Vishwaguru will attend G20 after Trump pulls out: Ramesh mocks Modi

In a sharp jab, Congress MP and general-secretary (communications) Jairam Ramesh on Friday took aim at Prime Minister Narendra Modi following US President Donald Trump’s decision to skip the upcoming G20 summit in South Africa.

Hitting out at the PM, Ramesh quipped that Modi — whom he called the “self-styled Vishwaguru” — would now almost certainly make an appearance at the summit in person.

Ramesh’s remark came shortly after Trump announced a US boycott of the Johannesburg summit, citing alleged “violence and land seizures” against South Africa’s minority White farmers — a claim that Pretoria swiftly dismissed as baseless and inflammatory.

In the recent past, PM Modi has seemingly skipped direct meetings with Trump at the G7 summit in Canada, declined to travel to Egypt for the signing of the Gaza peace treaty, and stayed away from Kuala Lumpur for the ASEAN and East Asia summits, with speculation growing that his reason for doing so was to avoid coming face to face with his once 'dear friend'.

“Now that President Trump has announced that he will not be attending the G20 Summit in South Africa a few days hence on 22–23 November, we can be certain that the self-styled Vishwaguru will himself attend in person,” Ramesh wrote on X.

While Trump’s decision has drawn condemnation from several quarters for undermining multilateral engagement, Ramesh’s comment sought to turn the moment into a commentary on Modi’s foreign policy persona — one that he argues thrives on global stagecraft and spectacle.

With the G20 Summit just weeks away, world leaders are expected to gather in Johannesburg to discuss economic recovery, energy transition, and global equity — though the diplomatic spotlight, as Ramesh suggested with his barbed flourish, may once again shift toward the theatre of personalities that defines modern geopolitics.