Jairam Ramesh attacks PM Modi’s ‘selective diplomacy’ as Trump’s boasts pile up to 50

In a sharp and satirical swipe at the government’s foreign policy overtures, Congress general secretary Jairam Ramesh on Friday, 10 October, accused Prime Minister Narendra Modi of engaging in “selective diplomacy” and “performative statesmanship”, saying the prime minister had “spent the day basking in photo-ops and praise exchanges with foreign leaders” while conveniently overlooking the moral cost of India’s silence on Gaza.

“Prime Minister Modi spent all day yesterday talking to UK prime minister Keir Starmer and sending message after message of praise and admiration to President Donald Trump. He did not, of course, forget to speak to the man who has unleashed a genocide on Gaza — Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu — also during this time,” Ramesh remarked in a statement dripping with irony and indignation.

The Congress leader’s remarks came amid a whirlwind of diplomatic activity, with New Delhi’s renewed outreach to Western capitals seen as part of a broader recalibration of India’s foreign posture. Yet, as Ramesh’s pointed reference to Netanyahu — whose military campaign in Gaza has drawn international outrage — underscores, there is left what he called the “moral vacuum” in India’s foreign engagement.

“But yesterday,” Ramesh continued, turning his gaze westward, “was also the day when President Trump, during his meeting with Finland’s President Alexander Stubb, reached the half-century mark on his claim that he stopped Operation Sindoor using trade and tariffs as his brahmastra. In this, President Trump has been consistent, insistent and persistent. And it won’t be long before he scores a century.”

With characteristic wit, Ramesh juxtaposed Trump’s exaggerated self-congratulation with Modi’s diplomatic flattery, painting both as figures “bound by the theatrics of self-mythmaking”. His use of the cricketing metaphor — the “half-century” and the promise of a “century” — added a layer of irony to his critique, reflecting both amusement and alarm at what he termed the global spectacle of inflated egos in high office.

The reference to Operation Sindoor — a much-contested episode in international affairs that Trump has repeatedly claimed to have “halted single-handedly through sheer force of trade policy” — has now entered what Ramesh wryly called “the folklore of fact-free diplomacy”.

Observers noted that Ramesh’s statement was more than just a partisan jab. It echoed a broader unease within sections of India’s political establishment over the government’s conspicuous silence on Gaza’s humanitarian catastrophe, even as it cultivates closer ties with Israel and the West.

By contrasting Modi’s “courtesy calls” with Trump’s “claims of cosmic accomplishment”, Ramesh seemed to suggest that contemporary geopolitics has become less about moral conviction and more about performance — a stage on which leaders compete not for justice, but for applause. (Witness the POTUS latest claim to the Nobel, for instance.)

“Diplomacy today,” he quipped, “has become less about dialogue and more about dramatics — a theatre of praise, posturing and profound amnesia.”