On the other hand, editorials in some of America’s newspapers urged the US President to embrace India, but also prevail on the PM on issues of free speech, dissent and the rights of religious minorities. Around 70 lawmakers, most of them Biden’s party colleagues, urged the President to dial up the pressure.

How do we understand this seeming dissonance? What are the messages for all sides of the ideological trenches?

There’s no question that the PM’s visit to Washington has been an extremely successful one. Once denied a visa and blocked from entering the country for nearly a decade, Modi has every reason to smile at the irony of this moment, when the Biden administration just cannot get enough of him.

Whether it is the purchase of Boeing aircraft and armed drones or the mega deal with General Electric to make fighter jet engines in India, the age of New Delhi being what Biden called America’s defining relationship is well and truly here.

Shared security concerns in the Indo-Pacific and the convergence of containing China’s aggressive encirclement will remain the energy epicentre of the strategic cooperation in the near future. And then there is the enormous success of the nearly five-million-strong Indian-American community. From Sundar Pichai to Mindy Kaling, the desi immigrant is an industrious, ambitious, high-achieving segment of America.

But India’s democracy debate – especially as seen through the eyes of the West – followed Modi and Biden into the White House press briefing. And there are lessons for both sides of the debate in what happened next.

The Modi government has snarled at any public commentary from the Biden administration on India’s internal debates, be they political or cultural. An official in the Biden administration told me that “whatever has to be raised, will be done, privately, quietly.”

But officials did meet, on background, with prominent members of the diaspora, several of them known critics of the Modi government, to be briefed on the democracy debate. And then Obama, who once wrote a profile of Modi as a “reformer-in-chief” for Time Magazine, waded into the debate with his remarks on how “at some point, India may pull apart…” if the rights of religious minorities are not protected.

You can argue, as several have, that Obama undercut Biden, and the President would not have been pleased. Or you could argue, as others have, that Obama was saying what others could not publicly. Either way, his remarks and the question at the press meet, should tell the government that this debate is not going away. Whether the BJP and its supporters see it as hypocritical, or the work of a so-called anti-India lobby; the government is better served at taking these questions head-on, than pushing them away.

For American critics of the Modi government, it is important to understand two things. Many Indians – in fact, I would say most – would close ranks at judgement by the government of another country. Indians, even those who vote differently, might argue that 70 lawmakers in India’s Parliament are unlikely to write a letter to Modi asking him to raise gun violence or the absence of abortion rights in his meetings with Biden.

Political scientist Ashutosh Varshney recently made an interesting observation on the democracy debate in both countries. In India, he said, how elections are fought, won and lost remains a healthy process; the debate is around what happens between elections. In the US, on the other hand, ever since the Capitol Hill insurrection, election results themselves have been challenged and weaponised.

The point is that democracies are often imperfect and a work in progress, everywhere in the world. The conversation on values can definitely not be avoided in a globalised world. But it can only be had as a dialogue between equals. Not by one country appointing itself to the role of global arbiter of those values.

For the government and its American critics both, that might be something to consider.

Barkha Dutt is an award-winning journalist and writer The views expressed are personal.