Prime Minister Theresa May holds a meeting with her Indian counterpart, Narendra Modi, on the second day of the G20 Summit in Hangzhou, China. Stefan Rousseau/PA Images. All rights reserved.Britain's recently elected Prime Minister Theresa May, post-Brexit, has chosen to visit India from November 6, her first foray outside Europe after taking office. She ought to have headed to Washington given Britain’s ‘special relationship’ with the United States but presumably thanks to the presidential election due on November 8 that was ruled out.
However, why did she choose India as her first port of call outside of Europe even as her country is witness to a rising spate of racist attacks including against people of Indian and other southern Asian as well as Black and Coloured origins?
The former colony which is home to the second largest population – 1.2 billion, behind China's 1.4 billion – has been pursuing pro-big-business policies since the 1990s at least. And under the current government of Narendra Modi and his Bharatiya Janata Party, the country has been moving rapidly rightwards.
