From Cold Shoulder to Hugs: President Obama and PM Modi's Changed Dynamic

New Delhi: As Barack Obama and Narendra Modi clasped each other in a bear hug today, the US and Indian leaders highlighted a bond that observers say stems in part from their humble backgrounds and mutual outsider status.

It's less than a year since the Obama administration ended its cold-shouldering of PM Modi, who had been a pariah in Washington and other Western capitals for more than a decade over communal riots in Gujarat in 2002 when he was the Chief Minister.

The US was the last Western power to end Mr Modi's isolation.

With relations already soured in late 2013 by the arrest and strip-search of an Indian diplomat in New York, Time magazine predicted last year "the atmosphere could soon become even more tense" with Mr Modi in power.

But the PM has refrained from voicing bitterness, and his first meeting with President Obama at the White House in September went far better than many had hoped.

"I think they struck up a very good chemistry," the White House's Deputy National Security Advisor Ben Rhodes told news agency AFP, recalling how the pair had had a long discussion over dinner.

Weeks after that ice-breaker, the two governments resolved a row over food subsidies that had been blocking a global trade agreement, underlining the sense that the pair could do business together.

US officials say President Obama has savoured dealing with a leader who, thanks to his thumping election majority, can get things done.

As he issued his invitation to President Obama, Mr Modi said on Twitter that he was going "to have a friend over".

While there is little doubt that diplomatic imperatives and a mutual desire to counterbalance China's rise partly explains their desire to find common ground, observers say it goes further than that.

Both men entered office under a huge weight of expectation, with grand plans to deliver radical reform that would underline the sense of a bold break from the established order.

"In their first conversation after Prime Minister Modi's election, I think they noted some similarities in terms of how their campaigns kind of changed the way in which politics was practised in their respective countries," said Rhodes.

While Mr Obama's predecessor George W Bush was the son of a president, Mr Modi's main election rival was Rahul Gandhi, whose father and grandmother had both been Prime Minister.

And as the son of a tea vendor, PM Modi's back story carried echoes of President Obama's inspirational rise to become the first black US president.

In an interview published on the eve of his arrival in Delhi, the President said PM Modi's "remarkable life story... is a reflection of the determination of the Indian people to succeed".

"They both come from similar origins. One represents the American dream and the other represents the Indian dream," KG Suresh, senior fellow at the Delhi-based Vivekananda International Foundation think-tank, told AFP.

While President Obama may come from the left of US politics and PM Modi from the right of India's political spectrum, Mr Suresh said they shared basic common goals.

"Modi knows that for the vast socio-economic changes including his ambitious Make in India campaign, he needs American investments and technology, in sectors like defence, energy, nuclear and national security," Mr Suresh said.

"President Obama obviously wants to revive (the) American economy, create jobs and for him India is a great market that offers him an opportunity to fulfil the aspirations of his own people."