In India, the Case of a Missing American Ambassador

And India plays an important role in difficult global negotiations on global health, climate change or technology policy. Richard Verma, the U.S. ambassador to New Delhi during the Obama administration, said that India was essential in getting an agreement on the Paris climate accords. Mr. Verma helped facilitate some of the initial meetings that led to engagement between Indian and American leaders.

Major policy decisions such as the climate accords were agreed on by President Barack Obama and Mr. Modi. But in bilateral negotiations, an ambassador plays a key role in hammering out details of trade and defense agreements relying on his or her personal relationships.

India assumed the leadership of the Group of 20 in December and has lost no time is projecting itself as a peacemaker following a rules-based international order. India’s foreign minister, Subrahmanyam Jaishankar, arguably one of the most talented international diplomats operating today, projects an image of India on the world stage as a responsible nuclear power, resolute against terrorism, and a global force for good.

What you will not get from Mr. Jaishankar is an honest appraisal of the decline of civil rights in India. Ambassadors have been essential in providing Washington with cleareyed assessments about the domestic situation in India — a task that is more essential now than ever. Since his election in 2014, Mr. Modi has presided over the consolidation of a Hindu-majoritarian politics, systematically concentrated power in the hands of the executive and clamped down on political dissent. The Modi government’s onslaught against minorities, freedom of the press and the independence of the judiciary has been relentless.

The United States will need to continuously assess the degree to which it and India still share liberal, democratic values. Ambassadors such as Galbraith, Chester Bowles, Daniel Patrick Moynihan and Frank Wisner, mixing with civil society, the press, bureaucrats and politicians of all stripes, were able to provide an informative and nuanced assessment about the country’s trajectory.

In April 1977, President Jimmy Carter appointed Robert Goheen, a former president of Princeton, as his ambassador to India. Mr. Goheen had been born in India and was in a position to observe if India’s experiment with democracy had survived the “Emergency,” the difficult period between June 1975 and March 1977 when Prime Minister Indira Gandhi suspended constitutional rights, assumed extraordinary powers, jailed opposition leaders and silenced the press.

The work of diplomats can be hard to pin down as they juggle multiple roles. One of the critical responsibilities of an ambassador is to provide accurate assessments about the political landscape of the host country and to be his government’s eyes and ears on the ground. The absence of an American ambassador today may actually suit policymakers in New Delhi. It allows them to avoid careful scrutiny of its domestic affairs.