The destinies of India, US have converged in the past two years

Today is the last day of my tenure as the United States ambassador to India and as I leave my post, I want to thank the people of India who have made the past two years the highlight of my professional life. In my travels across India, I have been inspired by the potential of this land of my forefathers and the potential of the relationship between India and the United States. I depart with a deep satisfaction that our shared effort over the past two years has fixed the course of a partnership that will benefit the lives of billions.

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Many great thinkers have understood and celebrated the positive aspects of the shared India-US experience that have brought us to where we are today. At the beginning of the 20th century Rabindranath Tagore saw the US as an emerging country that would guide a riven world through looming crises and he appealed to leaders to stay true to the ideals and commitments in which our republic was born. During his 1959 visit to India, Martin Luther King encouraged Indians growing uncertain about their trajectory to cleave to Gandhian ideals and urged Americans to “help India preserve her soul and thus help to save our own.” Read more….