Those in the know at Rashtrapati Bhavan will tell you President Mukherjee used to hate travelling abroad. He specifically disliked ceremonial visits, because he believed the role of the President of India, especially during foreign visits, should be in the national interest—proactive and dialogue-driven, while keeping the country’s geopolitical and economic priorities in mind.

For years, Indians viewed their countrymen who emigrated abroad for better opportunities with suspicion – as if they’d somehow betrayed the motherland. (...)And the country’s new government is looking at the huge expatriate population – second only to China’s – as a valuable component of India’s foreign policy, in much the same way the Jewish diaspora in the US influences international opinion and policy on Israel.