US president will take a selfie at Taj Mahal

LAHORE: The 44th American President Barack Obama is due to arrive in India on the night of January 24 on a four-day visit to attend the 65th anniversary of the country’s 117,369-word constitution, the world’s longest charter containing 448 articles in 25 parts, 12 schedules, five appendices and nearly 100 amendments.
As of January 2015, the 53-year old Obama has made 38 international trips to 48 different countries, but this would be his second visit to India as US President (after the November 6 to 9, 2010 tour) and he will be the first American leader to attend the Republic Day parade of the world’s tenth-largest economy by nominal GDP ($2.048 trillion) and third-largest by Purchasing Power Parity ($7.277 trillion).
According to the “Times of India,” the largest Indian newspaper by circulation and largest-selling English daily with a readership of 7.643 million, President Obama will also visit Taj Mahal with his wife Michelle during his highly-publicised visit, where he will click a selfie holding the tip of one of the world’s seven wonders.
The Taj Mahal is a 73-metre high white marble mausoleum built by Moghul emperor Shah Jahan (1594-1666) in memory of his third wife Mumtaz Mahal, between 1632 and 1653.
The top Indian newspaper has revealed that Obama has heard the popular myth that Shah Jahan had cut off the hands of the workers of this monument so that no similar structure could be built again.
“Being an African-American, Obama understands and sympathizes with the pain of all those workers who were treated worse than slaves. He’ll be paying tribute to them. Obama might take the Taj express way to visit Agra,” reports the 1838 newspaper.
And for security reasons, the team handling his visit has nicknamed the trip as “Acche Din” (Good days).
Another prestigious Indian newspaper “The Hindu” writes: “On January 25, he will review the presidential guard of honour and visit Rajghat with many speculating that Mr. Modi would accompany him there, just as President Obama accompanied Mr. Modi to the Martin Luther King memorial when he was in Washington last year. Later, both leaders will have a bilateral meeting where they are expected to review the entire gamut of the relationship and also touch upon regional and international developments. That evening he is expected to attend President Pranab Mukherjee’s official banquet.”
According to “The Hindu,” the US has given a list of 17 projects to the Indian side for consideration under the Defence Technology Trade Initiative, while on the front of climate change, both New Delhi and Washington DC are likely to give a major push for “renewable energy with the US set to offer a grant for India to purchase energy efficient technologies.”
This is how the esteemed American magazine “Time” sees Obama’s visit: “Tanks, missiles and thousands of soldiers, along with elaborate floats representing the country’s states, roll down Rajpath, the Indian capital’s broadest avenue, to commemorate the milestone in a grand, Soviet-style parade. Which is why, this year, when US President Barack Obama takes his place next to India’s leaders to witness the pageantry, there will be no mistaking the political symbolism.”
The “Time magazine further writes: “It will also underscore a rapid shift in U.S.-India ties, which descended into an angry diplomatic row involving Devyani Khobragade, India’s deputy consul general in New York City, in late 2013. Accused of visa fraud and underpaying her housekeeper, Khobragade was handcuffed and strip-searched by US marshals, triggering furious protests from New Delhi. India retaliated by yanking away various privileges enjoyed by American diplomats and removing security barriers from around the US embassy in New Delhi’s diplomatic quarter.”The US magazine also stated that following the bloody sectarian rioting in the then Narendra Modi-governed Indian state of Gujarat in 2002, the US had blocked the Indian leader from visiting New York. “But all was forgotten in September, when the newly installed Prime Minister Modi visited Washington at the invitation of the American President,” it views.