India celebrates Republic Day with Obama as guest of honor

India celebrated its Republic Day Monday, which commemorates the date when the Constitution of India came into force in 1950, with a cultural and military parade that was attended by U.S. President Barack Obama as its chief guest.

Obama is the first U.S. president to have attended Indian Republic Day celebrations and also the first to travel twice to India on an official visit, which marks Washington’s ongoing “engagement” with India, officials said.

The parade was presided over by Indian President Pranab Mukherjee who during his speech on the occasion also made a reference to two of the founding fathers of the United States: Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin.

Mukherjee also referred to some of the ills that plague the nation and said, “Our resolve to eliminate poverty through inclusive development has to be a step in that direction” and urged all citizens to respect women, a very sensitive issue in India.

“It pains me to see that Mother India is not respected by her own children when it comes to the safety of women. Atrocities of rape, murders, harassment on the roads, kidnapping and dowry deaths have made women fearful even in their own homes,” Mukherjee said.

The Indian president also referred to a “remarkable” event that happened last year, when “after three decades the people have voted into power a single party with a majority for a stable government”, referring to the BJP government’s win with Narendra Modi as the prime minister.

Modi and Mukherjee escorted Obama during the parade from the main stage in the Rajpath area in central New Delhi which was heavily protected by 2,000 members of the security forces, according to local news channel NDTV.

Another 50,000 agents and military personnel were deployed in the heart of the Indian capital, including 500 members of the U.S. Secret Service, to prevent any attempted terrorist attack during the celebrations.

The traditional military parade, in which soldiers of infantry, cavalry, the paratrooper brigade, the navy, and the air force marched through New Delhi’s Rajpath, giving way to a convoy of carriages.

The carriages represented tableauxs of cultural, architectural and historical diversity of Indian regions, a melting pot of ethnicities and languages with 1.2 billion people.

According to the Obama agenda, after the parade, the U.S. president is scheduled to meet with members of the Congress Party of the NehruGandhi dynasty, now in opposition, and later with local and U.S. businessmen.