When will Modi stand up for India?

Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s deafening silence in the face of US President Donald Trump’s aggressive, even hostile, behaviour towards India is a crushing disappointment for his followers. It is dawning on them that the man they rooted for is a mirage, that he has never shown courage before the leader of a powerful country.

Reports that the US has invited Pakistan’s army chief Asim Munir to the US Military Day celebrations in Washington DC on 14 June — so soon after Operation Sindoor — have come as another rude shock to India.

Trump has been using trade as a ‘weapon of mass destruction’. There is talk of India slashing tariffs in sectors like agriculture and automobiles. Opening up the Indian market to US farm products will conceivably hurt Indian farmers; cheaper American cars will increase competition for Indian manufacturers.

Trump’s nominee for the key post of assistant secretary for South Asia in the state department, Paul Kapur, spoke of an “even-handed approach” towards India and Pakistan at his confirmation hearing.

Canada and Mexico resisted when Trump tried to bully them with tariffs. China, whose progress and prosperity is considerably founded on manufacturing for and exporting to the US, did not buckle either. Indeed, China, which is America’s second largest trading partner, will pay duties of 10–55 per cent, as opposed to a crippling 145 per cent Trump had earlier announced.

A muted denial to Trump’s claim that India had agreed to zero bilateral tariffs, is all that one has heard as New Delhi scrambles to arrive at an interim arrangement before the 9 July deadline, which will impose a blanket 26 per cent tariff on Indian exports to the US.

Trump cannot stop boasting how he brought about the ceasefire in the recent four-day military conflict between India and Pakistan. While our ministry of external affairs denies this, Pakistan is repeatedly praising and thanking Trump for it.

A Pakistani delegation has turned this to diplomatic advantage, using it to bolster its global narrative in London, Brussels and Paris. The delegation claimed Trump had signalled he would mediate between the two on Kashmir at a neutral venue. This can only be music to the US President’s ears. Yet, Prime Minister Modi remains mute.

Business World reports that World Liberty Financial, in which Trump’s sons Eric and Donald Jr and son-in-law Jared Kushner are majority shareholders, recently signed a deal with the Pakistan Crypto Council. This aligns with Trump’s current obsession with rare earth resources, of which there is no dearth in Pakistan’s Balochistan province.

There are now reports that both China and Russia are backing Pakistan’s bid to join BRICS, which Trump wants India to leave. The BRICS summit on 7–8 July, which PM Modi is expected to attend, thus assumes significance.

India’s past friendship with the Soviet Union/Russia now truly seems to be a thing of the past. Moscow has not only conducted joint military exercises with Pakistan but has also sold Mi-35 attack helicopters, anti-tank systems and air defence equipment to it. Yet external affairs minister S. Jaishankar thinks India–Russia relations is a “one constant in world politics”.

Meanwhile, Indian immigrants in the US face increasing hostility. The latest incident is that of a student handcuffed and being pinned to the ground at Newark airport while he was being sent back to India. If he was, as alleged by the US authorities, an illegal immigrant, he deserved to be sent back. But should he have been publicly abused?

The US and India do have ‘a comprehensive global strategic partnership’. One of the six pillars of this compact is fostering ‘people-to-people’ relationships between the two countries.

The US administration has virtually decreed that any social media post deemed to be critical of the President or his policies could be sufficient ground for denying visas or for deportation. A throwback to the McCarthy era of the 1950s?

Strengthening collaboration between higher education institutions of India and the US was underlined as a means of achieving greater people-to-people amalgamation. Trump, however, appears to be uncaring of this objective. His ‘America First’-driven immigration policy has gone to the extent of hounding bona fide students out and either delaying or denying visas to those who have obtained admission into American universities. Modi and his ministers have, again, remained conspicuously silent.

The First Amendment in the American Constitution gives students the right to protest, to possess independent political views, including being opposed to the US president and his administration and taking positions in international affairs.

Those very freedoms are now under attack. Let alone an individual being targeted for being his critic, pro-Palestine or anti-Israel stances are unacceptable to the present incumbent of the White House. Therefore, a widespread scrutiny of social media activity is terrorising foreign academics in the US. Any post not in consonance with Trump’s thinking is enough to evict an overseas student from America or a visa application being rejected.

Indians in the US higher education fraternity are, thus, living in fear of the proverbial knock on the door. It is, of course, every nation’s sovereign right to grant or revoke visas. But such decisions are expected to be within the ambit of law as well as respectful of an individual’s economic and human rights.

Indians enjoying permanent residence or employment status in the US are not secure either. If they are not slavishly on the same page as Trump, their presence in the US could be arbitrarily terminated. The Indo–US agreement on allocation of work visas to Indians — crucial for India’s IT and other companies to be competitive in the American market — is effectively in a jeopardy. Again, there hasn’t been a whimper of a protest from India.

Trump’s proposed ‘big and beautiful bill’ includes a remittance tax that could hurt India’s economy. Yet, not a murmur from Modi or his cabinet.

When the then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi in 1984 asked Rakesh Sharma how India looked from space, he famously replied, ‘saare jahan se achcha’ (better than the whole world). If another IAF man, Shubhanshu Shukla, is now put the same question about America, he may respond: it’s ablaze!

From a sinking US economy, to the spectacular fallout between Trump and Elon Musk, the world’s wealthiest man, to the riots in Los Angeles and other American cities, America is indeed on fire.

As the US descends into economic stagnation and political unrest — riots in major cities, a shrinking economy, growing inflation — Trump’s grip on power appears more erratic. His public feud with Elon Musk has only intensified this instability.

Musk, a potential ally to India via Tesla and Starlink, has threatened to bankroll Trump’s opponents in Congress. Trump, in turn, warned of “serious consequences” if Musk supports his rivals.

Musk had claimed Trump figures in the files relating to the notorious late New York-based sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein, alleging, ‘That is the real reason they (the files) have not been made public.’ The allegation spurred the opposition Democratic Party to call for a full declassification.

India finds itself caught in this personal drama. Welcoming Musk’s businesses may draw Trump’s ire, yet rejecting them hampers India’s technological growth.

Meanwhile, most dangerously, CNN headlined that ‘Trump is hyping a case to use American troops on domestic soil’. He deployed US National Guards in Los Angeles with neither the city nor California state asking for it. He also has US Marines on standby to tackle rioting by Spanish-speaking people of central and South American origin, who were being raided by the Immigration and Customs Enforcement for allegedly harbouring illegal immigrants.

California governor Gavin Newsom, potentially a future Democrat candidate for the US presidency, said a long-feared moment of peril is at hand for US democracy. What began in LA has spread to other parts of California, cities in Texas state, New York, Chicago, Atlanta, Philadelphia, Washington, Boston and Seattle.

Interestingly, a survey by Pew Research Center reported that in five countries a majority still express confidence in Trump to do the right thing — Nigeria (79 per cent), Kenya (74 per cent), Israel (69 per cent), Hungary (53 per cent) and India (52 per cent).

Views are personal

Ashis Ray can be followed on X @ashiscray. More of his writings can be found here