On the 13-hour flight from Washington to Delhi, George Bush could do a lot worse than to put aside his briefing books and curl up instead with E.M. Forster's best-known novel. “A Passage to India” is a tale of misunderstanding: of wrong signals, exaggerated expectations, offence unwittingly caused and taken, and inevitable disappointment. It is a parable of the complications that arise when eager Anglo-Saxons go travelling on the Indian subcontinent.

　　India is a rich and exotic country. Its booming high-tech service sector and tens of millions of affluent consumers have already convinced many of the world's business people that India is on the brink of replicating the astonishing burst of growth that transformed China from poor-house to power-house in little more than two decades.

　　America has neglected India in the past. When Bill Clinton went to Delhi in 2000, his was the first presidential visit for 22 years, and it is surely not a good thing that Mr Bush has waited quite so long to make his own inaugural trip there. India is a nuclear power, home to more Muslims than any country but Indonesia; and it borders China, which many American policymakers see as at best a growing rival and at worst a future enemy. India is seldom regarded in the same way, even though it favoured the Soviet side in the cold war and even though Indian firms offer just as tough competition for parts of America's service sector as Chinese factories do to low-end manufacturing.

　　Despite all this, there are reasons to urge both sides to tread as carefully as angels before they rush in to an over-enthusiastic partnership.

　　India has two great attractions. One is stability. India has proven mechanisms for the peaceful transfer of power and the ability to withstand terrible internal conflicts without danger to its integrity. Another attraction is demography. India will remain younger and more dynamic well into the middle of the 21st century.