India, Oct. 25 -- The two largest democracies in the world ought to have had a smooth working relationship, the more so as the Indian diaspora in the US has crossed four million citizens and counting, including children with one of the parents being Indian-American. Yet such is not the case. There have been several zigzags along the trajectory of India-US relations, some of which were highly unpleasant, as during the 1971 Bangladesh War.

The start of the relationship may be traced back to the1940s, the era of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt. He was strongly in favour of freedom for India but was fiercely opposed by Prime Minister Winston Churchill of Britain, at that time the colonial overlords of India. Although in indifferent healt...