Trump ko gussa kyon aata hai

DONALD Trump has had a busy week. He has thrown the tariff gauntlet at India, doubling the tariff hike from 25 to 50 per cent. He has cancelled all trade talks with New Delhi. He has threatened India with secondary sanctions if it continues to buy cheap oil from Russia. He has ordered the deportation of several Bhutanese immigrants from the US. He has introduced a bond requiring some tourists to pay $5,000-15,000 to be eligible for a US visa. He has ordered the collection of race and gender data, along with test point averages, from applicants applying to US colleges.

You may well ask, US President ko itna gussa kyon aata hai. Why is he angry all the time. Deepak Chopra, the happiness guru, puts it down to Trump’s constant and desperate need for love, even adulation. He may well be right. Trump’s attention-seeking behaviour has not just turned the world upside down, it has had the dramatic effect of nations lining up to cut deals with America.

Only India is reacting differently. Modi has said he won’t compromise on the interests of India’s farmers and is ready to pay the price for standing up to America. NSA Doval rushed to Moscow a few days ago, brought Vladimir Putin out of his quarters in the Kremlin for an arm embrace and a public promise to visit Delhi soon. The PM will soon visit China for the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) summit.

This week Modi seems to have fully understood the meaning of atmanirbharta, self-reliance, non-alignment — call it what you will. The idea that India remains within a self-imposed lakshman rekha while dealing with the outside world.

The next few months promise to be interesting. The Quad summit is expected to be held in November, which means it’s Trump’s turn to come to India. A Russia-India-China trilateral, which India has been holding off for some time because Delhi didn’t want to unduly antagonise the Americans, may also be held.

The key question that arises is, whether a new Cold War is in the offing. Also, what is the major foreign policy lesson New Delhi has learnt at this week’s burns ward.

For the last decade, Modi has been wooing the Americans assiduously. Nothing wrong with that, of course — half of Punjab which has already emigrated to US-Canada understands the inordinate power of America, as do large parts of the rest of the country which still, desperately, want that green card. This is as true for the Indian elite as well as those less fortunate, who sell their assets in order to get their child into the land of milk and honey.

But Modi has gone many steps further, no doubt in the belief that allying with a powerful nation will bring in the benefits of that alliance — just like Japan did after the Second World War. Question is, does India want to be like tiny Japan — a great and incredible country — or does it want to be itself, a unique, civilisational power. The current spat with the US is a good time to answer that question.

In fact, India’s foreign policy has seemed more than a bit confusing in recent years. The extraordinary attention towards America came at the same time Chinese troops crossed the Line of Actual Control in the middle of Covid-19 — throwing both Modi and India off guard. Sino-Indian relations went into a low dip.

Four years later, the rank inequality between India’s and China’s economies forced a rethink — India is far too dependent on cheap Chinese goods and the lack of trade was hurting. So when Modi went to Kazan for the BRICS summit last year, the Russians brokered a deal, allowing Modi and Xi Jinping to meet. Later this month, the PM will go to Tianjin for the SCO summit, where he will meet Xi again.

Now this short history lesson is only useful if you employ the following perspective. Which is that while India makes nice with China on the one hand, it refuses to speak to Pakistan on the other. It bears repeating that the intimate China-Pakistan relationship was on offer as recently as during Op Sindoor, when Chinese missiles aided Pakistan in striking Indian aircraft — as none other than CDS Anil Chauhan recently admitted.

So if the China-Pakistan patron-client tie stretches all the way from Karakoram to Karachi, what good is it if Modi refuses to dialogue with Rawalpindi? Moreover, Trump has just invited Pakistan’s Field Marshal Asim Munir for another meeting to the White House — rubbing salt into India’s wounds.

Here’s the second question this week. Should all this global recalibration mean that India should return to the arms of Vladimir Putin, in a latter-day version of the Cold War, when Hindi and Russi were bhai-bhai? The catch here is that if Modi does do that, he will already find Xi Jinping there — Xi and Vladimir are cool comrades who understand each other well. Remember, both have been schooled as Communists.

That’s why atmanirbharta is important. Modi — as well as all the PMs, from Nehru to Vajpayee — have known that India needs to be a strong and independent pole if it wants to be taken seriously. But how to do that when the big powers are turning somersaults in the sun and weaker nations are being buffeted around in the windstream that charges their wake?

The key is to marry both Chanakya and Confucius so that you can suit the metaphor to your circumstance. (Cross the water by touching the stones. Saam, daam, dand, bhed. It doesn’t matter if the cat is black or white as long as it catches the mice.) The economic reforms were once instrumental in sidestepping the Hindu rate of growth and allowing us to grow at unprecedented rates in our lifetimes — they gave India its distinctive spirit.

Once again, differences in religion, caste, class, creed, colour cannot be allowed to divide and rule us. PM Modi must return to the middle path where all boats rise together. That is his and India’s strength — a strength that is everything.