President Obama welcomed Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on a state last Tuesday at the White House.

Fareed Zakaria | BIO
CNN Anchor

India's Prime Minister Manmohan Singh came away from talks at the White House reassured about U.S. policy in Asia, according to foreign affairs analyst Fareed Zakaria.

Singh and President Obama capped their talks with an elaborate state dinner in a tent at the White House Tuesday night, the first such occasion in Obama's presidency.

Zakaria, who attended the formal event, told CNN the dinner was a success: "My sense is there was a very warm feeling. The Indian prime minister was gushing and he's not a man who gushes."

U.S. and Indian officials spoke about the war in Afghanistan, just as Obama is expected to announce - on Tuesday - increased U.S. troop levels in the region.

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Smoke billows out of the Taj Majal hotel in Mumbai, India, during a siege in November 2008.

Reza Sayah
CNN

Seven suspects arrested in connection with last year's attacks on the Indian financial capital of Mumbai were charged in connection with the siege Wednesday, a defense attorney for one of the men told CNN.

The suspects are Zaki-ur-Rehman Lakhvi, the alleged mastermind of the attacks, Umar Abjul Wajid, Shahid Jameel Riaz, Jameel Ahmed, Mohammad Younas Anjum, Mazhar Iqbal and Hammad Amin Sadiq.

Alyas Saddiqi, the defense attorney representing suspect Jameel Ahmed, said the defendants were charged with acts of terrorism, money laundering, supplying funds for terrorism, and providing tools for terrorism. Saddiqi said all the defendants pleaded not guilty to the charges.

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President Obama hosts Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in a state visit Tuesday at the White House.

Fareed Zakaria | BIO
CNN Anchor, “Fareed Zakaria – GPS”

Barack Obama has been criticized for kowtowing to the Chinese and the Russians over the last few months. But so far, this is all about atmospherics. The administration has not made any unilateral concession of substance to either country. It is taking a strategic view that developing strong relationships with both countries, particularly China, will yield long-term benefits. Strangely, however, that strategic focus has been lost in dealing with Asia's other rising giant, India.

At one level the administration is being extremely friendly. India's Prime Minister Manmohan Singh comes to Washington this week for the first official state visit of the Obama presidency. There will be toasts and celebrations and many nice words said in public about the ties between the two great democracies. But underneath this lies an unease about the state of the relationship.

Indian officials worry that the Obama team does not have the same fundamental orientation as the Bush administration regarding India's role in the 21st century. Some Obama officials publicly criticized the nuclear deal championed by George W. Bush, a deal that the Indians regard as basic recognition of their status as a major power. They worry that a Democratic administration could succumb to protectionism. They worry that it is too cozy with China.

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Editor's Note: This article continues our series excerpted from AC360°'s contributor David Gewirtz's upcoming book, How To Save Jobs, which will be available in December. Over the next few months, we'll be excerpting the first section of the book, which answers the question, "How did we get here?".Last time, we looked at how China has been transforming itself into a powerhouse nation This time, we'll begin our look at changes in India and what that might mean for Americans. To learn more about the book, follow David on Twitter @DavidGewirtz.

David Gewirtz | BIO
AC360° Contributor
Editor-in-Chief, ZATZ Publishing

For much of the 20th century, India followed an extremely socialist economic policy.  Its economy was excessively regulated, protectionism was rampant, corruption was everywhere, and growth was slow.

But in 1991, India changed its policy. Throughout the 1980s, India made it somewhat easier for businesses to grow. Rajiv Ghandi, India's Prime Minister from 1984 to 1989, removed price restrictions, and dropped corporate taxes to a much lower level than they'd ever been before. While growth increased, so did deficits (less taxes meant less money in the government's treasury).

India's primary trading partner was the Soviet Union and, in 1991, the Soviet Union fell. For all intents and purposes, India lost its best customer. And then oil prices went up during the first Gulf War.

All of this lead to a serious monetary crisis for the Indian government, which also suffered from a leadership vacuum. Rajiv resigned after losing an election in 1989 to Vishwanath Pratap Singh. Singh lasted in office for less than a year. Next came Chandra Shekhar who became Prime Minister on November 10, 1990 and resigned on June 21, 1991. Finally, Pamulaparthi Venkata Narasimha Rao took office in June, 1991 and served until May of 1996.

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The Washington Post
Interfaith Youth Core
Eboo Patel

The first thing Allah Rakha (A R) Rahman did when he arrived back on Indian soil after picking up two Oscars in Hollywood was to offer prayers at a Sufi shrine. Rahman, who won two Oscars for the music he created for "Slumdog Millionaire", accepted Islam in the late 1980s, after experiencing a dream sequence calling him into the faith. He has been on Haj multiple times and is regular in his five daily prayers. That he makes dance music for Indian beauties and seeks guidance at the mausoleums of Muslim saints only affirms his place in the mainstream of Indian Islam.

India has long been at the center of Muslim pluralism, a movement with three core elements:

1) A spiritual ethic defined by the Islamic concept of Tawheed, the idea that God is all-pervasive;
2) A social ethic that views those of other creeds as partners in the journey to serve God and humanity;
3) A cultural ethic that seeks to absorb the multiple identities of faith, nation, ethnicity and language, understanding this multiplicity as mutually enriching rather than mutually exclusive.

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Eboo Patel
Washington Post
Interfaith Youth Core

In the middle of the Q and A section of my talk on Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in this heartland city of Bhopal, a student from the local technical college stood up and said, "Sir, I have prepared a 15-minute lecture on Martin Luther King Jr. that I would like to read to you. Sir, would you like to hear it?"

He wasn't kooky activist, he wasn't kidding and no one in the audience laughed at him. He is part of middle India, earnest and aspirational India, ready to-do-whatever-it-takes-to-make-it India. After the program was over, he ran up to me excitedly and thrust the text into my hands. It was written in a schoolboy's cursive, in blue ballpoint pen. "I don't want to take your only copy," I told him. "Don't worry, sir, I have memorized the speech." I don't doubt it.

I'm on a brief speaking tour of India sponsored by the U.S. State Department, using the legacy of King and Gandhi as a springboard to explain why the world's oldest democracy and the world's largest should lead the world on the critical issue of interfaith cooperation.

If there is one term that describes contemporary India, it is aspiration. What is particularly refreshing to me is to watch that striving not just in India's economy, but also in other parts of its democracy.

The Chair of the country's first journalism department told me that there are somewhere between 35,000-40,000 newspapers in India - about a thousand of them in English - with new ones sprouting up all the time.

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While on assignment in India, CNN's Dr. Sanjay Gupta helps a little girl who is injured in the town of Sonepat.

Cate Vojdik
AC360° Writer

We’re following breaking news on the auto bailout. We’re getting reports that Senate Majority leader Harry Reid says the Big Three bailout is in jeopardy. Democrats apparently don’t have enough votes to give the Big Three the money they want from the $700 billion rescue plan pot. We’ll have more details by air time.

According to new CNN polling, the bailout is already a bust among Americans. Six in 10 oppose rescuing the Big Three with taxpayer money. In early November, nearly half the public supported federal help for Detroit. So what’s changed? We’d love to hear your take.

Some more baffling math from the poll: Three-quarters of respondents said they think they’ll personally feel the impact if the auto makers go bankrupt. We’re intrigued that so many Americans support letting the auto makers go belly up, while admitting their families will suffer from the consequences. Again, we’d love your input.

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Ultra-Orthodox Jewish men and boys pray next to the bodies of Rabbi Gavriel Holtzberg and his wife Rivka.

Rabbi Shmuley Boteach

All terrorism is monstrous, but the murder of Rabbi Gavriel and Rivka Holtzberg by ‘religious Islamic extremists’ stands out for its unspeakable infamy. The deliberate targeting of a small Jewish center and its married young directors, whose only purpose it was to provide for the religious needs of a community and feed travelers, proves that those who perpetrated this crime are bereft not only of even a hint of humanity, but every shred of faith as well. The world’s most aggressive atheists are more religious than these spiritual charlatans and pious frauds. When Osama bin Laden, whose beard masks the face of the ultimate religious hypocrite, attacked the World Trade Center in New York, the target was purportedly chosen as the very symbol of American materialism and excess. But what could these ‘religious’ people have been thinking in exterminating a twenty-something couple with two babies who moved from the world’s richest country to India to provide religious services and faith to the poor and the needy? What blow against Western decadence were they striking by targeting a Chabad House whose entire purpose it is to spread spirituality to people whose lives lack it? Now is not only a time to remember the victims but to hate their killers. One cannot love the innocent without simultaneously loathing those who orphan their children.

I know how uncomfortable people feel about hatred. It smacks of revenge. It poisons the heart of those who hate. But this is true only if we hate the good, the innocent, or the neutral. Hating monsters, however, motivates us to fight them. Only if an act like this repulses us to our core will we summon the will to fight these devils so that they can never murder again.

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