In Conversation: On A Matter of Trust: India-US Relations from Truman to Trump

Mamta Chaudhry, the author of the novel Haunting Paris (Nan A. Talese/Doubleday/Anchor Books), was born and raised in Calcutta and came to Florida for graduate studies. Her early fiction, poetry, and feature articles have been published in newspapers and magazines in the United States and India. Much of her professional career was in television and classical radio at stations in Calcutta; Gainesville, Florida; Dallas, and Miami. She also has taught literature and creative writing at the University of Miami.

Meenakshi Ahamed is an Indian-born journalist. She has worked at World Bank and the Ashoka Society, and is a foreign correspondent for NDTV in London. Her op-eds and articles have been published in The Asian Age, Seminar, Foreign Policy, The Wall Street Journal and The Washington Post. “I thought India was pretty jammed with poor people and cows wandering around the streets, witch doctors and people sitting on hot coals and bathing in the Ganges, but I did not realize that anybody thought it was important,” said President Harry S. Truman to Ambassador Chester Bowles in 1951. India-U.S. relations have come a long way since, but not without their challenges. In A Matter of Trust: India-US Relations from Truman to Trump (HarperCollins) Ahamed reveals the personal prejudices and insecurities of the leaders – and the political imperatives – that so often cast a shadow over their relationship. She draws on a unique trove of presidential papers, newly declassified documents, memoirs, and interviews with officials directly involved in events on both sides to put together an illuminating account of a relationship that has far-reaching implications for the changing global political landscape. Strobe Talbott, former deputy secretary of state and president of the Brookings Institution, considered that in A Matter of Trust, Ahamed “brings to life the leaders in both countries, with their views and prejudices. A masterpiece.”