Seventy-five members of the US Congress wrote to President Joe Biden ahead of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s arrival in New York on Tuesday, urging him to discuss during their bilateral engagement the need to protect human rights and democratic values in India.

The 75 signatories to the letter were not opposed to the visit like two of their colleagues, Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar, who have decided to boycott the joint sitting of the US Congress which Modi is scheduled to address on Thursday.

However, the signatories urged Biden to demonstrate American respect for human rights, press freedom, religious freedom and pluralism by raising these issues with Modi.

The US National Security Council’s coordinator for strategic communications, John Kirby, told reporters: “Human rights are a foundational element of this administration’s foreign policy, and you can certainly expect that the President will — as he always does and as you can do with friends and partners like Prime Minister Modi in India — raise our concerns about that.”

Kirby was responding to the question whether democratic stability and human rights would be discussed during the visit.

Responding to a similar question, he said the US was prepared to have “somewhat uncomfortable conversations with our partners and our friends and our allies”, and that Washington was well aware that democracy was tough.

Kirby made an oblique allusion to the difficult transition of power in the US in 2021, probably in anticipation of India countering any reference to democratic backsliding in the country by mentioning the January 6, 2021, violence at the Capitol building.

All the signatories to the letter to Biden — initiated by Senator Chris Van Hollen and Representative Pramila Jayapal — are Democrats like the President himself and have articulated the support that the India-US relationship enjoys in Washington. Tlaib and Omar, too, are from the Democratic Party.

The letter referred to the state department’s 2022 Country Report on Human Rights Practices in India and the International Religious Freedom Report, along with annual assessments compiled by Reporters Without Frontiers.

It reminded Biden of his own words that America must “lead not merely by the example of our power but by the power of our example”, making respect for human rights, press freedom, religious freedom, and pluralism the core tenets of American foreign policy.

“These tenets are necessary to the functioning of true democracy. In order to advance these values with credibility on the world stage, we must apply them equally to friend and foe alike, just as we work to apply these same principles here in the United States,” the letter said.

Given how the ruling ecosystem in India has reacted to such pressure in the past – alleging ulterior motives – the signatories made it clear that they were writing the letter in defence of certain values that India and the US share.

“We do not endorse any particular Indian leader or political party -- that is the decision of the people of India -- but we do stand in support of the important principles that should be a core part of American foreign policy,” they said, stressing the need for the “friendship to be built not only on our many shared interests but also on shared values”.

While Biden may raise the issue of human rights violations and democratic backsliding on Modi’s watch during their meeting, the US administration is not expected to give India too much grief on this count.

Washington is keen on keeping India in its corner in matters relating to China and on weaning New Delhi away from Moscow.

Kirby said that India was no longer a second-tier country in the US scheme of things, and described the relationship as one of “partners of first resort”. He added that “there is no partner more consequential than India”.

On the visit itself – Modi’s first state visit to the US --- Kirby said: “We are hosting India for an official state visit to put our cooperation on an inexorable trajectory, as we support India’s emergence as a great power that will be central to ensuring US interest in the coming decades.

“After years of strengthening our ties, the United States-India partnership is deeper and more expansive than it has ever been in the past. We now look instinctively to each other and work cooperatively with each other to uphold a free and open Indo-Pacific, to drive innovation, (and to) jointly tackle global challenges.”