July 4th and Modi an Apostle of Peace at the UN
Our cherished July 4th – embedded with “unalienable rights” and collateralized by our “sacred honor” thanks to Freedoms’ architect Thomas Jefferson – is around the corner. On the longest day of the year in June, PM Narendra Modi, whom the Australian PM Tony Albanese calls “The Boss,” took the world by storm at the UN – which I call the “Vatican of Peace” – and delivered on his 2015 Samarkand Declaration: that “today’s era is not an era of war,” by getting most of the world’s diplomats to join him in Yoga for better health and life, in an implicit rejection of war’s death and destruction. Indeed, so affected by the Modi magic in the air is that folks came by the thousands to to do Yoga on the North Lawn. Even I, limitations aside, got down on a yoga mat for the first time in my life; as to how I got up, Bill Clinton’s “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” cloaks the moment. That India’s PR Ruchira Kamboj and her team worked tirelessly is again PM Modi’s attribute, for it is he who has made India’s government “for the people,” honoring Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Covenant and making 1.4 billion Indians believe they are Americans too with inalienable rights. That members of the UNSC’s P5 and E10 attended, along with an overwhelming majority of the member states, partook in the Multilateral State Breakfast at sunrise followed by Yoga speaks volumes for the deep thirst humanity and the diplomatic corp have for peace, in sharp rebuke of wars without purpose or end. Modi’s “Yoga for One World, One Family” resonated, as humanity is suffering from endless wars’ numbness and hope-deconstruction.
Modi is a State Guest of President Joe Biden
After leading the world in Yoga, Modi left for Washington DC to be feted by President Biden as our State Guest. Jill and Joe Biden’s warm welcome everywhere, all the time, was pomp and circumstance come to life, even as it was exhausting and reassuring. What Modi did in Washington DC is nothing short of amazing, as he set a bar so high that few heads of state or governments will ever come close to. His playfulness, none more than during his Second Joint Address, speaks to the comfort level by and amongst the two most important democracies. The bipartisan warmth – led by Speaker Kevin McCarthy and Leaders Hakeem Jeffries, Chuck Schumer and Mitch McConnell – helps us right here at home to re-unite even after Modi’s departure and become a united States of America.
While there are those who see India as a linchpin to counterbalance China, I reject that disappointing pathway. First, India and Indians have our Bill of Rights as their own, in their Constitution that mirrors ours, due to mutual values and freedoms. Second, nations must reject the narcotic use of Counterbalance in statecraft, as it never works right, and boomerangs. Just, behold us and China. We made China rich and powerful as a counterbalance to the then-USSR. And now, instead of gratitude, even our minimalist desire to establish secure and regular communications between our respective military leadership to avoid miscalculations and misadventure get ignored by China in favor of strategic ambiguity – over and above the inherent Chinese inscrutability culled into an art form over the many centuries, while spy balloons traverse nations’ skyline without a tourist visa – and our Secretary of State Tony Blinken has to play nice in Beijing just to meet President Xi Jinping, who I see as a real life Count of Monte Cristo since his ejection of Hu Jintao on October 22, 2022. Well, truth be told, I prefer we play “nice” rather than “inhospitable,” as in Anchorage, as we are still recovering therefrom.
E Pluribus Unum has a new meaning: India and United States are One
In 2016, Modi’s Washington Declaration was of “Indivisibility.” This time, he embraced E Pluribus Unum, orated as if he was Mark Anthony of Old Rome, enjoyed himself while playfully engaging in rhetoric and offering to be a bipartisan bridge between the Democrats and the Republicans. He was “at home”; he was talking to his own family; India and America had become a happily married couple, with limitless potential and effortless affection. This Limitless Partnership of democracies is a direct response to the No Limits Partnership between President Xi and Putin of February 4, 2022. If you did not see him live or on video to-date, please do so. It’s Modi’s tour de force, that no foreign leader has come close to Modi’s Joint Address on June 22nd. Leaving Modi’s style and comfort of a son-in-law aside, it’s the substance of 1.4 billion Indians dreaming their “American Dream” as an “Indian Dream” that causes a joinder of nations better than holy matrimony. This collective, is a power of Peace and Freedoms, that authoritarian leaders have to reckon with. My personal hope is that India will soon achieve the “give and take” in our new familial relationship to a durable “win-win.”
Modi’s Ukraine Moment
Modi’s strongest applause line was when he spoke of Ukraine’s right to her “sovereignty and territorial integrity.”
Is it any wonder that America and India got married during this Joint Address, as we all proudly bore witness while wondering if this “AI,” America and India, honeymoon was going to last a thousand years as Lincoln ordained.
I started attending Joint Addresses to Congress since 1984 as a Member of the Speaker’s Club, when the House was presided by Speaker Tip O’Neill (“all politics is local”) and Ronald Reagan (“trust, but verify” and “constructive engagement”) was president. Narendra Modi made America and India indivisible in-fact with common relatives: Gandhi and King, while condoling us for the loss of Harry Reid, John McCain and the iconic John Lewis. As an American of Indian ancestry, this moment is both surreal as it is soulfully satisfying: E Pluribus Unum now even means USA and India are one!
Happy Independence Day America!
Ravi Batra, Esq.
Ravi Batra, starting September 11, 2021, is a publisher of The America Times Company Ltd., and since January 2022, is the Editor-in-Chief. He is a member of the National Press Club, in Washington D.C., and a member of its "Freedom of the Press" and "International Correspondents" Teams/Committees.
A member of the bar since 1981, he is the head of a boutique law firm in Manhattan, The Law Firm of Ravi Batra, P.C., that handles complex constitutional, sovereignty, torture, civil and criminal cases, representing governments, corporates and individuals, with landmark legal victories, including, libel in fiction, in “Batra v. Dick Wolf.” He is Chairman & CEO, Greenstar Global Energy Corp., King Danylo of Galicia International Ltd., Mars & Pax Advisors, Ltd., Chairman of National Advisory Council on South Asian Affairs, and since September 2021, Advisor for Legal and Humanitarian Affairs to the Permanent Mission of Georgia to the United Nations. He is invited by various governments to address High Level Ministerial events, including, on Counter-Terrorism, including, Astana (Nur-Sultan), Dushanbe, Minsk and Delhi. He has testified in Congress as an invitee of the Chair, U.S. House Foreign Affairs Committee, and interacted with U.S. Department of State from 1984 -1990, and then again, from 2006, during the tenures of Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, Hillary Clinton, John Kerry, Rex Tillerson, Mike Pompeo and Antony Blinken.
He has served as Commissioner of New York State Joint Commission on Public Ethics (JCOPE), Trustee on New York State IOLA Board, New York State Judicial Screening Committee for the Second Judicial Department, City Bar’s Judicial Committee, Vice-Chair of Kings County Democratic County Committee’s Independent Judicial Screening Committee for the then-2nd Judicial Department of Brooklyn and Staten Island, Chair of NYSTLA’ Judicial Independence Committee, with many more bar leadership roles, including, NYSBA’s House of Delegates for four years. He has served as Advisor for Legal & Human Rights Affairs to the Permanent Mission of Ukraine post-annexation of Crimea till 2021, and Legal Advisor to numerous nations’ permanent missions to the U. N. since 2009, including, India, Pakistan, Honduras and Malta. He has served: as Global Special Counsel to The Antonov Company in Ukraine, a state-owned company, and was registered with the Justice Dept pursuant to FARA; and as Special Global Advisor to Rector/President of both - National Aviation University of Ukraine and National Technical University of Ukraine/KPI. He remains involved in geopolitics and public policy since the mid-1980's, starting with being on House Speaker Tip O’Neill’s Speaker’s Club and appointed member of NACSAA during President Ronald Reagan’s tenure. In 1988, he was part of U.S. Attorney General Ed Meese’s Delegation to Japan to resolve bilateral trade imbalance. He regularly interacts with the multilateral diplomatic community, and during the High Level UNGA Debate, with heads of State/Government. He is sought for his views as a speaker and writer.