US Sutra | Trump-Modi rapport still holds: India-US relations after Iran conflict

On April 14, Vaishakhi and Ambedkar Jayanti, US President Donald J. Trump dialled his “good friend”, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi. They reviewed bilateral cooperation across multiple sectors to strengthen the India-US Comprehensive Global Strategic Partnership. As reported by the US Ambassador to India, Sergio Gor, Trump concluded by saying, “I just want you to know we all love you.” Evidently, their strong personal rapport still holds.

Now, let’s go down memory lane a bit. Before he entered the White House, Senator John F. Kennedy published an article in the May 1958 issue of the French periodical, Le Monde Diplomatique. Called “The Future of Democracy in India”. He urged the newly independent India to accept America as a democratic partner, for its own prosperity and for the greater good of the free world.

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But India’s first prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, baulked. He was a Fabian socialist, steeped in the anti-imperialistic rhetoric of his times. But when Communist China invaded India in 1962, he wrote secret letters to Kennedy pleading, in the name of the free world, for urgent help. The United States airlifted arms, shared intelligence, and even positioned the USS Enterprise in the Bay of Bengal. Chinese forces withdrew, bringing their short invasion to an early end, but not before they occupied Aksai Chin, an area the size of Switzerland, in the erstwhile state of Jammu and Kashmir — Indian territory which India will probably never get back.

Nehru, however, continued his doctrine of non-alignment, cloaked in sanctimonious idealism, which meant a reflexive suspicion of Washington. The 1962 crisis exposed the contradiction: when survival was at stake, Nehru turned to the very power he had kept at arm’s length. In the post-Nehru era, India, under his daughter Indira Gandhi, soon to be prime minister, pivoted to the Soviet Union in a comprehensive alliance which, though degraded, still persists.

That pattern became a feature — a bug, if you will — of Indian foreign policy. India wanted American technology, capital, and strategic cover without the responsibilities of alignment. It worked for a while. The first Cold War tolerated ambiguity, but only marginally. The US took India’s arch adversary, a more compliant and usable Pakistan, as an ally. Pakistan did a lot of America’s dirty work in South Asia, especially Afghanistan — for a price, of course.

Skip to contemporary times. Trump’s first term (2017-2021) showed what real convergence could look like. The “Howdy Modi” rally in Houston in September 2019 drew 50,000 Indian-Americans chanting for both leaders. I was there and covered it as an independent columnist. I can still remember how electric the atmosphere was, especially when the two leaders took a sort of victory lap around a packed stadium.

What followed was significant. Defence deals accelerated: Boeing Apache and Chinook helicopters, GE F-414 engines for India’s Tejas fighters, the foundational iCET agreement on semiconductors, AI, and quantum computing, and much else characterised those good times. Personal chemistry between President Trump and PM Modi translated into tangible momentum.

Yet that momentum was squandered in the run-up to Trump’s second inauguration in January 2025. PM Modi’s skipping the meeting with Trump during the presidential campaign, though the latter had, with his characteristic flourish, if not boasting, already announced it. A sign of worse things to come?

In Trump 2.0, Washington has been reading the script coming out of Delhi differently: it sees India’s “strategic autonomy” as a new version of Nehru’s non-alignment. Several American critics — and some Indians too — accuse India of being sanctimonious, preaching to the world, while being transactional. The pictures from the 2024 BRICS summit in Kazan, where India stood shoulder to shoulder with Russia and China, while cheap Russian oil imports hit record highs, crystallised these American doubts.

Similarly, New Delhi abstained or watered down UN resolutions on Ukraine and continued to hedge on critical technology export controls. Trump’s second presidency, now far more assertive, read this not as independence but as opportunism. The result was swift and visible: India’s place in Washington’s strategic hierarchy slipped. Quad summits became proforma, advanced US defence co-production stalled, and technology transfer guardrails tightened. Worse, Pakistan has once again become the favoured go-between in the present US-Iran war.

When one dispassionately analyses the situation both in Washington and Delhi, one finds the necessity to recover the middle ground. In today’s India, Nehru’s instinctive mistrust of the United States is being dressed up in new language. Worse, the country’s social media has gone to town calling President Trump names. Even former foreign secretaries and defence experts have been frequently using undiplomatic language, dismissing POTUS as an “unhinged” “sociopath”.

Trump’s unpredictability has rendered them repeatedly wrong in their predictions and provocations. In fact, experts the world over have found themselves increasingly irrelevant in the world that Trump has disrupted. The orchestrated noise in global mainstream media over the defeat of the US and Iran’s victory is, to say the least, totally contrary to facts. Unfortunately, its echoes are heard all over India.

India needs to reset its notion of “strategic autonomy.” In my view, it should be turned into a tool to bring the two democracies closer to each other, not pull them farther apart. Washington has to have a better understanding of India’s sensitivities. And Delhi will have to ensure that its diplomatic playbook doesn’t look like: hedge, delay, equivocate — never take sides, especially if the side is the US.

What is the way forward? I hope to show this in the concluding part of this column.

[To be concluded in Part II]

(The writer, currently Sri Aurobindo Chair (Hon.) at Vedere University, is an author and columnist. Views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely those of the author. They do not necessarily reflect Firstpost’s views.)