Prime Minister Indira Gandhi with President Ronald Reagan at the 1981 Cancun Summit in Mexico, where heads of government from key industrialised and developing countries met.
The subsequent Indira-Ronnie meeting set the tone for a thaw in the Indo-US relationship, infamously frozen by another Republican President, Richard Nixon, and his passion for Pakistan. Indira Gandhi and her son/successor Rajiv Gandhi were Ronnie and Nancy Reagan's guests in 1982 and 1985 respectively. Both meetings went well and changed the belief that only Democrats in the White House were friendly to India.
Below, US Vice-President George H W Bush and Barbara Bush with Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi and Sonia Gandhi in 1987. The man who went on to become America's 41st President represented his country at Indira Gandhi's funeral in November 1984. His son, the 43rd President, has, of course, made the Indo-US relationship one of the foreign policy milestones of his Presidency.
Also read: 'Jaswant achieved more of his objectives than I'
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