At a recent campaign event, President Joe Biden of the United States of America described India, China, Japan and Russia as xenophobic nations that do not welcome immigrants. He claimed that historically, the US’s openness to migration was a key factor in that nation’s economic growth. Predictably, the countries he named — especially the US’s friends, India and Japan — pushed back, with the Indian external affairs minister, S. Jaishankar, referring to India’s centuries-old track record of embracing people from myriad societies that have come to the country. Yet, the reality about both the US and India — especially in recent years — is far more chequered than the self-congratulatory comments made by Mr Biden and Mr Jaishankar, respectively. If political leaders are unwilling to acknowledge the truth, it is time for them — and the governments they are part of — to reflect on the reasons for their unease. The US, for instance, is indeed a land of immigrants. But throughout its history, it has married immigration with a stiff dose of racism. Millions of people were forcibly brought to the US and other parts of the Americas under the Transatlantic slave trade. The Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 banned Chinese immigration for a decade. During World War II, approximately 120,000 Americans of Japanese descent were interned in camps and their loyalties questioned. The former president, Donald Trump — his chances of returning to the White House seem bright — imposed a ban on travel to the US from multiple Muslim-majority nations. Mr Biden has continued with many of Mr Trump’s restrictive policies relating to migrants seeking to enter the US through its southern border.

India, which indeed has traditionally been an open and welcoming society, can no longer claim the moral high ground either. Like the US, India too needs to look in the mirror. There is a deep irony in Mr Jaishankar’s response to Mr Biden's comments as it came days after his Bharatiya Janata Party posted a blatantly Islamophobic Instagram video portraying a Hindu India as the victim of waves of Muslim raids over several centuries. The country that welcomed Parsis, Tibetan Buddhists, Sri Lankan Tamils and Bangladeshi and Afghan refugees across faiths is now trying to expel Rohingya asylum-seekers who escaped death in Myanmar. Under the Citizenship (Amendment) Act, it has imposed a religious test on which refugees are treated preferentially. These are far deeper stains on India's legacy than the words of a foreign partner and New Delhi must reflect on the erosion of the spirit of accommodation. Clever words and finger-pointing will not wash them away.