Prime Minister Narendra Modi will be meeting the United States President Donald Trump in Washington on February 13. He is going straight to U.S. on a two-day visit after completing his engagement in France on Tuesday, including co-chairing the global AI summit along with the French President Emanuel Macron. For all practical purposes, Modi will be the second head of state who has been officially invited by the second term US President to visit the White House for talks. The other was the Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The two other Prime Ministers who met Trump before Modi’s visit, were not really invited by Trump, they gatecrashed into the White House to pay their ‘respects’ to the all powerful US President without getting any official invitation.
So that way, certainly Trump’s invitation to the Indian Prime Minister has some additional significance at this time, as Modi’s visit is taking place within one month of Trump’s inauguration as the second-term President on January 20. Over these past three weeks, Trump has carried out some of his MAGA promises, including immediate deportation of 104 undocumented Indians in the first batch through the US military aircraft in a handcuffed-and-chained manner. Trump has announced 25 per cent tariff on steel and aluminium items to be imported by USA, which will affect India. The final decision about the fate of H-1B visa holders is being processed and any adverse step will affect a lot of Indians working in the US right now in the information technology sector.
There is some nervousness among the South Block officials on the eve of the February 13 talks as irrespective of his liking for the right-wing Prime Minister Narendra Modi by the far-right Donald Trump, Trump is a businessman and his decisions are based on a thoroughly transactional approach. He may be agreeable to some concessions to the Indian PM, taking into account India’s importance in Trump’s geopolitical aims in Asia Pacific to corner China. However, at the same time, he will seek a much higher price by persuading Modi to agree to much larger imports from the USA of oil products and armaments.
Already, the share of USA in the purchase of arms and weapons for Indian defence forces has been on the rise in the last few years. However, this time, Trump will try to take maximum advantage of India’s vulnerability over the fate of the estimated 7.5 lakh undocumented Indians as also lakhs of H-1B visa holders. In terms of perception of the middle classes in India, the vote bank of the BJP, the future of the undocumented Indians and the H-1B visa holders is far more important, than some additional purchase of the weapons by India from the USA. Trump’s advisers have made all the exercises and in this meeting, Trump is confident of hitting the bulls-eye compelling India to buy much more from the U.S and thereby bring down the defence imports from Russia.
Trump deals with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi not on equal footing. He has the gumption to deal with this great nation in such an authoritarian manner because the Indian Prime Minister does not carry with him the stature of India as a great nation with a history of five thousand years. It will be good for the Indian Prime Minister on the eve of his February 13 meeting with Trump to remember what happened on November 4, 1971 when the late Prime Minister Indira Gandhi met the then U.S. President Richard Nixon at the White House.
Indira Gandhi after disagreeing with Richard Nixon at the summit on the US assessment about the ongoing developments in the eastern part of Pakistan, which the then Bengali freedom fighters had declared as Bangladesh, cancelled the India-US joint press conference and walked away in her grand style. She was looking like a queen and all the U.S. officials were looking at her going away with awe and disbelief. Henry Kissinger, while seeing off Indira Gandhi to her car, said “Madam Prime Minister, don’t you feel you could have been a little more patient with the President?”
Indira Gandhi replied, “Thank you, for your valuable suggestion. Being a developing country we have our backbones straight and enough will and resources to fight atrocities. We shall prove that days are gone where power can rule and often control any nation from thousands of miles away.” She said that India regards America as a friend, but not as a boss. India is capable of writing its own destiny. We know and are aware how to deal with each one according to circumstances.
Exactly, one month after this, the India-Pakistan war started on December 3 and on December 16 of 1971, Pakistan surrendered. Indira Gandhi kept her vow which she took in Washington. She was in a far more difficult situation in 1971 vis-a-vis USA than is Narendra Modi now. But she had faith in this great nation, its people and civilisational history. Our Prime Minister will do well to keep in mind what Indira Gandhi said 53 years ago in Washington during his forthcoming meeting with Trump on Thursday. Narendra Modi must show the guts like Indira Gandhi to treat U.S. on equal footing. (IPA Service)
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