WASHINGTON — U.S. Rep. Ro Khanna said India must increasingly act like a global power and assume greater international responsibilities as its economic and strategic influence grows.
Speaking at the Capitol Hill Summit 2026, organized by the U.S.-India Friendship Council, Khanna said India’s rise carries obligations that extend beyond regional politics and economic growth.
“India has to decide who it wants to be as it enters this place of world leadership,” Khanna said during a panel discussion on defense, technology and energy cooperation. “You can’t say you want to be a world leader, but then shrink away from responsibility.”
Khanna pointed to the war in Ukraine as an area where India could play a constructive diplomatic role because of its longstanding ties with Russia.
“I’ve been very vocal in India as well as here that India can play a very constructive role in helping bring the war in Ukraine to an end,” he said. “It has lines of communications with Russia.”
Khanna said India has historically sought to maintain a nonaligned position in global affairs, but suggested that 21st-century geopolitical realities require New Delhi to take clearer positions on international crises.
“India has its own aspirations,” Khanna said. “Fastest growing economy in the world. It has to decide who it wants to be.”
Despite recent tensions over tariffs and trade policies under President Donald Trump’s administration, Khanna said the broader strategic logic of the U.S.-India relationship remains intact.
“Nothing fundamentally has changed about our long-term strategic interest,” he said.
Khanna said Democrats and Republicans in Congress continue to strongly support closer engagement with India, particularly on defense, technology and Indo-Pacific security cooperation.
At the same time, he criticized what he described as anti-Indian voices within parts of the Trump administration.
“I do think there’s folks like Peter Navarro and others inside the administration that are very anti-Indian,” Khanna said.
Earlier at the summit, Khanna offered a broader defense of a values-based U.S.-India partnership and warned against building ties around nationalism or authoritarianism.
“It is what are the values that will undergird the US-India relationship,” he said. “Are we going to form an alliance of convenience based on nationalism?”
Khanna said the two democracies should work together to promote pluralism, democratic governance and international cooperation.
“We must, as the United States, build a multiracial democracy and work with India as a multiracial democracy,” he said.
The congressman also reflected on his own political career as an Indian American, recalling that he was once told an Indian American of Hindu faith would struggle to win elected office in the United States.
“One of the very few people who would say, ‘You keep at it, you keep working, this country will make space for you,’ was Swadesh,” Khanna said, referring to U.S.-India Friendship Council Chairman Swadesh Chatterjee.
Khanna represents California’s Silicon Valley-based 17th Congressional District and is one of the most prominent Indian American voices in Congress on technology, democracy and foreign policy issues. (Source: IANS)
