U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry at the State Department June 20, 2024 in Washington, DC.
(Win McNamee/Getty Images)
Recent revelations by American whistleblower Edward Snowden are casting a pall over nascent U.S. efforts to reenergize relations with India. On Wednesday, the Indian government summoned a top American diplomat in response to reports that the U.S. National Security Agency had conducted surveillance on the Bharatiya Janata Party, led by new Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi .
According to the claims, published by the Washington Post on Monday, the NSA had broad license to conduct surveillance on virtually any foreign government with the exception of Britain, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. Furthermore, the NSA was reportedly given the authority to target foreign political parties, including Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood and National Salvation Front, the Pakistan People’s Party, Lebanon’s Hezbollah-allied Amal, and the Bolivarian Continental Coordinator of Venezuela — as well as the BJP. The 2010 court order authorizing this surveillance is just the latest document released by Snowden to make geopolitical waves.
And it throws a wrench into Washington’s ongoing attempt at overhauling relations with New Delhi, which reached a low point following a spat over the arrest of an Indian diplomat in New York last December. Tensions around the episode are thought to be responsible for the resignation of the U.S. ambassador to New Delhi shortly after and have continued to linger despite the election of a new government. In fact, the rise of Modi’s BJP has been even more problematic for U.S. diplomats worried about the effect of the leader’s near-decade-old travel ban to the U.S. over the 2002 violence in Gujarat.
While Modi has so far shown himself uninterested in holding a grudge over the ban, the revelation of U.S. surveillance on his Hindu Nationalist party is not likely to inspire the same show of goodwill from the leader. Modi has not yet personally commented on the reports but a spokesman for India’s Ministry of External Affairs has already called the allegations “highly objectionable.” The move to summon Washington’s top diplomat in New Delhi underscores the seriousness with which the government is approaching the reports while reenergizing the tensions of a few months ago.
This is, of course, a seriously inopportune moment for another spike in diplomatic antagonism. The Obama administration had been hoping to revive ties with India with an eye towards more robust trade and defense agreements between the two governments. John Kerry was expected to pay a visit to New Delhi later this month to parlay with BJP officials ahead of a planned trip by Modi to Washington in September. What should have been a promising chance to get off on the right foot with the new BJP government will now be awkward at best for Washington.
