coun-
tries at the expense of the ambassador’s reputation. I had reached the
point, however, where I felt it was intolerable that American Fulbrighters
should be so blatantly discriminated against, that we should seem to ac-
cept interference with the academic freedoms implied in the Fulbright
Program, and that we should continue to pay all of the program’s costs,
as we had ­these past fifty-­two years, in a country clearly able to afford
some financial contribution. Indeed, if the Indians continued to enjoy
a ­free ­ride on Fulbright ­there was e­ very reason to believe they would
make ­little effort ­toward reforms.
I de­cided to take several steps that I hoped would restore the prestige
of the Fulbright Program and lead to its expansion as a premier vehicle
for education and better understanding between India and Amer­i­ca. I
began by writing a letter in early 2008 to the newly selected Fulbright
scholars, saying in effect, congratulations for being awarded a Fulbright,
but please be aware that this could be bad for your health. The letter
went on to explain the prob­lems we had been having with the Indian
70 Chapter 2

program, so that no new Fulbrighter would be unaware of the potential

incon­ve­nience they might face.
The next step was to call on the foreign secretary, Mr. Shankar Menon,
who was invariably friendly and had himself made a significant effort
to clear up the ­process prob­lems with the ministries of ­human resources
and home affairs. The Foreign Ministry’s efforts, though welcome, had
been only marginally effective. Mr. Menon was very supportive of the
Fulbright Program and understood its importance to India over the
past half ­century. But entrenched bureaucracy is difficult to overcome
anywhere and especially perhaps in India. I showed Mr. Menon the
letter I had sent, which he found rather shocking, and proposed that
in the next months we should work together to achieve the following
objectives. The first was to remove the visa backlog and to stop the
practice in India of rejecting the study programs of Fulbright scholars.
The second was to amend the original Fulbright Program agreement to
provide for India to expand the program by paying half of the finances
each year. And, fi­nally, that we should amend the agreement to permit
private-­sector parties to contribute to the program. If we could not
achieve the first two objectives, I indicated that my inclination would
be to suspend the program u ­ ntil its prob­lems could be fixed.
This meeting marked the turning point for transforming the Fulbright
Program into a true US-­India partnership. Thanks to the intervention of
Mr. Menon, the visa backlog began to shrink, study programs ­stopped
being rejected out of hand, and we began the dialogue that would result
in India agreeing to finance half the program by matching the amount
contributed annually by the United States. They also agreed to per-
mit private solicitations of resources. The outcome was a doubling of
the Fulbright Program from approximately 130 grants (covering both
Indians g­ oing to the United States and Americans coming to India) to
close to 300. In the f­uture, if private resources could be enlisted, I saw
no reason why the program could not in due course grow to a thousand
scholars each year.
The Fulbright Board in India was reconstituted to incorporate
higher quality, more enthusiastic ­people who ­were willing to consider
 ­Going the Distanc  71

greater diversification of the study content of the program. I success-

fully advocated for the program to move away from too heavy a focus
on lit­er­a­ture and culture to include technology and agricultural science.
When Mr. Menon and I signed the amended agreement in 2008
at a small luncheon at Hyderabad H ­ ouse I could not have been more
pleased. The experience with Fulbright perfectly reflected the dynamic
of the US-­India relationship and the mix of official bilateral and pri-
vate civil society interests. It is this aspect of our relations that ­causes
me to believe so firmly in the ­future our two nations ­will share.
Two other experiences intervened in my last two years that left
an indelible mark on Jeannie and me. The first was our visit to His
Holiness the Dalai Lama in Dharamsala. He is a most remarkable
individual, and Dharamsala is a unique replica of Tibet. The United
States has supported the Tibetan community in exile for many years,
especially by funding and supporting vari­ous kinds of schools for or-
phans and other ­children left by parents who brought them over the
mountains from Tibet to leave them in freedom at Dharamsala. The
extraordinary presence of His Holiness pervaded the entire Buddhist
community in Dharamsala and not surprisingly accompanies His
Holiness wherever he goes in the world.
Our other experience came with the responsibility the US ambassa-
dor to India has for the Kingdom of Bhutan. Formal relations between
the United States and Bhutan have never been established, but the US
embassy in New Delhi is responsible for US visa ­services and other
­matters for Bhutanese citizens, and the ambassador is required to visit
Bhutan periodically. This proved to be a pleasant and stimulating re-
sponsibility. King Jigme Singye (abdicated 2006) of Bhutan, who had
been on the throne since 1972, when he was seventeen years old, was
a man of extraordinary vision. Over some twenty years he gradually
introduced ele­ments of demo­cratic governance into Bhutan, culminat-
ing in 2008 in his abdication and the introduction of a constitutional
monarchy with his son, Jigme Khesar Namgyel, crowned as the first
constitutional monarch of Bhutan. In light of my ­earlier interests in
constitutional engineering in Northern Rhodesia and the holding of
72 Chapter 2

elections, I was fascinated and impressed by the wisdom and admin-

istration King Jigme Singye developed to accomplish this impressive
change. Jeannie and I attended the memorable and colorful coronation
in Bhutan of King Jigme Khesar Namgyel in December 2006.

* * *

In early 2007 the United States began an intensive engagement with

India on the negotiation of the US-­India Section 123 Agreement
which, when completed, would govern bilateral arrangements between
the United States and India for civil nuclear cooperation. This would be
a true test of the resolve of both sides to determine ­whether a workable
123 Agreement could actually be hammered out in a fashion acceptable
to both sides, to the world at large, and ultimately to the US Congress.
The US negotiation ­process in Washington was led by Under Secretary
of State for P ­ olitical Affairs Nick Burns. Responsibility was shared
with National Security Advisor Stephen Hadley and his assistant John
Rood, a man with knowledge and experience in the field of nuclear
policy. In the State Department the chief expert among the negotia-
tors was Director of the Office of Nuclear Energy, Safety and Security
Richard Stratford, who had negotiated previous 123 Agreements for
the United States. Although skeptical of success, Dick Stratford was a
complete professional, a man of deep experience, loyal dedication to the
agreed-on agenda of the US government, and realistic in his approach
to a complex and po­liti­cally sensitive ­process.
Most of our meetings took place in India with three key figures in
the Indian government. First, Shyam Saran, former foreign secretary
and now the prime minister’s representative for the express purpose of
this negotiation; National Security Advisor M. K. Narayanan, often
referred to as the keeper of the equities of the Gandhi f­ amily; and fi­
nally, Foreign Secretary Shankar Menon, who was the former Indian
ambassador to China and Pakistan.
Pro­gress was slow, partly b ­ ecause the education p
­ rocess concern-
ing the comprehensive reach of the 123 Agreement took time to be
 ­Going the Distanc  73

Nicholas Burns, US ­under secretary of state (center right), shakes

hands with Shiv Shankar Menon, Indian foreign secretary (center left)
as India’s top nuclear negotiator Shyam Saran (left) and Ambassador
David Mulford look on during a meeting in New Delhi, June 1, 2007.
The meeting was a continuation of talks between India and the
United States intended to resolve delays in the nuclear agreement.
Raveendran/AFP via Getty Images

digested by the Indians, but also b ­ ecause a key ele­ment on the Indian side,
namely India’s power­ful and privileged nuclear science community, was
not regularly pre­sent at our meetings, not in any case at its most ­senior
level. In fact, as negotiations proceeded during the first six months of
2007, it seemed to me that India’s nuclear science community had lost
its initial enthusiasm for the deal. ­There was no doubt that rising leftist
opposition was making itself felt in the nuclear community and in the
cabinet co­ali­tion. In addition, a community that had enjoyed the par­tic­
u­lar f­avor and re­spect (not to mention funding and other privileges) of
Indian governments over some thirty years began perhaps to recognize
that it would be subject to new constraints and far greater demands for
transparency than in the past.
74 Chapter 2

By March 2007 we had reached a point where further pro­gress

seemed doubtful. A distinct paralysis had set in regarding the more dif-
ficult issues, especially concerning India’s demand for ironclad fuel as-
surances, minimal control over international use and allocation of fuel
and technology between the civil and strategic sides of the industry,
and fi­nally the degree of intrusion into India’s nuclear affairs by out-
side players such as the IAEA, the Nuclear Suppliers Group, and the
United States. The Indians also sought to give the widest and most flex-
ible interpretation to the amended language of the Atomic Energy Act
to permit them the greatest latitude pos­si­ble in the provisions of the
123 Agreement. For weeks on end we waited in vain for the Indian side
to put its bottom-­line demands on the ­table. Instead, ­there seemed to
be endless sparring when it seemed to us that India’s leadership should
force its nuclear scientific community and bureaucrats to face up to the
fundamental p ­ olitical decisions that would have to be made if India was
to see its g­ rand proj­ect through to completion. Several highly touted
meetings in Washington fared no better, and we began to won­der who
in India was r­ eally in charge of the nuclear initiative.
Meanwhile, we also engaged in our first discussions about how the
enterprise would be advanced to the IAEA and the Nuclear Suppliers
Group once we had completed the 123 Agreement. ­These exchanges
highlighted very deep differences on the degree of responsibility to
be borne by each party in the next phase. The board of governors
of the IAEA met several times a year, but not all country members of
the Nuclear Suppliers Group w ­ ere represented on the IAEA board. In
addition, the 123 Agreement, when completed, was not itself subject
to the formal approval of the IAEA board. Instead, the IAEA-­India
bilateral Nuclear Safeguards Agreement would require the formal
approval of the board, and, so far as we could tell, the Indians had
not yet seriously engaged the IAEA in this negotiation. It seemed
that perhaps India was assuming it could get by in the IAEA with a
relatively ­simple pro forma safeguards agreement pushed through the
board by the United States. Our view, on the other hand, was that the
IAEA Nuclear Safeguards Agreement was a bilateral ­matter between
 ­Going the Distanc  75

the IAEA and India to be voted upon ultimately u ­ nder the standard
procedures of the board.
The second issue divided us even further: how India was to win the
support of the Nuclear Suppliers Group for the transformation of its
status from nuclear outcast to full civil nuclear participant in the world’s
nuclear nonproliferation regime. The Nuclear Suppliers Group met in
plenary session at most only twice a year. The United States had made an
explanatory ­presentation to the group, but we clearly looked to India to
follow up with its own campaign to sell the plan for civil nuclear devel-
opment as well as the credibility of its plans to comply with the princi­
ples and practices of nuclear nonproliferation. As the months passed, we
urged India to make its case before one of the Nuclear Suppliers Group
plenary meetings to begin to build the support that would be needed
when the 123 Agreement and the IAEA-­India safeguards agreement
­were placed before the group for formal consideration.
No doubt the p ­ rocess for achieving a full consensus supporting
India in a group that functioned only by consensus as opposed to
majority vote was extremely challenging. Our view was that it was
vital for India to lay this groundwork at the few plenary sessions that
would pre­sent themselves over the next ­eighteen months. India’s view
was that it was the responsibility of the United States to achieve the
needed consensus on India’s behalf. Only the United States could
bring the necessary influence to bear on all the member nations to
move them to a full consensus. India’s efforts, they feared, would be
divisive, and in any case, India lacked the power to force recalcitrant
members to come to the ­table with positive attitudes. The result was
that as plenary opportunities passed, we waited for India, and they
waited for us while members of the group enjoyed the comfort of
almost complete withdrawal.
The climax of the 123 negotiation came in July at a meeting in
Washington. The outstanding points that remained unresolved w ­ ere
few in number. Bringing the Indian side to the t­ able for final resolution
of ­these issues had taken months of talks that failed to move t­oward
resolution. One began to won­der ­whether it was the chairman of India’s
76 Chapter 2

nuclear power authority who held the power of final decision or the
prime minister. The co­ali­tion itself was divided, with the leftist parties
holding a position of inflexible hostility ­toward the entire enterprise. Fi­
nally, we succeeded in getting all the ­senior negotiators from both sides
in the same room on the seventh floor of the State Department, with
Chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission of India Anil Kakodkar
ensconced in a nearby ­hotel room, positioned for private consultations
with the Indian team. I was pre­sent at the ­table with grave misgivings
about the once-­removed status of Anil Kakodkar, who apparently would
have to sanction final concessions by India.
India sought to strengthen in its ­favor the provisions referring to the
supply of nuclear fuel to India ­under all circumstances and conditions
that might prevail in the f­uture. The language governing this subject
had been agreed on with President Bush at the time of the completion
of India’s nuclear separation agreement the previous year. The gist of
India’s concern was that if, in the ­future, the United States imposed
sanctions or other­wise terminated nuclear cooperation with India, the
United States also might attempt to block the provision of fuel for
India even while India’s agreement with the Nuclear Suppliers Group
and the IAEA remained in place.
In order to soften India’s fears, we had agreed to assist India in cre-
ating a nuclear fuel stockpiling fa­cil­i­ty which if rationally managed by
India would overcome any US supply prob­lem. For example, if India
stockpiled fuel not from the United States and used US-­origin fuel for
current operations, the threat of a US disruption, which we believed in
any case not to be a relevant threat in world uranium markets, would
be overcome. The functioning of the world’s heavi­ly private uranium
markets in our view removed the threat to India of the United States
exercising control over the world market. But India, which apparently
had weak faith in the dependability of markets and in its own ability
to manage a stockpile operation, remained fearful of US influence and
their vulnerability to p
­ olitical criticism in India. In the end, we refused
to soften the original presidential language to give India the comfort
it was seeking.
 ­Going the Distanc  77

India’s other major demand was that it should be granted the right
by the United States to establish a fa­cil­i­ty for repro­cessing nuclear fuel.
While we ­were willing to consider the m ­ atter in princi­ple in the ­future,
India sought the granting of this right up front in the 123 Agreement.
This proved to be a deeply contentious issue. The Indians refused to
budge. In the end, President Bush agreed to make the concession in the
form of agreement by the United States to immediately grant India the
right to establish a nuclear fuel repro­cessing fa­cil­i­ty, subject to some care-
fully crafted language which in effect required a further negotiation with
the United States within a set time period and in accordance with certain
agreed procedures and conditions.
By the last days of July the 123 Agreement text was completed.
Formal parliamentary approval of the agreement was not required in
India, but the government was anxious to have the issue fully aired in
the form of a parliamentary debate during the monsoon session of par-
liament in August and September. Only then would the government
move ahead to the next phase of completing its negotiation of India’s
bilateral nuclear safeguards agreement with the IAEA. We w ­ ere now
only ­eighteen months away from the end of the Bush administration.
The monsoon parliament erupted in chaos when the motion was
made to introduce debate on the US-­India 123 Agreement. Day ­after
day, whenever an attempt was made to introduce debate, order could not
be established to permit debate. India’s media was vociferous and divided
on the merits of the deal reached with the United States. India’s BJP
opposition, which had initially introduced the idea of civil nuclear coop-
eration prior to 2004, now refused to recognize that its own aspirations
had been achieved and even exceeded. They refused to accept the written
facts of the case as presented in the agreement and demagogued all the
old shibboleths of a US conspiracy with the Indian government to rob
India of its nuclear ­independence and to subjugate India’s foreign policy
to US control. Leftist parties exceeded even ­these extreme accusations
and stated that if the government of India took any steps t­ oward advanc-
ing the p­ rocess to the IAEA or the Nuclear Suppliers Group, they would
immediately withdraw their support of the UPA government and call
78 Chapter 2

for a vote of confidence that surely was likely to bring the government
down. Other groups made the case that even though a parliamentary
vote was not required to “ratify” the 123 Agreement, the nuclear initia-
tive was so unique in India’s history that a debate and vote of confidence
to reflect the sense of parliament should be mandatory.
By early September we faced a complete standoff, and India’s
­political ­process regarding the agreement was frozen in place. As I
tried to engage India’s s­ enior officials, pointing out the timetable con-
straints we and they would face in completing the entire ­process, I
was met with empty assurances of a rapid move forward to the IAEA.
To the argument that agreement had already been reached between
us on the 123 text and that India must advance to the next stage,
­there was only a nodding caution and reminders of the complexities
of Indian domestic politics. September turned to October with no
sign of movement and no real engagement with the United States on
when any action would be taken.
Fi­nally, on October 12, the opening day of the Hindustan Times annual
world forum event, Mrs. Sonia Gandhi and Prime Minister Manmohan
Singh announced that maintaining the co­ali­tion government for its full
term through May 2009 would take priority over completing India’s
civil nuclear agreement with the United States. I was stunned by this
remarkable statement and simply unable to comprehend the rationale
for turning away from what the Indians themselves had characterized
as the most impor­tant diplomatic initiative of the past sixty years. ­There
was sharp anger in the State Department and the White H ­ ouse, to-
gether with the usual charges of incompetence, untrustworthiness, and
plain double dealing by the Indian government, a staple of the past fifty
years of be­hav­ior between the two ­great democracies.
This preemptive action was a heavy blow a­ fter two and a half years
of dedicated effort on an initiative that I knew to be of vital importance
to the Indian government. One could understand the UPA’s fear of a
withdrawal of leftist party support from the co­ali­tion, and one could
equally recognize the Congress Party leadership placing a high priority
on successfully managing a co­ali­tion government for the full five years of
 ­Going the Distanc  79

parliament. What I found less easy to justify was the fact that this gov-
ernment had negotiated and agreed on the text of the 123 Agreement
­after the US Congress had agreed to amend the Atomic Energy Act of
1954 for the first time since its original passage, and only then had they
balked. I also thought direction from the Congress Party leadership to
the nuclear science community to comply with what the leadership had
set as India’s f­ uture nuclear policy was more than overdue. We heard re-
ports of complicit actions between the nuclear science leadership group
and the leftist parties to delay the agreement, which to me seemed as
incredible as it was unacceptable. Who was ­really in charge of India, I
wondered, as the prime minister and the Indian cabinet had de­cided
long before to move ahead with the 123 Agreement.
Yet I had lived and worked for many years among difficult ­people
and in po­liti­cally sensitive situations requiring supreme patience and
iron discipline against the temptation to become outraged and to
engage in satisfying but essentially unproductive public statements.
Besides, I knew from experience that an out­spoken stance could result
in further backward movement. I firmly believed that the nuclear deal
was a fundamental interest of India, that the leaders genuinely wanted
to do the deal, and that given the complexities of Indian politics, the
best strategy was to wait, say virtually nothing, and be prepared for
any break. It was no dif­fer­ent from my early football experience: if you
­were sitting on the bench, your first duty to yourself and your team
was to be ready at any moment to enter the game and to score the
first time you touch the ball. It had worked for me in the past, and I
was sure ­there would at least be one chance at some point, and if the
chance came it could not be missed.
Once the government acknowledged that its top priority was the
preservation of the UPA co­ali­tion through the full term of its au-
thority (May 2009), it had in real­ity made itself hostage to the leftist
parties in the co­ali­tion and even to divisions within Congress and
among its more loyal co­ali­tion partners. The weakened position of the
government’s leadership therefore extended well beyond the question
of India’s civil nuclear initiative with the United States. The next eight
80 Chapter 2

months would gradually reveal the weakened ability of the Congress

leadership in India’s government to lead, and to fall to a level of im-
potence across the ­whole policy spectrum. Rising subsidies, giveaway
programs to rural India, and the inability to cope with a sharp rise in
inflation in food and energy prices had by May 2008 reduced the gov-
ernment of Prime Minister Singh to what I characterized at the time
as feeble impotence. With the next general election only a year away,
one would have given no chance for this government to be reelected.
Its single claim to credibility was the fact that the Congress Party
would have managed a co­ali­tion government for the full five-­year
term, but that accomplishment would come at the expense of nearly
two years of paralysis, with no significant policy achievement and an
economy in decline. In June 2008 the government was forced to cave
in on its policy of preserving ceilings on energy prices and to concede
that inflation would peak at approximately 14 ­percent over the com-
ing months. ­There was a public outcry on both fronts, and the govern-
ment fell into the habit of blaming ­these setbacks on a poor monsoon
in 2007 and world energy price rises in 2008.
On the all-­important questions of the 123 Agreement negotiation
I ­adopted a policy of quiet patience, first to understand the full magni-
tude of the government’s dilemma and second not to insert the United
States directly into India’s troubled ­political scene. From our standpoint
it looked as if the prime minister’s pronouncement of October 2007
would result in a fatal blow to the timetable to see the deal through to
completion during the Bush administration. The common wisdom was
that ­there w­ ere too many complex steps still to be achieved before final
approval could be gained from the US Congress, which would have its
own timetable constraints. Once the administration ended, the view in
Washington was that even though Congress had amended the 1954
Atomic Energy Act, the nuclear initiative would have to begin all over
again in a new Congress and administration where its prospects looked
distinctly less bright. We would be back to square one.
At first the idea persisted in India that somehow the impending time-
table issues could be overcome, apparently by the magical powers of the
 ­Going the Distanc  81

United States in the IAEA and the Nuclear Suppliers Group, as well as
by the US administration’s powers to manipulate the Congress. Once
again, India’s facile assumptions that global realities could be overcome
at some final moment by the importance of the United States and
India conducting some kind of lightning strike persuaded the Indian
bureaucracy not to worry. I was told that the government wanted the
agreement to succeed and would find a way to work around its ­political
limitations. The real­ity was, however, that on the US side the shrink-
ing timetable and the complexities of congressional action would over-
whelm us. Meanwhile, the main point in India was not to politicize
the situation, a significant challenge in a country of constant ­political
turmoil with a hyperactive media.
For a period of nine months I made no aggressive remarks in pub-
lic, ­rose to none of the bait offered by the media or India’s active think
tank community. Instead, I expressed our understanding and re­spect for
India’s ­political p
­ rocess and our willingness to let the ­political p
­ rocess
work itself through. On two occasions I added simply that we w ­ ere
aware of and concerned about the passage of time and its effect on the
deal timetable, with no further elaboration on the dozens of questions
which inevitably followed.
Privately, with Indian officials and with s­ enior ministers, including
the prime minister, I was more specific about the rising importance of
our timetable constraints. Foreign Minister Pranab Mukherjee, an ex-
tremely able and po­liti­cally astute leader on many fronts in the Indian
government, was charged with chairing a committee in the Indian gov-
ernment on the question of moving civil nuclear talks forward in a fash-
ion that could be supported by the co­ali­tion, and especially by the
leftist parties. This, of course, was next to impossible, b
­ ecause the left-
ist parties had not been able to prevent the negotiation of e­ ither the
separation agreement or the US-­India 123 Agreement, and as a result,
their only chance of blocking pro­gress was to oppose any movement
by the government to begin negotiations with the IAEA on India’s
nuclear safeguards agreement. This, the left argued, represented the
first and critical step in making the 123 Agreement operational. ­Were
82 Chapter 2

the government to take such a step, the leftist parties would withdraw
their support from the government and call for a confidence motion
in parliament, which would surely bring the government down. Thus,
Foreign Minister Mukherjee was conducting a negotiation formed on
the basis of how many subtle steps could be debated on the head of a
very sharp pin without imperiling the survival of the government. As
time passed and the government became more enfeebled on a number
of dif­fer­ent fronts, one could sense that the leftist parties had less to
lose by withdrawing support from the co­ali­tion and possibly some-
thing to be gained by disassociating themselves from a government
that was both less effective and more unpop­u­lar.
As the weeks following October 12 turned into months of waiting
and watching for the smallest signs of pro­gress, I developed a vigil men-
tality, waiting on the sidelines for the chance to enter the game, take the
ball, and score. I had to be ready, to visualize ­every possibility, however
dull the waiting might be, and to avoid at all costs any sense of hopeless-
ness. ­Every day I was turning over our prob­lem in my mind. Meanwhile,
Nick Burns left the State Department in May 2008, and I sensed that
­others in Washington had given up and accepted what seemed to be
inevitable failure.

* * *

June 2008 was the low point in the popularity of Prime Minister Singh’s
government. A dramatic rise in inflation, especially in food prices im-
pacting India’s multitudes and in the price of petrol at the pump, fueled
the government’s widespread unpopularity. Looming food shortages
and price inflation even persuaded India to prohibit exports of essen-
tial foodstuffs, such as rice, to poor countries in Africa and elsewhere.
India, the traditional leader of the Third World who had so often lec-
tured the West about the morals of assistance, turned inward to brace
itself against the possibility of another failed monsoon.
We ­were approaching the annual economic summit of the heads
of state and governments set for early July in Tokyo. Prime Minister
 ­Going the Distanc  83

Singh was to meet bilaterally with President Bush. The meeting looked
like the very last chance in an already failing nuclear initiative. In the
second half of June I asked to see Prime Minister Singh to make it
clear to him that w­ hatever he might be hearing from the bureaucracy
we ­were at the last pos­si­ble moment for any hope of completing the
US-­India Civil Nuclear Agreement.
In the constant ­process of turning over the prob­lem of our impasse
on the civil nuclear agreement, I had developed a line of argument for
action by India that I thought might be appealing to Indian thought
pro­cesses. If India ­were to advance now to the IAEA and then to
the Nuclear Suppliers Group and fi­nally lodge ­these accomplishments
before the US Congress in its last session, India might well achieve
two highly significant results. By gaining the approvals of the IAEA
and the Nuclear Suppliers Group, both of which would be supported
by the United States, the burden for further action would shift di-
rectly onto Congress and the administration. Even if the congres-
sional timetable and the rules laid down for pro­cessing final approval
made the task impossible to complete, India would be in a position to
argue that it had done its part to fulfill its commitments to the Bush
administration.
The second ele­ment of this approach was to consider what India’s
position might be if the exception granted to India by US law to ac-
cess civil nuclear technology from outside India w ­ ere to be formally
recognized and accepted by both the IAEA and the Nuclear Suppliers
Group. ­These actions would have been proposed and supported by
the United States. The US Atomic Energy Act of 1954 was already
amended with commanding bipartisan majorities in Congress. The
change in US law, of course, would not have been activated by fi-
nal congressional approval of the actions taken by the IAEA and
the Nuclear Suppliers Group. One had to won­der, however, ­whether
actions taken by recognized international bodies of sovereign na-
tions, including the United States, might not remain valid for t­hose
countries who de­cided to honor ­these decisions in their dealings with
India. If India, having accomplished t­ hese approvals, moved ahead and
84 Chapter 2

submitted its completed actions to Congress by early September 2008,

and Congress failed to act before January 20, 2009, the status of India’s
position in the world of civil nuclear commerce a­ fter that date might
be open to widely dif­fer­ent interpretations. Even if such an outcome
could be forestalled, would the US-­India Civil Nuclear Agreement
­really be dead in the eyes of a new administration in 2009, especially
with all other conditions with other nations already met? I did not be-
lieve a new administration would be able ­under ­these circumstances to
hold the position that the nuclear deal had died on January 20, 2009.
­There had been ample time for consideration of the agreement (nearly
four years) in the United States, a change in law supported by over-
whelming bipartisan majorities in Congress, and approvals in the
IAEA and Nuclear Suppliers Group, supported in each case by the
United States as to their compliance with the intent of Congress and
the Bush administration. Fi­nally, if India did choose to go ahead with
other countries who had approved the agreements, the US nuclear
industry would be left out in the cold while the French, Germans, and
­Russians secured the crucial opening round of contracts.
My point to the prime minister when we met and discussed ­these
issues in late June was that moving ahead immediately to obtain IAEA
and Nuclear Suppliers Group approvals and afterward to place the
­matter before the US Congress in September held far more hope for
India than simply remaining inactive. If ­these actions brought about a
confidence vote in parliament by the leftist parties and the government
won, India would no longer be held hostage to the threat of the leftist
parties, and it would be in a position to put pressure on Congress and
the US administration. By proceeding in this fashion, India would have
honored its commitment to the United States to complete all steps and
submit the result to Congress for approval. The pressure on Congress
and the administration would be very significant in the closing months
of an administration hoping to burnish its legacy. Congress had its rules,
but the congressional leadership also knew how to alter its rules from
time to time. India had every­thing to gain by g­ oing forward, provided
that the government could survive calling the bluff of their Communist
 ­Going the Distanc  85

co­ali­tion members. If the final deal could be placed before Congress

with all other approvals accomplished by the opening of the session
­after L­ abor Day in early September, it would not be India’s fault if the
agreement ­were not fi­nally ratified before January 2009.
The prime minister listened intently. I had purposely arranged to meet
with him alone so I could speak freely in hopes of planting a seed I might
not want to openly acknowledge. He expressed his extreme regret over
having to go to Tokyo and meet with his friend, President Bush, with
nothing to offer for the remarkable efforts of the United States over
the past three years. I knew, however, that he had taken in the logic
of my proposal without acknowledging its somewhat Machiavellian
twist so far as the United States might be concerned.
Some two weeks ­later, while seated in my office, a news flash came
over the wires that Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on his flight to
the Tokyo summit had announced to traveling reporters that India
would commence immediately to move the nuclear deal forward to the
IAEA in the form of its application for the board to vote its approval
of the IAEA-­India Nuclear Safeguards Agreement. This, every­one
agreed, was the first step to operationalizing the civil nuclear agree-
ment. I ­will remember this moment as one of the most courageous
decisions in my experience by a prime minister for the ­future of his
country. I knew then that we would make the final run for ratification
by this administration, and my heart could not have risen with more
excitement in my breast.
Back on earth, the leftist parties immediately signaled their with-
drawal of support for the co­ali­tion government, provoking the pros-
pect of an immediate parliamentary vote of confidence that would test
the ability of the co­ali­tion and the civil nuclear agreement to survive.
The confidence vote was set for the third week of July, and the first
media judgments ­were that the government could not survive.
For the next two weeks the chief activity of the media was to count
and recount potential votes on a daily basis. Sometimes the government
lost by twelve to fifteen votes. Other times it lost by fewer than five
votes. Then, in the waning days t­here ­were rumors of the government
86 Chapter 2

gaining the support of one of their severest critics, Amarh Singh, and his
handful of twenty-­three votes in the lower ­house. Rumors ­were that his
party would not join the co­ali­tion government, but on this impor­tant
test it would support the policy of the government. In the end, Prime
Minister Singh won the confidence vote by a comfortable margin, but
not before some highly dramatic theater in parliament during the de-
bate preceding the vote. One member marched into the chamber with a
large suitcase in hand, which he opened on the speaker’s rostrum to spill
millions of rupees across the ­table and onto the floor. This, he said, was
the cash he had been offered to change his vote to support the govern-
ment. He raised his arms shouting that he would have none of it. The
government brushed the theater aside and immediately began its efforts
to advance to the IAEA and Nuclear Suppliers Group. Once again we
­were engaged with India in a common purpose whose urgency with the
summer break looming in E ­ urope could hardly be overestimated.
Bureaucrats in ­Europe and ­those based in ­Europe from other coun-
tries invariably shut up shop in the month of August. We needed an
IAEA board meeting vote, and we estimated at least two plenary ses-
sions of the forty-­five-­member Nuclear Suppliers Group—­all before
early September. It was common practice not to hold an IAEA board
meeting in August, and plenary meetings of the Nuclear Suppliers
Group normally took place approximately nine months apart. We also
faced the prob­lem that the suppliers group would refuse to meet ­until
the IAEA had completed its work.
So, Vienna became the target for meetings in the languid days of
summer. One could imagine delegates being dragged back from holi-
days for business that many ­were not in any case keen to ­process. The
US Congress would reconvene on September 8, so we had five weeks
for a ­process we had ­imagined would require many months. We also
had a US Congress whose last session ­running up to the presidential
election in early November was rumored to be shrinking so members
could be home campaigning by early October.
Our first break came in early August when the IAEA agreed to
hold a board vote on India’s nuclear safeguards agreement. Work had
 ­Going the Distanc  87

already been done on safeguards by India, and since the draft agree-
ment followed the many other pre­ce­dents the IAEA had established
with other countries, the agreement was acted on relatively quickly.
This brought the focus of attention onto the Nuclear Suppliers Group,
which had a diverse membership of both large and small countries.
Consensus was reached that t­ here should be a meeting set in Vienna
for August 20–23, where the first full discussion would take place with a
view to reconvening in early September a­ fter governments had the op-
portunity of home office consultations, which for most countries meant
that top ­political leaders would have to make the final decision to sup-
port or oppose India.
I attended the Vienna meeting, which was a much larger, more for-
mal affair than I had ­imagined. Its plenary gathering numbered more
than two hundred, with delegates spread at desks across a wide but
rather shallow hall. The chairman presided at a small desk that was not
raised onto a rostrum and did not provide space for lieutenants flanking
him on ­either side. Statements ­were brief; ­there ­were a large number of
contributions, and the debate that followed was neither especially active
nor substantive in nature.
I suspected it was largely a behind-­the-­scenes affair, with most par-
ticipants ­there to gather information and impressions for their subse-
quent deliberations back home. One event that greatly surprised and
troubled me was a briefing we had scheduled for the Indian team led
by Shyam Saran and Shankar Menon. The briefing was held in the
luxurious plenary hall of the IAEA. The Indian team led off with sum-
mary remarks before opening the floor to questions and discussion. To
my surprise not a single delegate raised a question. I concluded that
­either the periodic briefings over the past two years had effectively
answered all outstanding questions or that minds ­were already made
up and delegates did not wish to show their hands. I began to won­der
exactly how a consensus by the suppliers group, which had never had
a seriously divisive issue to decide, would be formed, and, more to the
point, expressed. ­There was to be no formal vote. What would hap-
pen if a country simply abstained from reaching its view on the India
88 Chapter 2

issue? Would a consensus be based only on t­hose pre­sent at a f­uture

meeting, or must it include ­every country expressing its decision in
some forum at a par­tic­u­lar moment in time?
What was clear from the Vienna meeting was that several smaller
countries with socialist governments and strong environmental com-
munities ­were not supportive of the agreements. I also noticed that
delegates ­were almost exclusively drawn from the nuclear nonprolif-
eration or defense offices of the vari­ous foreign ministries. ­These of-
ficials, like their counter­parts in Washington, w ­ ere highly specialized
and generally unenthusiastic about any change in the global nuclear
nonproliferation architecture. The broader issues we had advanced
with members of Congress in the United States when preparing for
the vote to change the Atomic Energy Act ­were simply not discussed
by our team or by delegates in general.
An exception was at a dinner hosted by the US ambassador to the
IAEA in Vienna, where a small group of delegates engaged in the kind
of broad-based discussion we had been hearing in Washington for nearly
two years. Afterward, the Swiss delegate, whose country reportedly was
against authorizing the deal, conceded to me that he had learned more
in one ­evening than in the past forty years. He was from the Swiss
Foreign Office’s section dealing with nuclear nonproliferation, which
was where I i­magined he had been for most of the past forty years.
When I returned to Delhi from Vienna it was clear that six coun-
tries w
­ ere likely to hold out against India: Austria, Sweden, Denmark,
Holland, Ireland, and New Zealand. China was also a holdout, al-
though for dif­fer­ent reasons, and they had not at this point formally
declared their position. Before leaving Vienna I met with Austria’s
foreign secretary, who, like o­ thers, had not been exposed to the broader
range of arguments for bringing India into the global system. Clearly,
what was missing in many of ­these countries was a broader ­political
awareness of the importance of finding a basis for India to participate
in the world’s nuclear nonproliferation regime. Austria, for example,
prided itself on having no nuclear reactors in its country, but as every­
one knew, Austria imported large amounts of electricity generated
 ­Going the Distanc  89

from nuclear reactors in neighboring countries. ­There was no under-

standing of India’s situation, its energy needs for its growing economy,
and the environmental damage that would flow from India, as with
China, from supporting its high growth in the ­decades ahead almost
entirely from power based on exploiting coal. India would surely con-
tinue to thrive and in ­doing so could well become the world’s largest
polluter, u­ nless it succeeded in the coming years to build and operate
a world-­class civil nuclear industry large enough to support its f­ uture
growth. This point was generally accepted in the Delhi diplomatic com-
munity but not by several of the smaller countries that would need to
support India in the Nuclear Suppliers Group consensus.
Back in New Delhi, I saw the urgency of engaging po­liti­cally with
­these pos­si­ble “holdout” countries. Before g­ oing to Vienna I had in-
vited the ambassadors of the Nuclear Suppliers Group countries to my
residence for a briefing. This had been appreciated on the ground in
New Delhi but had accomplished ­little more than to provide an infor-
mation flow back to foreign offices, which in many cases w ­ ere already
in summer break mode.
I felt I had to engage the ambassadors of the countries that ­were
likely holdouts in a way that would provoke them into raising the India
issue to the highest p ­ olitical levels in their countries before the second
and decisive meeting of the suppliers group. I de­cided to host a lun-
cheon at my residence and invite ambassadors from only the six hold-
out countries. Internally, I called the event “The Recalcitrants’ Lunch.”
I asked my staff to prepare a paper with six sections, one devoted to the
development of each country’s relationship with India over the previ-
ous five years. I knew that India was among the highest diplomatic
and commercial priorities for each country during the course of my
tenure. The paper focused on their accomplishments, their improving
trade balances with India, and their foreign direct investment pro­gress.
Many countries had sponsored multiple visits to India of vari­ous trade,
education, development, and diplomatic del­e­ga­tions.
When the vari­ous ambassadors arrived at Roo­se­velt ­House and
saw the seven place settings at the large round ­table set in the main
90 Chapter 2

reception room looking out into Roo­se­velt ­House’s spacious, green

garden, they knew this was to be a lunch for the select few. At the
­table I handed out the papers and asked them to read the three pages
of country-­specific information. Then I said that I had invited them
to this gathering ­because the White ­House and the secretary of state
­were confused as to why their countries ­were prepared to sacrifice their
impressive accomplishments with India over the past five years. To this
comment ­there was a profound silence.
I continued that the United States was only confused about what
appeared to be their common view not to join in the consensus that
would permit India to return to the world of civil nuclear commerce
and to become a positive participant in the global nuclear nonprolifera-
tion regime. The United States had impor­tant and intensive relations
with each of their countries, which would not be disturbed by w ­ hatever
decision they fi­nally would make. India’s reaction, however, to a decision
to torpedo the US-­India Civil Nuclear Agreement, w ­ hether as a group
or individually, would, I noted, be an entirely dif­fer­ent story. I let them
know that the United States did not understand why they would so
lightly sacrifice five years of pro­gress with India, ­because I had no doubt
that India would impose a harsh and painful price on any country that
sabotaged what for India was seen as their most impor­tant diplomatic
breakthrough for the past fifty years.
The lunch went smoothly but quite quickly. As the ambassadors
hastened out into the rising summer heat, I knew the lines to capitals
would be singing that after­noon. I was also confident that the after­
noon’s messages would convey a sense of panic and be directed to the
highest levels in their governments—­well above their respective bu-
reaucracies. No one left the working paper ­behind, and I sat with a
cup of coffee, which all the “recalcitrants” had politely declined, and
thought of the entertaining instructions printed on E ­ nglish fireworks
back when I was at Oxford: “Light fuse and retire.”
I did not attend the second plenary of the Nuclear Suppliers Group
in early September. This meeting would simply rec­ord ­whether a per-
fect consensus could be achieved to support the proposed change in
 ­Going the Distanc  91

India’s position in the world of civil nuclear commerce. Debate and

lobbying in Vienna ­were over. We would soon know ­whether a small
group of holdout countries, or even a single nation in the forty-­five-­
member group, would destroy the consensus for change. In the days
leading up to the plenary meeting the “recalcitrant” group of small
countries began to weaken. Opposing India, the United States, and
the other large nuclear powers who supported the changed status for
India would clearly carry a high price. At the meeting they all sup-
ported the consensus, together with China, which joined at the last
minute a­ fter a call the previous night from President Bush to the prime
minister of China.
­There could be no doubt about the magnitude of this victory, and
all of us involved in the effort shared an enormous sense of pride and
achievement. In par­tic­u­lar, we ­were very fortunate to have Geoff Pyatt,
my former much-­valued deputy chief of mission in India, serving as
the deputy to our ambassador in Vienna. Geoff was knowledgeable,
committed to the cause, and a skilled diplomat, who is now the US
ambassador to Ukraine.1 But our victory could only be short-­lived,
­because we still faced what appeared to be the impossible task of work-
ing the final ratification through the US Congress. When Congress
reconvened on September 8 ­after its summer recess, it was expected to
remain in session only through mid-­October before adjourning prior
to the presidential election in early November. The original legislation
passed in 2006 visualized a p ­ rocess for this final phase that would set
aside at least thirty congressional business days, which in the normal
course of events could well cover up to sixty calendar days. Even as-
suming a “lame duck” session of Congress ­after the election, ­there
simply would not be enough days before the administration ended on
January 20, 2009. Only a decision by the congressional leadership to
change the rules could alter this prospect.
Pressure for this initiative came immediately from the admin-
istration. Recall, however, the ­political atmosphere that dominated

1. ​As of 2024, Pyatt is assistant secretary of state of energy resources.

92 Chapter 2

Washington at that time. We ­were less than two months away from
a strongly contested general election that stimulated highly parti-
san interests. In addition, the global financial crisis reached its peak
in September 2008, when ­political leaders and finance officials found
themselves staring into the abyss of a complete breakdown of the
world’s financial system. The meltdown of global financial markets was
sowing panic on Wall Street, in London, and in Japan, and Congress
was engaged in a frantic effort to enact economic stabilization ­measures.
On September 25 the president’s economic stabilization legislation
was defeated in Congress, and that e­ vening he hosted Prime Minister
Manmohan Singh of India for a small private dinner in the f­ amily din-
ing room of the White ­House. The prime minister was accompanied
by Foreign Secretary Menon, National Security Advisor Narayanan,
and the ambassador of India to the United States, Ronen Sen. Our
side included National Security Advisor Stephen Hadley, Secretary of
State Condoleezza Rice, and me. The dinner was memorable from the
moment President Bush entered the room. Despite having had one
of the worst days of his presidency, with collapsing markets and the
defeat of his stabilization package in Congress, he entered with a calm
and friendly bearing, conveying none of the frustration of his day. In
fact, as we sat down to dinner, he tipped back his chair and observed
that ­after such a day t­here was no one in the world that he would
rather be having dinner with that ­evening than Prime Minister Singh.
The president referred to the example of calmness and peace always
conveyed by the prime minister and expressed his gratitude for the
prime minister being at the White ­House on this par­tic­u­lar ­evening.
We exchanged views on a wide variety of subjects that e­ vening,
including prospects for congressional action on the US-­India Civil
Nuclear Agreement. The president was confident that the m ­ easure
would be passed by the Congress before the general election recess.
This was the most heartening observation of the ­evening, and in less
than two weeks it proved to be correct. The congressional leadership
came together to agree to ­process the final very ­simple piece of legis-
lation that would bless and activate the agreement. Once again, large
 ­Going the Distanc  93

bipartisan majorities ­were registered in both ­houses of Congress, just

one month before a divisive US general election. President Bush’s leg-
acy for India was secured. I believed then and still believe that this ac-
complishment with India by President Bush w ­ ill be seen for d
­ ecades
to come as the cornerstone of modern US-­India relations, as well as
vital to India’s rise to world power status.
For me the vote was the culmination of nearly four years of effort
on ­every aspect of the civil nuclear initiative, coupled with periods of
patience and restraint as the ­process unfolded in our respective capi-
tals and as all the countries in the global nuclear nonproliferation re-
gime came together to express their support.
The signing by the president at the White H ­ ouse on October 8
of the US-­India Nuclear Cooperation Approval and Nonproliferation
Enhancement Act was the event that crystallized the entire enterprise.
The East Room was packed, with ­every seat and space for standing
occupied. Across the back of the room ­were more tv cameras and still
photog­raphers than I had ever seen in one place, including most sum-
mit meetings around the world. Dozens of the cameras ­were directly
linked to India, where I knew that in the heat of the late monsoon
season the nation waited.
Jeannie and I entered the White H ­ ouse early to attend a private re-
ception with the president and leaders of Congress. We noticed when
entering through the East Wing portico that the Secret S ­ ervice guards
­were permitting attendees to bring cameras and cell phones into the
White ­House, despite signs clearly asking visitors to leave all such items
at the gate. Perhaps the Secret ­Service had recognized that the large
crowd of Indians and Indian Americans who had been critical to the
lobbying success in Congress would resist leaving their cameras b ­ ehind
on this happy and historic occasion.
Inside we met the president and members of Congress to enjoy the
moment and sense of accomplishment shared by all. Then we moved
into the East Room, resplendent in brilliant lights and set up with a
raised stage and a small ­table decorated with American and Indian
flags, with the legislation laid out for signing. Vice President Cheney
94 Chapter 2

President George W. Bush signs H.R. 7081, The United States-­India Nuclear
Cooperation Approval and Nonproliferation Enhancement Act,
October 8, 2008, in the East Room at the White ­House. ­Behind President
Bush (left to right) are Rep. Joseph Crowley, Rep. Eliot Engel, Secretary
of State Condoleezza Rice, Sen. Chris Dodd, Sen. John Warner, Energy
Secretary Samuel Bodman, India’s ambassador to the United States
Ronen Sen, and Vice President Dick Cheney. Official White ­House photo
by Eric Draper, courtesy of George W. Bush Presidential Library

was pre­sent, and a group of congressional leaders stood b ­ ehind the

president.
President Bush spoke from the rostrum before moving to the
small ­table decorated with the Indian and American flags to sign
the US-­India Nuclear Cooperation Approval and Nonproliferation
Enhancement Act.
Jeannie and I ­were seated in the first row just before the signing
desk. When the president spoke, we both saw him wink at us as he
completed the opening passage. Then he moved to the t­able and in
a few moments signed the ribboned legislative packages. Thousands
 ­Going the Distanc  95

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice with Pranab Mukherjee, Indian

­minister of external affairs, after signing the bilateral instruments of the
123 Agreement, October 10, 2008. Manuel Balce Ceneta/AP

of flash bulbs exploded with shutters making what seemed to be a

wall of simultaneous clicks. Every­one stood with a ­great cheer, with
the Indians immediately leaving their seats and surging forward. The
president stepped off the stage and came straight to us to shake hands,
to congratulate me and thank me for my efforts. He embraced Jeannie
and kissed her on the cheek. Such was the consideration consistently
shown by this president for the ­people who worked for him.
Jeannie and I felt at that moment and in the confusion that followed
that the historic and boisterous occasion had been perfectly captured
96 Chapter 2

in time. We felt a swelling of pride and sense of true accomplishment.

We knew that our decision in 2005 to stay the course in India, despite
Jeannie’s suffering and our long separation, was truly an act of love and
commitment that would carry forward for the rest of our lives.

* * *

On the ­evening of October 25, 2005, I was invited to visit the campus
of the Pathways School, a relatively new boarding school about an
hour’s drive outside New Delhi. The school was founded by the Jain
­family in New Delhi and in less than ten years had established itself as
a serious baccalaureate-­program educational institution. The occasion
was a special e­ vening for parents and guests in which the students put
on a light show depicting the drama Ramayana, set around a small
lake and stone works in the center of the campus. I was driven out on
one of Delhi’s first cool ­evenings ­after the long, hot summer, and the
last ten miles down a narrow country lane at twilight u ­ nder the rising
of a full moon was lovely, cool, and picturesque in the fading light.
I spoke before the light show to the body of assembled parents, stu-
dents, teachers, and visitors. When I finished, my security officer asked
me to step away for a moment. He told me t­ here had been a major ter-
rorist bomb attack on Sarojini Market in New Delhi, with a large num-
ber of casualties. Within a few minutes I was on my way back into Delhi
in a very dif­fer­ent mood than on the outbound trip. Sarojini Market was
not far from the diplomatic enclave; it was frequented by large crowds in
the ­evenings, including many diplomatic personnel who ­were attracted
by its c­ onvenience and huge se­lection of goods. I could not imagine the
scenes of horror and hoped ­there ­were no American citizens among
the dead and injured. Traffic g­ oing back to the city was heavy and I
could understand why. Since the attack on India’s parliament in early
2002 ­there had been virtually no significant terrorism attacks in India,
apart from the almost daily incidents that swirled around Srinagar in
Kashmir and periodic local vio­lence in India’s northeast. Sarojini was
clearly an attack of a wholly dif­fer­ent type.
 ­Going the Distanc  97

No Americans ­were killed or injured in Sarojini Market that night,

but the death toll numbered well over sixty and the destruction to
shops and the market was widespread. In the next few weeks, intel­
ligence sources, both Indian and American, identified Lashkar-­e-­
Taiba (LeT), a well-­established terrorist ­organization that operates
largely out of Pakistan, as the perpetrators of this outrage. The ratio-
nale ­behind the attack was that Lashkar-­e-­Taiba wanted to increase
its visibility and the national impact of its terrorist activities in India.
The vio­lence it promoted in Kashmir was now so commonplace that the
organization was gaining only minimal publicity benefits from them.
A few hand grenades and some daily murders confined to Kashmir
simply ­were not spectacular enough and had ­little impact on the na-
tion of India. Their new strategy was to strike into the heartland of
India with spectacularly destructive attacks, claiming dozens of ­human
lives and sowing division, distrust, and communal tensions in India’s
dense population. ­These attacks ­were to be the weapon of choice for
Pakistan’s ­future terrorist operations in India.
India, it appeared, would now face the chilling prospect of a much-­
expanded terrorist campaign. Sarojini Market would prove to be a wa-
tershed event for India’s internal security and a significant challenge
for US-­India relations. The information pieced together by intelligence
sources confirmed to the Indians that the attack was a new departure
for Pakistan’s terrorist campaign across India, which reached its peak
three years ­later in the brutal terrorist attacks on ­hotels in Mumbai.
In the months that followed Sarojini Market, t­here ­were attacks in
the markets of other Indian cities. ­These ­were virtually identical to the
attack on Sarojini Market: crude pipe bombs, fire, panic, disorder, and
bloody casualties. As soon as the attacks w ­ ere over and police rushed
in to hunt for suspects, crime scenes w ­ ere cleaned, destroying any pros-
pect for serious forensic work. Sketches of suspects ­were distributed,
but ­there w ­ ere few arrests and subsequently no significant prosecu-
tions. The Indian intelligence community was sure that the terrorists
­were Pakistanis with no real local support from Indians, except perhaps
for information or minor assistance paid for in cash by the perpetrators.
98 Chapter 2

For the Indian intelligence community, the new strategy proved a de-
pressing and frightening challenge.
That the LeT could marshal a far more destructive campaign was
graphically demonstrated in the coordinated bomb attacks that took
place in Mumbai against the city’s commuter trains on July 11, 2006.
Over two hundred ­people ­were killed at the height of the ­evening
rush hour as they made their way home. For months afterward the
Daily News and Analy­sis in Mumbai published a personal sketch each
day of one individual victim, his or her life story as a working person,
a ­family member, wife, husband, son, or ­daughter, and how by sheer
chance that person came to be where they met their death in a train
ripped open by blasts in the midst of heavy monsoon rains. ­These ac-
counts ­were graphic and conveyed the pain, injustice, and pure chance
of death by the hand of cross-­border terrorism.
­These developments also raised serious prob­lems for me as US am-
bassador in India. In the years following 9/11 in the United States, when
initially ­there was a notable sense of solidarity between the United
States and India, questions arose in India concerning the apparent dou-
ble standard of the US government t­ oward terrorism in India. The at-
tack on India’s parliament in early 2002, which had clearly been carried
out by Pakistanis, was not followed by any punitive US action against
Pakistan. Instead, the United States appeared to be largely insensitive
to Pakistani-­led attacks across India following the Sarojini Market
outrage in 2005. The United States continued to regard Pakistan as a
critically impor­tant ally, vital to US interests in A
­ fghanistan. US aid
continued to flow to Pakistan without significant conditions. Providing
new or modernized F-16s to Pakistan, for example, continued to be
advanced as a policy objective of the US administration, whereas in
India the attitude was that F-16s are not used for crowd control in cases
of domestic unrest; they can carry nuclear weapons, which in India
­were clearly seen as for deployment against India. Nevertheless, the
State Department continued issuing statements expressing our out-
rage and unconvincingly citing our shared interests in fighting terror-
ism. In fact, the State Department, the Department of Defense, and
 ­Going the Distanc  99

the intelligence agencies of the United States all continued to assume

that India should fully cooperate with the United States in the field of
counterterrorism, with no commensurate action by the United States
against Pakistan.
As ambassador to India, I found this attitude ­toward Pakistan’s
involvement in terrorism damaging for our other­wise strengthening
relationship. Despite initiatives proposed from time to time in coun-
terterrorism intelligence activities by the United States, the Indians
restricted their cooperation with us to the exchange of intelligence in-
formation, drawing the line at any operational cooperation. Their atti-
tude, in my view, caused a quite unjustified disappointment in the US
intelligence community, followed by the typically superficial response
that Indian attitudes just confirmed how difficult and unreasonable
they could be to work with. Meanwhile, within the US government
I found as ambassador a surprising and irritating lack of cooperation
from our own intelligence community. Obtaining information on
Pakistani sponsorship or encouragement of terrorism in India was
simply not forthcoming from Washington, in spite of numerous re-
quests for a more-­considered appraisal of the role being played by
the government of Pakistan. Instead, I received the worn and utterly
useless response that US intelligence could not produce the “smoking
gun” linkage required to convict the Pakistani government of actively
planning and promoting terrorism in India.
By treating this life and death issue in India as if we had to meet
the standard for guilt in a court of law before we could lift a con-
structive fin­ger against the outrageous vio­lence flowing into India
from Pakistan, the United States struck a severe blow to its cred-
ibility in India. The slightest exercise of common sense would have
justified some sort of punitive action against Pakistan. To broadcast
our sympathy ­after each terrorist event and then to fail to follow up
with any credible response on the ground in Pakistan was shameful
for the United Sates and fully justified, in my view, the cynicism and
suspicion our ­people found in both the government and society of
India.
100 Chapter 2

As my time in India began drawing to a close in 2008, and we had

successfully revived the US-­India civil nuclear effort, t­ here was e­ very
reason to renew our efforts to address counterterrorism. This was the
one area of US-­India strategic cooperation that had remained at a
standstill for four years. Several considerations came into play in try-
ing to raise counterterrorism cooperation to a higher priority for both
sides. Leadership in the US intelligence community was improved by
the appointment of better ­people. Congress began to show tentative
signs of wanting stronger conditionality on US aid to Pakistan. A
new and highly classified technology that could be of key importance
to India in its strug­gle to preempt terrorist activity on the ground in
India was introduced for consideration between us. Fi­nally, the con-
tinued pattern of more frequent attacks around India, coupled with
the now quite impressive seven-­year track rec­ord of the United States
in preventing another 9/11 at home strongly suggested that India
could benefit from a better understanding of US domestic actions to
improve internal security since 9/11.
High-­level meetings began to take place. I approached members
of the Indian government to encourage them to arrange to visit US
counterterrorism facilities in Amer­i­ca to see for themselves how we had
overcome the inherent conflicts in our federal, state, and municipal law
enforcement structures to improve our ability to identify pos­si­ble terror-
ist initiatives and in par­tic­ul­ar to disrupt attacks before they could take
place. India’s complex federal, state, and municipal structure of semiau-
tonomous authorities raised many of the same questions we had faced
when it was becoming increasingly obvious that India was losing the
­battle for ensuring internal security against terrorist attacks, ­whether
from Pakistan or from the Naxalites within India. By October 2008 I
felt sure I was getting their attention.
Then came Mumbai. On the ­evening of November 26, 2008, ten
highly trained and heavi­ly armed terrorists attacked Mumbai in what
became India’s 9/11. They came ashore in small rubber boats laden
with explosives, heavy weapons, and ammunition. They set off for dif­
fer­ent targets: the railway station, a Jewish religious center, and three
 ­Going the Distanc  101

of Mumbai’s most fash­ion­able ­hotels. Everywhere they appeared over

the next few hours they killed indiscriminately: innocent ­people in the
streets and the main train station, police officers, a rabbi and his wife
at Nariman ­House, and ­hotel guests and Mumbai families enjoying
the restaurants and ambience of Mumbai’s leading h ­ otels. As the ter-
rorists entered the Taj Palace and the Oberoi ­Hotel they shot the door
staff and the check-in p ­ eople ­behind the front desks, then proceeded
to the busy restaurants, killing ­people at their ­tables. At the Taj they
quickly proceeded to the man­ag­er’s apartment and murdered his wife
and small ­children. Fires ­were started in the h ­ otels as the terrorists
went room to room, killing and seizing hostages.
The initial shock of the attack was quickly replaced by the realization
that Mumbai and especially the h ­ otels w
­ ere ­under siege for as long as
the terrorists could hold out. In the end this proved to be seventy-­six
hours, during which nine of the ten terrorists ­were killed and one cap-
tured wounded but alive. During this attack, ­after the initial killings in
the restaurant and lobby areas, the terrorists stalked terrified guests in
the rooms and as they tried to escape from the ­hotels. Hostages ­were
checked for nationality, and foreigners w ­ ere not released. A group of
hostages ­were assembled at the Oberoi, marched to an upper floor, and
brutally slaughtered.
Outside the ­hotels, vast crowds assembled to watch the flames
coming out of the win­dows and on the roof of the historic Taj Palace
­Hotel. The police remained outside the ­hotels, seemingly immobi-
lized, with any movement ­toward the h ­ otels met with grenades tossed
out by the terrorists, who seemed to know where the police w ­ ere get-
ting close to the buildings. Indian national t­elevision quickly staked
out the h­ otels and reported nonstop on the unfolding horror.
Shortly ­after the attack began, I was contacted in Phoenix, Arizona,
where Jeannie and I had gone for a f­amily Thanksgiving. It was
Wednesday e­vening in Phoenix and Thanksgiving morning in New
Delhi. We left immediately for India. Arriving in New Delhi Friday
­evening, the attack was still ­going on, with movement by the authorities
to enter the h
­ otels with commandos only just begun. The following day
102 Chapter 2

Secretary of State
Condoleezza Rice arriving
December 3, 2008, to dis­
cuss rising tensions between
India and Pakistan follow­
ing the late November
attacks in Mumbai by
Pakistan-­based terrorists.
Pictured with Rice (left)
are Ambassador Mulford
and Jeannie Mulford.
Raveendran/AFP via
Getty Images

the terrorists w ­ ere gradually overcome so that by late Saturday the at-
tack was over and the authorities ­were left fighting the fires and search-
ing ­hotels for bodies and survivors. Meanwhile, details of the street
attacks, the railway station massacre, and the utterly depraved attack on
Nariman ­House, the Jewish center, had emerged. Public outrage against
the Indian authorities for what appeared to be a delayed and inadequate
response swept the nation. Why ­couldn’t the government of India pro-
tect its ­people against predictable terrorist outrages? The public seemed
more intensely critical of their own authorities than against Pakistan,
the suspected perpetrator of the attack. The view among Indians was
that they expected this kind of outrageous be­hav­ior from Pakistan; it
was India’s inability to protect its own citizens that drew the ire of the
Indians. Incompetence and inaction from top to bottom was the pub-
lic’s ­bitter judgment, which l­ater, despite the personal bravery of many
in the Mumbai police, proved to be for the most part true.
 ­Going the Distanc  103

The most immediate ­political casualty was Home Minister Shivraj

Patil, who resigned and was succeeded by P. Chidambaram, India’s fi-
nance minister. Chidambaram, a l­awyer by training and a leader from
South India within the UPA co­ali­tion, had the reputation of being
extremely able, articulate, and decisive. ­These qualities ­were quickly de-
ployed at Home Affairs and in a fashion which immediately reor­ga­
nized India’s most urgent challenges following the attack. ­These ­were
to identify and punish the perpetrators; to address India’s obvious need
for a coherent national security regime that could anticipate and dis-
rupt ­future terrorist attacks; and to provide an immediately credible
effort to identify Pakistan as the perpetrator of the attack.
We made the unusual offer to provide forensic assistance at the crime
scene, and to our ­great surprise this was immediately accepted by the
home minister. Indeed, a twelve-­member FBI team was en route almost
at once for India. Their agreed-on mission was to offer on-­the-­ground
assistance to the Mumbai police. They ­were permitted to enter India at
Mumbai instead of first ­going to New Delhi, and their sophisticated
high-­tech equipment was cleared for entry into India that same day at
Mumbai airport. ­These w ­ ere all remarkable developments by any his-
toric standard that spoke of India’s new attitude of urgency and the de-
cisive nature of Mr. Chidambaram.
Within a few days it was clear that we had made a major break-
through in counterterrorism cooperation with India. Much credit for
this was to the FBI team members themselves, who w ­ ere able to es-
tablish close and friendly working relations with the Mumbai police.
Eleven countries lost citizens in the Mumbai attack. India estab-
lished the forensic effort as a serious p ­ rocess aimed at producing as
quickly as pos­si­ble a dossier of evidence that would indict Pakistan
beyond question as the planner and perpetrator of the most profes-
sional and brutal terrorist attack ever on India. Pro­gress was immediate
and dramatic. The suspicion that the attack had been managed over
some seventy-­two hours by “handlers” in Pakistan was confirmed when
the FBI was able to retrieve verbatim mobile telephone conversations
between handlers in Pakistan and the ten terrorists on the ground in
104 Chapter 2

Mumbai. ­These exchanges, which ­were transformed into transcripts,

­were recovered from the damaged and in some cases melted mobile
phones found on the bodies of the terrorists. They confirmed that
handlers in Pakistan w ­ ere following events in Mumbai on 24/7 news
channels on Indian t­elevision, instructing the terrorists in the h ­ otels
on where the Indian police ­were deployed, whom to kill, and whom
to ­free, among the many hostages taken in the h ­ otels. In one case, the
terrorists w ­ ere instructed to seek out foreigners, take them to an upper
floor of the h ­ otel, and hold out their phones so they could hear the
hostages being killed.
The reconstructed rec­ord of the attack made the most horrible read-
ing. It confirmed that at the h ­ otels the doormen and baggage handlers
­were killed outright, and the young and attractive front desk staffs
­were murdered as they stood. The terrorists went to the restaurants,
killing p­ eople at their ­tables. An American man was killed before his
thirteen-­year-­old ­daughter, who was wounded and escaped. She was
­later hunted down in the ­hotel and killed. At the Taj Palace, the ter-
rorists went directly to the man­ag­er’s apartment and killed his wife
and young c­ hildren. The final report also established that despite the
loss of his ­family, the man­ag­er remained at his post for the duration
of the attack. Fires w ­ ere set in the ­hotels, and p­ eople ­were killed in
their rooms or trying to escape. Some survived by locking their rooms
and hiding. One could hardly imagine the horror of ­those seventy-­six
hours for all who ­were caught up in the slaughter and their anxious
families on the outside.
Pakistan’s immediate response was to deny that the attackers w ­ ere
from Pakistan, even though Azam Amir Kasav, who had been wounded
and apprehended by the Mumbai police, admitted that he was from
a village in Pakistan. Within a few weeks the claims of the Pakistani
government that the attack had not been planned or carried out from
Pakistani soil ­were proven beyond doubt to be blatant lies. A satellite cell
phone found in one of the rubber dinghies used by the terrorists to come
ashore in Mumbai provided incontrovertible evidence. The joint team
produced a map of northern India and Pakistan that showed bright
 ­Going the Distanc  105

yellow dots indicating where the phone had been each day for the previ-
ous four weeks. The phone had never left Pakistan. It had been in the
border areas where terrorist training camps ­were known to be located
­until a few days before the attack. Then the phone had gone to a par­tic­
u­lar ­house on a named street in Karachi, and from t­ here to the Karachi
harbor and down the coast of India to Mumbai.
This and other revelations forced Pakistan out of its denial mode. It
was forced to acknowledge that the attack was carried out by Pakistani
nationals who had planned the attack on Pakistani soil. Yet it still
denied government involvement, and the official position of the US
government remained that of no smoking gun having been found in
Pakistan. Such was and apparently still is the capacity for denial in the
US Department of State, the National Security Council, and the CIA.
Meanwhile, the FBI and Mumbai police completed their work in
assembling the dossier of evidence implicating the government of
Pakistan and distributed it to each of the eleven countries that lost
citizens in the attack. The joint effort of the FBI and the Indian au-
thorities marked a critical turning point in US-­India counterterrorism
cooperation. Home Minister Chidambaram, reappointed minister of
home affairs following the Indian general election of May 2009, has
continued the effort with the FBI, and I have no doubt that from the
tragedy in Mumbai yet another dimension of the US-­India strategic
partnership ­will build greater trust and stronger counterterrorism co-
operation for the ­future.
About the Author

Ambassador David Mulford is a distinguished visiting fellow at the

Hoover Institution, Stanford University. In this role, he focuses on
global economic and p ­ olitical events, and as chair of Hoover’s US-­India
relations program, he concentrates his efforts on economic growth and
transformative relations between India and the United States.
Prior to joining the Hoover Institution, Mulford was chairman and
CEO of Credit Suisse ­Europe, responsible for leading the worldwide,
large-­scale privatization business and other corporate and govern-
ment advisory assignments. Mulford also served for ten years with the
Saudi Arabia Monetary Agency (SAMA) as ­senior investment advi-
sor, managing the investment of Saudi oil revenues and developing a
comprehensive investment program.
In 1984 Mulford left Saudi Arabia to serve for nine years in the
administrations of presidents Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush
as assistant secretary and u ­ nder secretary of ­Treasury for international
affairs. Among his responsibilities ­were coordinating economic policies
with G-7 industrial nations, chairing the administrations’ yen/dollar ne-
gotiations, acting as s­ enior advisor for financial negotiations with Rus­sia
and other states of the former Soviet U ­ nion, and providing leadership
of the administrations’ Latin Amer­i­ca debt strategy (the Baker and
Brady plans) and President Bush’s Enterprise for the Amer­i­cas.

107
108 About the Author

Mulford also led the US del­e­ga­tion to negotiate the establishment

of the E­ uropean Bank for Reconstruction and Development, as well as
led G-7 negotiations to reduce Poland’s official bilateral debt in 1991.
In 2003 President George W. Bush nominated Mulford as US am-
bassador to India, at a time when India-­US relations ­were undergoing
a dramatic shift and the strategic partnership between New Delhi and
Washington was gaining momentum.
During his tenure, India achieved unpre­ce­dented cooperation with
the United States and exponential growth in business, trade, health,
finance, science, agriculture, and education. Ambassador Mulford was
deeply involved in negotiating the United States–­India Civil Nuclear
Agreement to its conclusion in 2008.
Mulford holds a DPhil degree from Oxford University and an MA in
­political science from Boston University and graduated cum laude with
a BA in economics from Lawrence University in Appleton, Wisconsin.
Prior to earning his doctorate, he conducted gradu­ate studies in 1960
at the University of Cape Town, South Africa. Bringing to fruition his
keen interest in the peaceful transition from White-­minority rule to
Black-­majority government and ­independence in Central Africa, he
published two books on Zambia and Northern Rhodesia.
While at the ­Treasury Department, Mulford was awarded the Legion
d’Honneur from President François Mitterrand of France, the Order
of May from President Carlos Menem of Argentina, and the Officer’s
Cross of the Medal of Merit from President Lech Walesa of Poland.
Upon departing the ­Treasury, he received the Alexander Hamilton
Award, the highest honor bestowed by the Secretary of the ­Treasury,
for extraordinary ­service and benefit to the ­Treasury Department and
the nation. He was also awarded an honorary doctorate of laws from
Lawrence University. In 2007 the US Department of State awarded
Mulford the Sue M. Cobb Award for exemplary diplomatic s­ ervice in
recognition of his extraordinary efforts as a noncareer ambassador in
using private-­sector leadership and management skills to make a signifi-
cant impact on US-­India bilateral relations.
In 2014 Ambassador Mulford published Packing for India: A Life of
Action in Global Finance and Diplomacy.