“Diplomatic mirage”: Jairam Ramesh tears into Modi-Trump ‘friendship’

In a sharp and scathing critique of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s foreign policy optics, senior Congress leader Jairam Ramesh on Tuesday, 14 October, questioned the nature of the much-touted ‘friendship’ between Modi and US president Donald Trump, after the latter lavished praise on Pakistan’s army chief and prime minister at a global summit in Egypt.

Ramesh, in a strongly worded statement, said the Prime Minister’s repeated claims of a close personal rapport with Trump stood in stark contrast to the American leader’s recent actions and remarks — which, he argued, undermined India’s strategic interests.

“Prime Minister [Modi] keeps calling President Trump his good friend. To be fair, President Trump also keeps calling Mr Modi his good friend. But what sort of friendship is this?” Ramesh asked pointedly.

He went on to recount a series of diplomatic episodes that, according to him, exposed the hollowness of the so-called friendship.

“President Trump hosted Field Marshal Asim Munir to an unprecedented lunch at the White House on 18 June 2025. This was the very field marshal whose inflammatory and communally poisonous remarks provided the backdrop to the Pahalgam terror attacks orchestrated by Pakistan on 22 April 2025,” Ramesh noted.

The Congress leader added that Trump had met Munir again on 1 October 2025, at the White House, where the Pakistani army chief presented him with a “box of rare earths” — a gesture widely seen as symbolic of deepening US–Pakistan military and strategic engagement.

“And now,” Ramesh continued, “in Egypt yesterday, President Trump calls Asim Munir ‘my favourite Field Marshal’ and gives special attention to the Prime Minister of Pakistan. What kind of signal is President Trump sending to India — in spite of Mr Modi’s desperate attempts to ingratiate himself with the US president?” (PM Modi reportedly has even joined the POTUS own Truth Social platform, ostensibly to lavish praise on his friend on Trump’s own favourite stomping grounds.)

Ramesh’s remarks come amid a growing chorus of criticism from the Opposition, accusing the Modi government of failing to safeguard India’s diplomatic stature and regional security priorities in the face of shifting global alliances.

Trump’s recent comments in Egypt, in which he described Pakistan’s leadership in glowing terms and referred to India’s leader only obliquely, have rekindled debate over whether India’s much-vaunted ‘Modi–Trump friendship’ has yielded tangible benefits — or merely optics.