Biden touts ties with India, but gives only an indirect nudge on human rights

President Joe Biden hailed the country’s deepening relationship with India as he stood alongside its leader Thursday, highlighting the ascendant nation’s strategic importance while making only oblique references to New Delhi’s backsliding democracy.

“Indians and Americans … cherish freedom and celebrate the democratic values of universal human rights,” Biden said during a news conference, “which face challenges around the world and in each of our countries but which remain so vital to the success of each of our nations: press freedoms, religion freedom, tolerance, diversity.”

Earlier Thursday, Biden welcomed Modi to the White House with a speech touting religious freedom as a “core principle” for both nations, a gentle chiding for the prime minister’s treatment of Muslims. “We live in democracy,” Modi said as part of a long winded defense. “There is absolutely no space for discrimination, neither on the basis of caste, religion, creed or gender.”

But India’s biggest role, the administration believes, could be to provide a check on China. India and China share a lengthy border and recent tensions. U.S. has elevated India as part of the Quad alliance — along with Australia and Japan — to reinforce democracy’s position in the Pacific and has pushed New Delhi to act as a buffer against the economic and territorial ambitions of Xi Jinping.

“A joint address is among the most prestigious invitations and honors the United States Congress can extend,” said Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez , one of those shunning the speech, in a statement. “We should not do so for individuals with deeply troubling human rights records – particularly for individuals whom our own State Department has concluded are engaged in systematic human rights abuses of religious minorities and caste-oppressed communities.

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