New Delhi: Late US President Dwight Eisenhower’s visit to Agra over five decades ago presents a stark contrast to the changed global security situation now as President Obama prepares to visit Taj Mahal next week.
Over 4,000 policemen and 100 US Secret Service agents, bulletproof vehicles, buzzing choppers and motorboats on the Yamuna combine to provide an overarching security cover for Obama when he visits the historical monument of love.
But it was an open Cadillac ride accompanied by Jawaharlal Nehru for the late US President when he visited the Taj Mahal in December, 1959.
Crowds lined up on both sides of the road as he drove past in an open Cadillac with Pandit Nehru waving back to the crowd amidst shouts of “Pt Jawaharlal Nehru ki jai” and “Long Live Indo-US friendship” and even “Welcome Ike” the pet name of the then US President,” says N R Smith, a veteran journalist who had covered that visit.
“Over a hundred people” walked behind the Presidential Party as they strolled down the central causeway with fountains playing 15 feet high and falling, the floral patterns on the crystal clear water in the tanks.
People, were close enough to “catch some of the sentences uttered by Pandit Nehru as he guided the US President and explained to him the finer points of the architecture of the building.”
From the Taj Mahal, Eisenhower drove down to the Circuit House from where he took off in a helicopter for Bichpuri Village, 13 km from Agra, where he landed on the grounds of Balwant Rajput College to a grand welcome.
The President’s motorcade meandered through narrow roads in the nearby Larmda village, included in the itinerary based on Eisenhower’s wish to see an Indian village.
 Since no vehicle could traverse the ‘katcha (mudsmeared) lane inside the village, the motorcade stopped outside the village and the tall ‘Ike’ had to “use all military skills to negotiate the ups and downs of the road.”
Nehru “kept a running commentary on what an Indian village is like, even as a small security group kept a vigilant eye on both sides of the mud track and the photographers clicked away, sometimes getting atop the thatched roofs, much to the concern of the villages who feared the roofs would collapse.”
Â