The Hill News

At the end of his tenure as U.S. Ambassador to India in 1969, the highly regarded statesman Chester Bowles lamented that during his time in New Delhi very few members of Congress visited India. Most stayed no more than three days, he said, and "this was just enough to confuse them. They’d see things they didn’t expect to see, changes they hadn’t anticipated, and they felt unsettled about it."

Unsettled and not very interested in pursuing closer U.S.-India ties once they returned to Washington. Today, there’s been a dramatic change.

Recently, the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) and the Senate India Caucus sponsored a half-day policy conference on Capitol Hill focused on U.S.-India relations. The co-chairs of the caucus, Mark Warner (D-Va.) and John Cornyn (R-Texas), spoke about the importance of growing bilateral ties. Senator Warner said the relationship "has raced forward in the last decade-plus" for a host of reasons -- strategi! c, economic and cultural. Senator Cornyn called India "one of our most important strategic relationships in the world."

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