President Biden plans to roll out the red carpet on Thursday morning to formally welcome Prime Minister Narendra Modi of India to the White House for a pomp-filled state visit intended to woo the world’s most populous nation at a time of conflict with Russia and rising tension with China.
Mr. Biden will celebrate India’s rise with a lavish display of friendship marked by marching bands, honor guards and a multigun salute on the South Lawn, weather permitting, to be followed by an Oval Office meeting and a gala state dinner. Mr. Modi agreed to join Mr. Biden in the East Room to meet with journalists and will also address a joint session of Congress in the afternoon.
The visit represents the latest move on the geopolitical chess board as Mr. Biden seeks more allies against increasingly aggressive governments in Moscow and Beijing. India, which remained nonaligned during the Cold War, has refused to join the American-led coalition aiding Ukraine in its war against invading Russian forces. And while it shares a certain enmity for China, it has not fully subscribed to Washington’s strategy for dealing with the Asian giant.
Mr. Modi started his day on Wednesday in New York, where he joined a group yoga session on the lawn of the United Nations in Manhattan in honor of International Yoga Day, an observation he helped persuade the world body to begin years ago.
Afterward, he traveled to Washington and visited the National Science Foundation in the Virginia suburb of Alexandria with Jill Biden, the first lady, to highlight work force training programs. In the evening, he arrived at the White House for a less formal welcome and a private dinner with Mr. Biden before the public festivities on Thursday.
The two leaders plan to announce a long list of initiatives advancing cooperation on telecommunications, semiconductors, artificial intelligence and other areas, according to administration officials. Mr. Modi intends to sign the Artemis Accords, a set of principles governing peaceful exploration of the moon, Mars and other celestial bodies, and the two will announce a joint mission to the International Space Station in 2024.
Among the most concrete agreements to be announced, officials said, will be a deal between General Electric and the state-owned Hindustan Aeronautics Limited to manufacture in India F414 engines used to power the Boeing F/A-18E/F Super Hornet. The two sides will also announce that India will proceed with a long-stalled $3 billion purchase of MQ-9B Predator drones from General Atomics.
The military hardware sales may help continue to wean India off Russian arms suppliers, but otherwise officials previewing the visit offered no indications that Mr. Modi would move closer to backing Ukraine in the war, nor were there any concrete examples of increased cooperation to counter China’s assertive moves in the Indo-Pacific region.
Administration officials suggested the meeting was just one step in an evolution of India’s stance on the Ukraine war, part of what they characterized as “bending the arc of India’s engagement,” so New Delhi can be helpful in encouraging diplomacy when the time for negotiations eventually arrives.
But in wooing Mr. Modi, it was clear that Mr. Biden was taking a soft approach to backsliding on democracy in India, where the government has cracked down on dissent and hounded opponents. He will raise human rights issues, officials said, but they used the word “respectful” more than once to characterize the president’s approach.
They considered it a victory that the administration had persuaded Mr. Modi, who famously refuses to hold news conferences, to meet with reporters alongside Mr. Biden, as most major world leaders do when they visit the White House. Even then, the White House avoided using the term “news conference”; its public schedule said the leaders would “take questions from the press” in the East Room.
The state dinner will be held on the South Lawn in a pavilion draped in green with saffron-colored flowers at every table, the colors of the Indian flag. Lotus blooms, an important symbol in India, will be incorporated throughout the décor. Images of the bald eagle and the peacock, the national birds of the two countries, will be displayed as the backdrop when the leaders offer their traditional toasts.
The menu will be vegetarian, in accordance with Mr. Modi’s diet, with an optional fish entree. The first course will be a marinated millet and grilled corn kernel salad with compressed watermelon and avocado sauce, followed by a main course of stuffed portobello mushrooms and creamy saffron-infused risotto. A sumac-roasted sea bass will be available upon request. A rose and cardamom-infused strawberry shortcake will be served for dessert.
Joshua Bell, the Grammy-winning violinist, will perform, as will Penn Masala, a South Asian a cappella group founded by students at the University of Pennsylvania, and the U.S. Marine Band chamber orchestra.
“After years of strengthening ties, the U.S.-India partnership is deep and expansive as we jointly tackle global challenges,” Dr. Biden told reporters on Wednesday in previewing the event. “But our relationship isn’t only about the government. We’re celebrating the families and friendships that span the globe, those who feel the bonds of home, in both of our countries.”
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