Rubio’s visit: America’s Delhi diplomacy still carries a missionary complex

There was little ambiguity about the purpose behind US Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s Delhi visit. The United States wanted to stabilise a relationship that had visibly drifted over the past year and a half, especially given Delhi’s centrality in Washington’s larger strategic calculus vis-à-vis Beijing.

The timing was revealing. Rubio arrived shortly after US President Donald Trump’s high-profile Beijing outreach, which by most accounts did not unfold as per American expectations. Xi Jinping appeared composed, tactically prepared and strategically organised. China once again demonstrated that it could negotiate with the United States from a position of strength rather than insecurity.

Historically, whenever Washington encounters strategic resistance from Beijing, it instinctively looks towards Delhi. The Indo-Pacific strategy itself rests heavily on the assumption that Bharat will serve as the democratic counterweight to autocratic China.

Rubio’s visit also reflected deep anxiety within sections of the American establishment that Trump’s erratic tariff wars, his confused Pakistan policy, and his transactional worldview have weakened years of painstakingly built trust with Bharat. Across Washington’s strategic circles, there remains a broad understanding that India is not merely another partner; it is potentially the only major Asian power capable of standing up to China on its own.

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Rubio, therefore, arrived in Delhi not merely as America’s top diplomat, but as a political repairman tasked with reassuring Delhi that Washington still viewed it as a natural strategic partner in Asia. Unfortunately, diplomacy is not judged only by formal meetings or joint statements. It is equally shaped by symbolism, optics and political messaging. And it is here that Rubio appeared to have faltered.

His decision to begin his Bharat tour with a visit to the Missionaries of Charity in Kolkata raised immediate questions, though mostly in hushed voices. No reasonable observer would object to a practising Christian publicly expressing his faith. The issue here was political, coming as it did amidst the Foreign Contribution Regulation Act (FCRA) controversy surrounding the Missionaries of Charity. Its licence had been temporarily suspended in 2021 over FCRA compliance and foreign funding scrutiny before later being restored. Its licence is again due for renewal later this year.

Rubio’s Kolkata visit invariably has made many believe that Washington cannot engage Delhi without simultaneously sermonising, signalling or interfering. Rubio’s visit, thus, couldn’t escape the perception of being less like a personal endeavour and more like political messaging wrapped in missionary robes. Perhaps this is where the real problem emerges: America still does not understand — or maybe it doesn’t care — that Bharat has changed.

The Bharat of the 1980s and ’90s — mesmerised by the carefully cultivated saintly image of Mother Teresa — no longer exists. In the age of social media and information overflow, her legacy is no longer immune from criticism. Her opposition to abortion, even in cases of wartime sexual violence, her closeness to some of the most infamous dictators of her time, and her theological glorification of suffering are now openly debated rather than quietly ignored. Australian writer Germaine Greer, herself a Catholic, wrote in one of her journals about Mother Teresa’s intervention after the 1971 Bangladesh genocide where thousands of women, especially Hindu, were raped by Pakistani generals and soldiers. “The pregnant ones needed abortions,” Greer wrote, “Mother Teresa offered them no option but to bear the offspring of hate.”

At one of South Asia’s darkest humanitarian moments, Mother Teresa’s Catholic belief system trumped human empathy. To her credit, however, she never pretended otherwise. It’s we — the ‘educated’, ‘liberal’, ‘secular’ lots — who placed a secular, humanitarian halo around her when, as Christopher Hitchens writes in The Missionary Position, she “has never pretended that her work is anything but a fundamentalist religious campaign”, to the extent that she once told an interviewer that if faced with a choice between Galileo and the authority of the Inquisitions, she would side with the Church authorities!

Rubio’s Kolkata visit, therefore, seemed trapped in an obsolete Western liberal imagination — one in which Mother Teresa remained an unsurpassable moral icon and Kolkata existed merely as a “City of Joy” awaiting missionary redemption. But, just like Bharat and the world at large, Kolkata (and Bengal) has changed. More so after the political earthquake following the recently held Assembly elections in the state. The political defeat of Mamata Banerjee represented more than the collapse of a regional political regime. It marked the rejection of an entire politico-intellectual ecosystem that had dominated Bengal for decades — an ecosystem deeply invested in perverted secularism and distorted liberal moralism.

Rubio seemed oblivious to this transformation. Or maybe, as many people suspect, Bengal was America’s unfinished agenda after Bangladesh. Therein lies the deeper problem with Washington today: it still approaches Delhi with outdated mental maps. Maybe it knows, but the remnants of Cold War anti-Bharat sentiments still remain entrenched in some quarters of the American administration, especially within the State Department. One moment America courts Delhi; the next moment its administration, think tanks, media establishments and institutions such as the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) casually lump Bharat alongside authoritarian states and failed democracies. This duality creates distrust.

Yet, despite these missteps, the Rubio visit was not a failure. Important conversations were held. Strategic communication channels were strengthened. There were sincere attempts to address trade irritants and security concerns. Both sides also recognised that the stakes were too high for prolonged estrangement.

The time has come for Washington to realise that its relationship with Delhi is not a zero-sum game. If it truly wants its ties to flourish, it must moderate, if not abandon, its missionary instinct — both literally and geopolitically. Delhi does not seek patronage. It seeks respect. Until America understands that distinction, every “historic” diplomatic outreach will remain fundamentally incomplete.

One day Rubio may well look back on this visit and conclude: “Oh, it was a good trip… and it could have been better.” But for the missionary complex that still shadows Washington’s diplomacy towards Delhi.

(Views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely those of the author. They do not necessarily reflect Firstpost’s views.)