Washington | The US-India relationship is destined to deepen as long as China poses a threat, an eminent Indian-American expert has said.

Ashley Tellis, the Tata Chair for Strategic Affairs, at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, also said the coming years are also going to see a deepening of ties, not just between the two nations, but between the two societies.

"This (India-US) relationship is destined to deepen as long as China remains out there as something that both countries will have to manage," he said.

The US has been placing focus on India, seeking to cement ties with one of the world's fastest-growing economies, as tensions with China remain high.

The US and China have one of the world's most important and complex bilateral relationships. Since 1949, the countries have experienced periods of both tension and cooperation over issues including trade, climate change, the South China Sea, Taiwan and the COVID-19 pandemic.

The ties between India and China nosedived significantly following the fierce clash in the Galwan Valley in June 2020 that marked the most serious military conflict between the two sides in decades.

"So, in some sense, success is fated; simply because the structural factors will not give us the luxury of pulling apart. There's a caveat though, and the caveat should also remind us about the contingency of that success. Should things happen to China, this relationship could also go in other directions, right? So the structural factors work both ways," Tellis told a Washington audience this week.

His remarks came at an event "Friends and Benefits: The India-US Story" by well-known columnist Seema Sirohi.

"Whether it is a question of labour mobility, whether it's a question of technology.., we are just going to see our societies get even more deeply intertwined, and that will only strengthen the partnership for many, many years to come," he said.

"And that is there will be divergences sometimes in values and sometimes in interest, and we have to find creative ways of managing those divergences," Tellis said.

He also feels that the Indian diaspora in the US today is more divided than ever in the past.

Tellis said the diaspora in 2005 was very united.

"You didn't care what the politics of individual Indian Americans was. Today, I fear that the cleavages in the diaspora are becoming more and more pronounced and in years to come may not be as unified as I've seen them in the past," he said.