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President Biden will not travel to New Delhi next month as the chief guest at India’s Republic Day celebration, due to “scheduling demands,” national security adviser Jake Sullivan said this week.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi extended the invitation to Biden during their bilateral talks on the sidelines of the Group of 20 summit in September in India. It came as Biden has been working to cultivate a deeper strategic partnership with India to build a counterweight to China in the region.
The invitation also came as the Biden administration was quietly demanding that India investigate a plot directed by an Indian government employee to assassinate a Sikh separatist in the United States. News of the foiled plot did not become public until last month.
United States allege murder plot directed by Indian government employee
The White House insists Biden’s inability to attend the Jan. 26 event has nothing to do with the ongoing investigation into the murder plot. Last month, the Justice Department unsealed an indictment that alleged the Indian government employee ordered the murder of a U.S. citizen, and with an accomplice planned to kill “many targets,” including a Sikh leader who was fatally shot in Canada in June.
When the Biden administration learned of the thwarted plot in late July, it pressed the issue in several encounters, The Washington Post reported last month. Sullivan raised the matter with his counterpart, Ajit Doval, in early August. Within a week, Biden dispatched his CIA director, Bill Burns, to New Delhi to demand the government investigate and hold to account those responsible. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Sullivan repeated the message with Foreign Minister S. Jaishankar in September in Washington. Avril Haines, the director of national intelligence, flew to India in October to follow up.
Biden himself brought it up with Modi in a bilateral meeting at the G-20, stressing potential repercussions for the relationship “were similar threats to persist,” a senior administration official, speaking on the condition of anonymity under ground rules set by the White House, told The Post.
At the same time, the administration is sending signals of reassurance that the relationship with India remains strong. Earlier this month, deputy national security adviser Jon Finer led a U.S. delegation to New Delhi to advance a technology partnership between the two countries. He acknowledged India’s creation of a committee of inquiry into the assassination plot and again stressed the importance of holding those responsible to account, the White House said. The two governments can “work through” differences “in a constructive manner without derailing” cooperation, Finer said, speaking at a technology summit there.
The Republic Day invitation is meant as a diplomatic gesture to highlight a relationship of significance on a day that celebrates the adoption of India’s democratic constitution. President Barack Obama in 2015 became the first U.S. president to attend, following a visit by Modi to the United States amid a warming of the bilateral relationship.
Sullivan, in a statement, said that Washington has notified New Delhi that Biden would be unable to visit India. He said that Biden and Modi have “affirmed a vision” of the two countries as “among the closest partners in the world” and that their partnership in emerging technologies, space and defense will continue. Biden hosted Modi for a state visit in June.
“The president remains personally committed to carrying forward this partnership, which he has often described the most consequential partnership for the United States over the century unfolding,” Sullivan said.
New Delhi had also hoped to hold a meeting of leaders of the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue, or Quad, consisting of the United States, Japan, India and Australia, around the time of Biden’s visit, but the other leaders also had scheduling difficulties.
Indian government officials told reporters that they will try to hold the Quad Summit later in 2024. “We are looking for revised dates as the dates currently under consideration do not work with all the Quad partners,” officials said, according to Indian news accounts.
Biden is not the only leader to have scheduling conflicts. In 2019, President Donald Trump was invited but “begged off because of the State of the Union,” Walter Ladwig, associate professor of international relations at Kings College London said in an interview. Boris Johnson was invited in 2021 but couldn’t make it, he added.
Ladwig says he does not see Biden’s absence at Republic Day as a signal of displeasure related to the assassination plot allegations. “President Biden was aware of it and went to the G-20 and pulled out the stops to make sure it was a success for India,” he said. “It would be weird to put in all that effort and then purposefully snub this honor.”