The first meeting between Trump and Modi, after their respective electoral victories, is now over. While the Modi government and Godi media are busy celebrating the 'chemistry' between two 'great friends', the rest of the world is reading the real signals emanating from the Trump Administration's sundry announcements and the joint press conference and communique following the Trump-Modi meeting. While Trump called Modi a tough negotiator and flattered him by saying that there was 'no contest' between the two when it comes to negotiations, it is clear that the term 'negotiation' in this context is all but a euphemism for an abject surrender by the Modi government of India's national pride and interests.
Just a week before the Trump-Modi meeting an American military aircraft had landed in Amritsar carrying 104 Indian citizens deported in chains. A second aircraft with another batch of 119 deportees took off even as Modi was winding up his US trip. A list of 18,000 Indians liable to be deported in the coming days has already been handed over to India's foreign minister S Jaishankar during his meeting with the US foreign secretary after Trump's swearing-in. The issue of deportation of Indian citizens came up during the Trump-Modi press conference and Modi did not have the courage to call for a dignified deportation of Indian nationals. He supported the American action and sought Trump's cooperation to root out the 'ecosystem of human trafficking'. Modi's own state Gujarat, where his party has been uninterruptedly in power for nearly three decades now, is known to be one of the most thriving centres of this 'ecosystem'.
Modi was also asked if he had discussed the Adani case with Trump. His discomfort was most visible as he sought to brush it off as a 'personal matter' not worth the time of two heads of state. The whole world is aware of how Modi got Adani lucrative deals in country after country - from Bangladesh and Sri Lanka to Australia and Kenya, deals that are now being reviewed and scrapped almost across the world. Only Modi can explain how the question of a globally condemned corrupt Indian capitalist, who has an arrest warrant in the US for his corrupt practices, becomes a 'personal matter'! And who it is a 'personal matter' for - Adani or Modi?
In his rambling reply to this question, Modi also invoked Indian democracy and the motto of 'Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam' (the whole world is one family). This can only remind the world of Modi's previous press conference with President Biden in June 2023 when in reply to journalist Sabrina Siddiqui's question on the alarming state of minority rights and press freedom under Modi, he invoked the Constitution of India to claim that there was no room for discrimination of any kind. Sabrina Siddiqui was trolled viciously for raising the issue of backsliding of democracy in India. Maybe once again we will see trolling of foreign journalists for asking questions that Indian media persons have stopped asking or are being prevented from asking. Modi's discomfort with inconvenient questions tells us why he never addresses a press conference in India and gives interviews to only select individuals asking scripted questions.
True to his characteristic demagoguery, Modi has coined a new phrase to camouflage his government's betrayal of India's interests - he now calls it a mega partnership for prosperity! Imitating Trump's imperialist slogan of MAGA (make America great again), which translates into a reign of racist xenophobic tyranny for the US and hegemonic aggression and expansionist ambition for the rest of the world, Modi coined the slogan MIGA (make India great again) and like he had once conjured the so-called extra '2ab' by bracketing India with Canada, he combined MAGA and MIGA to conjure the fiction of a MEGA partnership between the US and India. And this when there are talks of 7 lakh Indians facing the threat of deportation from the US and the Trump Administration is busy announcing increased tariff on Indian exports.
The Modi government's own slogans of 'Make in India' and 'Atmanirbhar Bharat' (self-reliant India) now stand all but abandoned. The much-hyped defence partnership with the US is designed to increase India's military dependence on the US. While restricting Indian exports and immigration, the US wants to impose itself as India's dominant trading partner in every major field, especially in the crucial arena of oil, gas and energy. The exchange value of rupee has already declined to an unprecedented low of ₹87 to a dollar. To check the rupee's free fall, the RBI is buying rupee by spending dollars from its forex reserve. This makes India all the more vulnerable in terms of servicing of dollar debt and management of international trade deficit. The BRICS bloc has been exploring options of moving away from the US dollar as the exclusive currency of international trade, but Trump has pressured Modi to desist from this BRICS plan and also from buying oil and gas from Russia.
Over the years, especially in the Modi era, Indian foreign policy has moved away from platforms of regional cooperation like SAARC or forums of third world unity like the non-aligned movement. BRICS provided the only potential countervailing platform against the American stranglehold. But just ahead of his meeting with Modi, Trump launched a virulent verbal blitzkrieg against BRICS. While China has enough economic muscle and global political clout to counter American pressure, India's dependence on the US and lack of countervailing options will badly retard the country's development prospects. Growing economic and military dependence on the US and complete strategic identification with - if not subordination to - the US-Israel axis can only limit India's independence and sovereignty.
Never in India's post-colonial history has India appeared so helpless and bereft of self-respect as today under the Modi government. The great anti-colonial legacy of India's freedom movement is being tarnished at every step by a Prime Minister who falsely claims to have enhanced India's international stature. With the economy in doldrums, Constitution being subverted and national pride and interests mortgaged to the US, the Modi government has become a total liability for the Republic in its seventy-fifth anniversary.
