It is difficult to understand the need for Prime Minister Narendra Modi to tell the whole world in a post on X that he had a “great conversation” with his “friend”, United States President-elect Donald Trump, or for the Ministry of External Affairs to issue a statement through the official spokesperson that “as a fellow democracy, India celebrates the expression of people’s mandate in the US”. The State Department doesn’t make such gratuitous statements after the general elections in India; nor does the White House publicise a telephone call, if any, to an incoming PM in New Delhi’s South Block.
I think even more unbecoming is External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar shouting from the rooftop on Sunday that Modi’s was “among the first three calls that Trump took after winning the elections”, that “there is something natural about how Modi has built rapport and forged relationships across multiple US Presidents” — and that “a lot of countries are nervous about the US but we are not one of them”.
Sadly, all this whiny, uncalled-for advertising of Modi’s call to Trump serves no purpose except jogging our collective memory about Trump imitating Modi’s accent during his first term. In January 2018, The Washington Post had quoted senior US Administration officials saying that Trump mimicked Modi’s accent while discussing Afghanistan policy with them in the Oval Office.
The Post story was naturally picked up by the Indian media and Trump’s insolence triggered anger in the country. It also came to light that in 2016 Trump had mimicked an Indian call-centre employee’s diction while on the campaign trail to regale his supporters. It was rightly and vehemently pointed out in 2018 that Trump making fun of Modi by mimicking his pronunciation underscored not only the rampant Western practice of caricaturing South Asian accent but Trump’s own contempt for any brown voice.
And if mocking Modi’s accent in internal White House discussions isn’t extremely disturbing racial profiling, what is? The question is as pertinent in 2024 as it was six years ago. Only the naïve would try to brush it under the carpet.
Modi’s [and Jaishankar’s] gushing reaction to Trump’s re-election also remind me of what Bharat Karnad, India’s foremost old-school strategic expert, wrote in the chapter on Adversarial Geopolitics in his gem of a book Staggering Forward: Narendra Modi and India’s Global Ambition in 2018. Ï can’t resist quoting Karnad: “Having been groomed by the RSS, which is disciplined and hierarchically structured, Modi is reflexively deferential to the US and China and their heads of government, Trump and Xi, acknowledging them and their countries as India’s and his superiors in the rank ordering of nations and leaders. This attitude is reflected in his foreign policy based on giving minimum offence to these two countries, as also in his respectful and placatory behaviour where Trump and Xi are concerned. This fits in nicely with Trump’s and the US’s idea of their exalted place under the sun, and it confirms to the Confucian notion of order ‘under the heaven’.”
Jaishankar said on Sunday that unlike a lot of countries, India is not nervous about the US. Whether India is nervous or not is best known to Jaishankar, although being nervous doesn’t behove a country with India’s capabilities. But isn’t India angry at the US today? Isn’t India fuming? Jaishankar should have talked about that, instead of whether India is nervous about US or not.
Late last month, US Ambassador Eric Garcetti spoke insultingly and disparagingly of India in an interview to The Times of India. But the Modi government kept quiet. Jaishankar did not utter a word. Garcetti should have been summoned to South Block for a dressing-down, but he got away scot-free. Just like the ambassador of China who was not summoned in June 2020 after the People’s Liberation Army massacred 20 Indian soldiers in Galwan. When was the last time New Delhi mustered the courage to summon the ambassadors of America or China? Probably in the Old India, not the New India. The inability to look Washington and Beijing in the eye prove Karnad’s theory of Modi’s India kowtowing to the US and China.
Speaking about the Pannun case, Garcetti characterised India’s alleged role as outright “criminal activity”, and imperiously said that the “US wants the guilty to be held accountable and not just an assurance that the crime won’t be repeated in the future”. He also said that Washington “has drawn a red line that murder-for-hire is illegal and that crossing borders for international murder plots is against the law”, adding “our prosecutors are 100 not political — they exist in a different universe”. In short, he brazenly declared India guilty even before the trial. Garcetti’s arrogance and cockiness is breathtaking — and he got away with it!
As Trump pads up for his second innings, it’s instructive for New Delhi to recall his bullying and arm-twisting approach for four long years before Joe Biden squeezed him out of power. In 2020, Trump openly warned the Modi regime that the US would retaliate if it refused to export the anti-malarial drug hydroxychloroquine defying his personal request. He literally forced us to lift the ban on export of hydroxychloroquine tablets so that the US got what it wanted. Before that he publicly heckled Modi on the Harley Davidson motorcycles import tariff. Former US envoy to the United Nations Nikki Haley is now out of favour, but we can’t afford to forget how Trump sent her to New Delhi to deliver an ultimatum to either zero out all oil imports from Iran and Venezuela or face sanctions. And we just gave in. Is history now going to repeat itself?
The author is an independent, Pegasused reporter and commentator on foreign policy and domestic politics
