The US state department disclosed on Thursday in an accounting of gifts received from foreign leaders during 2023 that Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s was the “priciest” gift that President Biden received, rather, his wife Jill Biden received — a diamond valued at $20,000 (over Rs. 17 lakh.)

To an observer of the US political culture, it would invoke the analogy of a Middle Eastern sheikh from the Gulf region kow-towing to curry favours from the White House. Indeed, troubling questions do arise.

Touched to the quick, Delhi reacted immediately to put the record straight — that it was an artificial lab-grown diamond with a cost price between Rs. 15000-25000, which would put the value of the gift between Rs. 1.1-1.9 lakh only.

What Delhi didn’t say, or more likely its bureaucrats didn’t know, is that while real diamond has no limits on its shelf life, a lab-grown diamond may look the same, but has zero resale value. Suffice to say, the brilliance of the relationship may be gone, but the stone won’t lose its lustre and doesn’t get worn out with time.

Delhi’s clumsy clarification, unattributed of course, makes things worse. Actually, none of the three famous people looks good in this controversy. It makes Jill Biden who apparently took the gift seriously and retained it for official use, somewhat foolish.

A lavish edition of Mahabharata, the great epic that tells a millennia-old tale about the futility of war would have probably made a more appropriate gift from Modi to Biden who poked his nose into a fratricidal strife in distant Eurasia, undermined a nascent peace treaty between two brothers, and coaxed........

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