The joke among Indian Americans this week is that the US presidential candidate, Barack Obama, has “done an IAEA” on south Asians. After conceding Indian American support to his former rival, Hillary Clinton, for many months, after being largely indifferent to subcontinental issues since the start of his presidential bid a year-and-a-half ago, the man who could be the next American president sprang a succession of surprises in the last few weeks.

Like the Indian prime minister, Manmohan Singh, who gave the impression for at least half a year that the nuclear deal had been put on the back-burner for reasons of political expediency and then sprang a surprise by approaching the International Atomic Energy Agency, Obama and his presidential campaign are now deeply engaged in south Asia and with south Asians. For now, this is good news for India and Indian Americans.

Many eyebrows were raised in the United States of America and in circles in India that follow American politics when Obama issued a statement condoling the death of Field Marshal Sam Manekshaw on June 30. Obama, as far as anyone can recall, has never before, in his brief career as a US senator and in his longer role as an activist and legislator in Illinois, issued any statement on any domestic development in India. The death of an Indian military icon last month was an exception.

Precisely for that reason, Obama’s condolence message made many of those who read it sit up. Sam Manekshaw has always been a somewhat controversial figure in the US, like the prime minister he worked with during the most high-profile years of his military career. More than three decades after Indira Gandhi needled the Americans on everything, from the Vietnam war and the creation of Bangladesh to Nato and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, the ‘establishment’ in the US has not quite come to terms with her persona or her legacy, notwithstanding a recent apology by Henry Kissinger for referring to her as a “bitch” in his now public conversation with Richard Nixon. As a key executor of Indira Gandhi’s strategy for the birth of Bangladesh, Manekshaw throughout his long life came in for some of that discomfort in Washington with the late prime minister.

Obama’s praise for the Field Marshal and the words he chose to pay tribute to an Indian military icon, therefore, surprised those in Washington with an interest in US sensitivities on south Asia. “I offer my deep condolences to the people of India, on the passing of Field Marshal Sam Manekshaw,” Obama said in his statement. “He was a legendary soldier, a patriot, and an inspiration to his fellow citizens. Field Marshal Manekshaw provided an example of personal bravery, self-sacrifice, and steadfast devotion to duty that began before India’s independence, and will deservedly be remembered far into the future.”

A week later, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee set up an Asian American Finance Committee for his campaign. It has several prominent Americans of Indian origin as national co-chairs. These include West Bengal-born Swadesh Chatterjee, who has long been a catalyst for the bettering of Indo-US engagement, for which he was awarded the Padma Bhushan in 2001. It is obvious from the composition of the committee that Indian Americans, with their rising affluence, will play a larger-than-ever role in this year’s US presidential election.

The committee’s senior policy advisor, in addition to being its national co-chair, is Preeta Bansal, a former New York state solicitor-general and past chair of the US commission on international religious freedom. Another co-chair is the Silicon Valley venture capitalist, Vinod Khosla, co-founder of Sun Microsystems.

Another week passed and Obama gave an interview to Outlook magazine, the first Indian publication that he has spoken to, excluding gaggles with south Asian correspondents at fundraisers or in the corridors of Senate office buildings on Capitol Hill. He did not say much that was new in the interview: in a sense, the interviewer turned out to be as newsworthy as the interview. Ashish Kumar Sen, the correspondent for Outlook in Washington, it turned out, has been chasing Obama since February for the interview, but to no avail. Two weeks ago, however, it was Sen’s turn to be sought after by the Obama campaign because the presidential candidate wanted to talk to a south Asian publication, at last.

And then, last week, Obama lammed into General Pervez Musharraf just before he flew into Afghanistan. “We must offer more than a blank cheque to a General who has lost the confidence of his people,” the senator said in a speech in Washington that outlined a future Obama administration’s policy towards Pakistan.

“Make no mistake: we can’t succeed in Afghanistan or secure our homeland unless we change our Pakistan policy. We must expect more of the Pakistani government…We must move beyond a purely military alliance built on convenience or face mounting popular opposition in a nuclear-armed nation at the nexus of terror and radical Islam”, he emphasized.

It was a speech that did not get the attention in India that it deserved because of the preoccupation in New Delhi with the nuclear deal and its fallout on the future of the Manmohan Singh government. “It is time to strengthen our partnerships with Japan, South Korea, Australia and the world’s largest democracy — India — to create a stable and prosperous Asia,” Obama argued.

Obama’s July 15 speech is the clearest indication yet that should he become America’s next president, India’s backyard — Afghanistan and Pakistan — will become the main focus of active US military presence abroad, at least in the near run. For India, this is a mixed bag. Obama outlined his policy towards the Hindu Kush only a week after India suffered grievous losses at its embassy in Kabul in the worst terrorist attack inside Afghanistan since the overthrow of the Taliban.

Obama’s determination to fight and win in Afghanistan is good news for India. Such a fight will, however, also mean tactical US compromises with Pakistan in the short term and a strategic engagement with Islamabad in the long run. Given the geography of Afghanistan and Pakistan’s perennial quest for strategic depth in that country, what now appears to be good news for India may, in fact, turn out to be a policy on the ground that is not very different from that of the Bush administration towards Afghanistan and Pakistan — if Obama does, indeed, occupy the White House next year.

The key to Obama’s emerging south Asia policy is perhaps to look at the people who are making that policy within his campaign. For now, his main policy advisor on south Asia is Bruce Riedel, a former CIA officer who was Bill Clinton’s special assistant and senior director for the near East and south Asia in the national security council. Riedel’s riveting written account of Pakistan’s alleged deployment of nuclear missiles during the 1999 Kargil war and Clinton’s subsequent intervention that brought about an end to the conflict offers important insights into how he may be shaping Obama’s views on India and Pakistan.

Obama’s deeper involvement with south Asia is a good time for New Delhi to step up its engagement with the presumptive Democratic nominee. After all, India and Indian Americans banked heavily on Hillary Clinton on the one hand, and made it obvious, on the other, that their best bet for continuity in Indo-US relations was to have the Republican, John McCain, as the successor to George W. Bush.