[Hello, did you miss me?]

Photographs often reveal the subsurface reality as nothing else does. Just call up the trove of Modi-Trump pics on the net and what you see in most of them is Modi fawning over Trump, looking up endearingly at him, just too eager to please. The one with a bemused Melania (look at her eye, above) looking on as Modi embraces the US President ardently even as the latter reciprocates stiffly, is comical.

It suggests just how much Modi wants Trump to like him, and wants him to muster the intimacy the PM himself feels for the American — why? is not clear. It also suggests that the Indian leader is stuck in time, in the heyday of the “Howdy, Modi!” phase of their personal relations, but that Trump has moved on. As has US policy from centering on India to pivoting on the extended region. It is the reason why the 38-year old, Russian-speaking Sergio Gor, in-charge of personnel at the White House is the ambassador-designate not just to India but to the entire region, including presumably Pakistan and other South Asian states and Central Asia. Gor’s nomination can be a good thing for India, because the US will, per strategic logic, need an anchor for its regional policy and it cannot be any other country than India. This fact can be used by New Delhi to shape Gor’s mindset, Trump’s attitude, and the US policy. The more likely thing to happen is Gor tending the Kurilla way, and India being in the outhouse.

General Michael Kurilla is the recently retired chief of the US Central Command, who described Pakistan as a “phenomenal partner” in fighting terrorism, and couldn’t quite contain himself when praising the Pakistan army and its chief! Gor can then be expected to look upon Pakistan as the less difficult, more pliable, client state led by Field Marshal Asim Munir who, reportedly, has parked his wife and children in America where they have taken up US citizenship. With the Trump Family’s crypto and mining businesses dictating US policy, and Munir promising implicitly to add hugely to the US President’s personal wealth while, no doubt also enhancing his own family’s fortunes, this is the direction the US will be heading in.

Being on the outs with America is, in any case, what India should prudently prepare for. Instead, the Modi regime seems inclined to cling to the hope that treating Trump like some old style oriental potentate would prompt him to shower favours on India. On Friday (Sept 5), Trump said he’ll “always be friends with Modi”. When queried if he was ready to reset relations, he replied with a non-sequiter — “India and the United States have a special relationship”, adding that “There’s nothing to worry about. We just have moments on occasion.” And then he kvetched again about India buying oil from Russia and about his 50% tariffs to punish the country. The Indian prime minister reacted instantly and in an embarrasingly effusive manner: “Deeply appreciate and fully reciprocate President Trump’s sentiments and positive assessment of our ties. India and the US have a very positive and forward looking Comprehensive and Global Strategic Partnership”. This, as a Sunday newspaper felt constrained to point out, was only a day after Trump had posted on social media that the US had “lost” India to “deepest, darkest” China! And his prime attack dog, the commerce minister Edward Lutnick, had confidently predicted India would “say sorry” and return to finalise a free trade agreement! There was no reminding Trump by Modi in his response that the Indian government acts and will do so always on the basis of the country’s national interest, not on someone else’s say-so, that India is energy deficient and will continue to buy oil and gas from the cheapest source, and that Russia is an old friend and will remain so. This Modi and his regime did not do and, therefore, would Trump be wrong in assuming he can kick Modi and his government around every time he initiates these “moments”, and can compel them to do his bidding without disrupting or harming Indo-US ties?

Former Indian ambassadors to the US contacted by the media for their reactions uniformly said reponding “politely” to Trump was the right thing to do. No one said that making up with America is fine, but Washington ought to be put on notice if not by Modi than by Jaishankar, that India is not a Munir-ruled Pakistan to be trifled with. Nor did any amongst them criticise the external affairs minister for instead stressing the warmth in Modi’s personal relations with Trump! It appears there are no costs, no consequences for Trump treating India with disdain and its leader with contempt. National self-respect must mean something. If it doesn’t it must say something about us, and how much we lack by way of self-esteem.

Recall that Zhouenlai’s proffered hand was ignored by John Foster Dulles, Eisenhower’s Secretary of State, in the 1950s. The Chinese state never forgot that insult and no Chinese leader shook hands with Western leaders again until Nixon on his breakthrough trip in 1972. Aware of this incident and how it had rankled the Chinese Communist brass, Nixon walked the length of the red carpet at the airport with outstretched hands, and it was only after Nixon stood before him for a few seconds still with his hand out did the great Mandarin deign to shake it. That’s how nations win respect, and not when leaders snivel around for attention. China is a nation with a long memory. India is without one no matter how much hurt and humiliation is heaped on it. This is a historical fact.

Which way America tilts wouldn’t really matter all that much if Indians and their government had a sense of themselves and of the country’s geostrategic and economic importance in the world, and did not approach the US, or anyone else, as a supplicant. The Italian film maker, Pier Paolo Passolini, visiting in the 1950s called India “a nation of beggars”. The indigent still clog our cities, and Indian politicians, diplomats and bureaucrats have their metaphorical hand out. So, what has changed?

There may, however, be a general awakening, including wthin the government and the community of retired babus and the like, specifically to the danger Trump and the US pose India, Reflecting the unease. Arvind Virmani, a former chief economic adviser wrote on social media “I am …gradually coming around to the view, that a large fraction of US elites prefer an India which is weak & subservient to the US and/or China over a strong India. The puzzle is why?”

WHY? Because as I have been at pains to emphasise over the last 35-odd years, that the US, like all big powers, is unscrupulous in pursuing its interests, but it is more venomous than others. India meanwhile has been busy trying to act the vishwa this, vishwa that, and to be a “responsible state”, and has ended up mostly hurting itself. Soft power, the government thinks, is all that India need have. What hard power and military muscle the country prides itself on couldn’t withstand the slightest pressure from Trump during Sindoor. The Modi regime seemed as eager as the Munir Gang on the other side to end that farce of a “war”. There are no points awarded, no gains registered, in international relations for restraint. And no national interest is served by restraint. It is always the narrowly defined national interest that has to be realised at all cost and by any means, and in extremis. There’s just too much of the supposedly elevated thinking the Indian government seems afflicted by. It has time and again been conned into believing that what’s good for America/the West is good for India, into supporting idiotic causes like nuclear disarmament and nonproliferation, into asserting that shared democratic values, etc. matter. They don’t.

Have long maintained that because India and the Indian government have shown they are completely bereft of any strategic sense, the country’s interests would be better served if MEA and Defence Ministry merely aped Beijing and did what the Chinese do, and how they do it. The trouble is we can’t even do that. China proliferated nuclear missiles to Pakistan without a second thought. But merely mentioning a strictly reciprocal gesture of transferring nuclear missiles to states on China’s border to equalise the strategic situation, has our netas and babus breaking into cold sweat. Doing anything that Washington or Beijing frowns upon is likewise No Go. It seems there is nothing that India does as well as playing the victim. We also refuse to learn lessons from our own experiences, leave alone from others’.

What should the Indian government’s response have been to Trump’s attempt to reconnect?

The reaction ought to have been standoffish, with only the MEA spokesman saying something to the effect that “The Indian government notes President Trump’s interest in repairing relations with India, but trust cannot be easily restored. The US government could make a start by unconditionally removing the unfair and unjustified tariffs imposed on Indian exports.” That’s it. Nothing more! It would have set Trump thinking that India is harder to deal with than he thought. With Modi nor Jaishankar mentioning tariffs, the White House is free to believe the Indian government is fine with it!

It could put some teeth into this stance moreover by, for instance, holding all major capital acquisition/military procurement deals on hold. And doing the same to the free trade agreement neotiations. And to ensure India did not again step into any trap set by Trump’s whimsy-as-US-policy, the government should actively facilitate Indian exporters’ finding alternate markets for their goods, and to conspicuously ramp up economic and other relations with Russia, EU, China, and BRICS, and military cooperation with Australia and Japan — US allies that have about had it with Trump’s tariffs and unpredictable policies, and displayed it with more anger than New Delhi has shown. Especially now that the Pentagon has made public its intention to concentrate US resources on securing the homeland and the Western hemisphere leaving Asia, presumably, to China to lord over. This is G2 in the making I have been warning about. It is precisely the incentive needed for Asian states to cooperate, collaborate and mobilise to strategically tie down China — an evolving milieu New Delhi appears unmindful of. And for India to join Israel and Japan to develop advanced technology, freed from the oppressive American pressure and concerns.