NEW DELHI-
The U.S. ambassador to India has resigned following a row over the arrest of a junior Indian diplomat in New York that pushed relations between the world’s biggest democracies to their lowest ebb in more than a decade.
U.S. State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf denied on Monday that Nancy Powell’s resignation was related to ongoing tensions after the December arrest and subsequent strip search of the Indian diplomat, Devyani Khobragade.
But analysts said it was clear the position of Powell, a career diplomat who has held several postings in South Asia and became the ambassador to India in 2012, had become untenable as a result of the affair.
The United States sees India as a natural ally on a range of issues and a potential counterbalance to China in Asia. In 2010, President Barack Obama declared the U.S.-Indian relationship would be “one of the defining partnerships of the 21st century.”
Trade in goods was $63.7 billion last year, and U.S. Vice President Joseph Biden last year called for that to grow to half a trillion dollars in five years.
But trade relations were deteriorating even before the diplomatic row and, in India’s eyes, Powell’s tenure never recovered from Khobragade’s treatment. India took retaliatory measures against the U.S. embassy, including removing the ambassador’s exemption from airport security searches.
Many Indian officials felt Powell had mishandled the case, which was related to the low wages that Khobragade paid a domestic worker called Sangeeta Richard.
Both the Indian government and Narendra Modi, the opposition candidate who is favorite to become India’s next prime minister after elections that end in May, saw the arrest as U.S. hypocrisy and arrogance.
Foreign ministry officials were furious that the embassy under Powell issued human trafficking visas and arranged air tickets to help evacuate Richard’s husband and children two days before Khobragade’s arrest, flying them out of India where they were allegedly facing police harassment.
Indian officials said they were taken by surprise by the operation – and were dismayed about the lack of communication, given the supposed depth of the Indo-US relationship on issues ranging from intelligence sharing to Afghanistan.
India clamped down on alleged legal infractions by the embassy, including the visa status of teachers at the American Embassy School, an institution central to the lives of many expatriate employees of U.S. corporations in Delhi.
Powell met Modi in February, ending a decade-long U.S. boycott of Modi. It brought Washington’s policy in line with other major powers that had shunned him because of deadly religious riots that occurred on his watch, but have now warmed to a man who has overseen fast economic growth in his home state of Gujarat.