By Rajdeep Sardesai
“Abki Baar Trump Sarkar,” was prime minister Narendra Modi’s rather effusive chant in September 2019 at an event in Texas where he warmly embraced and appeared to endorse US president Donald Trump. Few months later in February 2020, Modi and Trump were engaged in another hug-fest, this time at a massive ‘Namaste Trump’ gathering in Ahmedabad. Part mis-judgement, part over-exuberance, the Indian leadership found itself on the wrong foot when Trump unexpectedly lost the 2020 US presidential election. Instead it was a case of ‘Abki Baar Biden Sarkar’ in Washington DC for the last four years. Now, perhaps even more astonishingly, Trump is back, this time with an even bigger mandate. The question is, will the chemistry of 2019-20 be re-ignited between the two leaders?
Mr Modi has called his US counterpart a ‘dear friend’ in a recent telephonic conversation. There has even been the suggestion that Modi and Trump are made for each other, two strongmen politicians with a flair for populist demagoguery and prime time showmanship. Their styles at times can appear strikingly similar, two leaders who understand the power of catchy slogans and artful soundbites. ‘Make America Great Again’ (MAGA) has been Trump’s calling card much like Modi has promised to create an ‘Amrit Kaal’ leading to a Viksit Bharat by 2047. For their vast army of cheerleaders, Modi and Trump represent the triumph of aggressive right-wing nationalism over the time-worn politics of liberal consensus. If Modi has struck at the Lutyens elite of a previous age, Trump has made the Capitol Hill establishment his primary target. The anti-immigrant rhetoric of Trump may resonate with Modi’s supporters who have often demonized the Indian Muslim as the ‘enemy within’. Trump’s backers want to build border walls to keep out immigrants; Modi’s army seeks to build temples over mosques. The search for a perpetual ‘enemy’ keeps their supporters engaged and enthralled.
And yet, let’s not overstate the Trump-Modi parallels. Truth be told, their differences might actually outstrip their similarities. Their political trajectories are very distinct to each other. Mr Modi has been in politics for half a century, the RSS pracharak who slowly but surely moved up the political ladder as part of the wider sangh parivar network. By contrast, Trump is a successful businessman first whose meteoric rise in politics has no space for existing hierarchies. Modi rose from within the BJP ranks, Trump captured the Republican Party as the quintessential ‘outsider’. Modi fashioned himself as a Hindutva icon, Trump positioned himself as a deal maker in chief. Modi is driven by an ideological zeal, Trump often by commercial instincts. Both leaders have woven personality cults around themselves, their propensity for self-love is inordinately high but where Modi is still part of his party machine, Trump seeks to disrupt and dismantle the political apparatus almost entirely. It is that instinct for disruption that makes Trump so dangerously unpredictable. In his decade in power, Prime Minister Modi has periodically tried to shake up the traditional rules of power politics, even occasionally attempting ‘shock and awe’ strategies to keep his opponents on the defensive. The 2016 demonetisation move was one such sudden attempt to ostensibly wage a ‘war’ on black money. But even while centralizing decision-making to a great extent, Modi has broadly stayed within a certain lakshman-rekha of political propriety. It is unlikely, for example, that the prime minister will tweet at midnight to take on a neighboring country.
By contrast, Trump seeks to routinely step well outside the norms of acceptable political behavior. A week into his tenure, the US president has already issued a string of acerbic statements and executive orders that are designed to confuse, confront and challenge his opponents. Then, be it a run-in with the Colombian president on deporting immigrants or with his Mexican counterpart on renaming the Gulf of Mexico, Trump wants to deliberately stir the political pot to keep his rivals on edge. The US president’s uniquely individualistic style has no place for political correctness while Modi is far keener to gain wider acceptability. Notice, for example, how Modi sought to appropriate Mahatma Gandhi by selecting Gandhi’s spectacles as the logo for the high-profile Swachh Bharat campaign. Or the conscious attempt to position himself as an inheritor of Sardar Patel’s ‘Iron Man’ legacy. Trump has little or no connect with his country’s past; his version of history appears to have only one show-stopper: his own self-image.
Which brings us to the original question: how will Trump and Modi get along five years after their initial love-fest? Modi doesn’t like to play second fiddle in any political equation while Trump doesn’t like to share the arc-lights with anyone else. As a result, an element of one-upmanship is almost inevitable: there is a desire for the Indian leadership to assert itself at the political high table even as the US president is determined to bully one and all. This is an asymmetrical relationship: the United States remains a global power with the capacity to influence the course of events while India is an aspiring power, still fighting for greater recognition in global corridors. For Trump, India may appear a vast lucrative market but squarely within an ‘America First’ framework; for Modi, the hope remains that Washington will see us as a trustworthy strategic ally.
That Trump with typical bombast has referred to China and India in the same breath as ‘tremendous tariff-makers’ should be a cause for some anxiety. This is a US president who has little time for diplomatic niceties or polite behavior. Instead, there is a deeply transactional core to the Trump worldview that won’t be swayed by fine words or past friendships. In essence, Trump would like to do a deal with both Beijing and New Delhi at some stage but entirely on his own terms. The unalloyed self-interest means that there is little space for high principles of morality in any dialogue with the occupant of the White House.
Over the next few months, India may well therefore have to play a cautious wait and watch game. As a conciliatory gesture, Mr Modi may well like to remind the US president that in 2019 he had openly backed Trump’s presidency. It is uncertain though what impact the past bonhomie will have on present equations. The problem is that the US president is like the Big Boss in a self-styled reality show. On this show, only one voice – his own — really seems to matter. The rest of the world, including India, are mere spectators for now, unsure of what the next act in this presidential soap opera will throw up.
(The writer is senior journalist and author. His latest book is 2024: The Election That Surprised India)