[The change of power in Washington comes at a time when the relationship between the world’s two largest democracies has gained momentum in recent years, with growing investment and military ties.]
By Annie Gowen
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Activists with India’s
Hindu Sena party pose with posters of Russian President
Vladimir Putin, Indian Prime Minister
Narendra Modi and President Trump in
New Delhi. (Sajjad Hussain/Agence
France-Presse via Getty Images)
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NEW
DELHI — One man came from
privileged beginnings and went to all the right schools, the other was the son
of a tea seller.
Yet both Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi
and President Trump rose to power as populist outsiders willing to disrupt
entrenched power systems in their respective capitals.
The two men spoke Tuesday, their first
interaction since a brief congratulatory phone call after Trump’s election in
November. In a summary of the call, the White House said that Trump called
India a “true friend and partner” and that the two discussed the economy,
defense and the fight against global terrorism. Trump said that he looked
forward to hosting Modi in a visit later this year, and Modi returned the favor
after the “warm conversation” in a tweet later.
The change of power in Washington comes at a
time when the relationship between the world’s two largest democracies has
gained momentum in recent years, with growing investment and military ties.
“We believe they mean well by us and we mean
well by them,” said Subrahmanyam Jaishankar, India’s foreign secretary. “We are
quite confident we’ll get off to a good relationship, so there is no anxiety
here at all.”
Yet some Indian leaders have expressed
concerns privately about Trump’s unpredictability and tendency to lash out.
On the campaign trail, Trump occasionally
praised India in speeches — “I am a big fan of Hindu, and I am a big fan of
India,” he said at a fundraiser in October, and he said India was a “natural
ally.”
But he also mimicked the accent of India’s
call center workers, vowed to keep American jobs in the United States and
criticized the H-1B high-skilled worker visa program, worrying the Indian tech
industry. The Trump Organization is also involved in at least four real estate
projects here in India, valued at an estimated $1.5 billion.
“There’s a lot of uncertainty in the air,”
said Milan Vaishnav, senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International
Peace and the author of a recent book on politics in India. “Nobody really
knows beyond some vague outlines what Trump foreign policy looks like. He
hasn’t said a lot about India, and what he has said is very vague. So India’s
objective is to figure out where he stands.”
The two men are likely to find common ground
going forward on terrorism and security, particularly in regard to the
terrorist threat from neighboring Pakistan, experts said. Judging from
Tuesday’s telephone call, “clearly terrorism was front and center,” Vaishnav
said.
In his inaugural address, Trump pledged to
stamp out Islamist terrorism around the world. But he earlier engaged in a
chummy telephone call with Pakistan’s Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif — calling him
a “terrific guy” who does “amazing work” — which also troubled Indian
officials.
Modi, 66, has long been associated with the
Hindu nationalist movement Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, and for a time was
denied a U.S. visa for failing to stop anti-Muslim riots while serving as a
state chief minister.
He went only after his party’s victory in
2014. He and President Barack Obama developed a rapport, and the next year he
asked Obama to be the chief guest at India’s Republic Day parade. By the end
of that visit, he was calling the president Barack.
Like Trump, Modi has a brash side and
communicates largely on Twitter, with an innate distrust for the mainstream
media. One of his first acts as prime minister was to do away with a traveling
press pool on foreign trips.
His supporters in the Hindu right have stoked
nationalistic fervor in the country — at times with violent results — and last
year India became immersed in a debate over patriotism and free speech after
protests on college campuses. Most recently, the Supreme Court mandated that
moviegoers must stand as the national anthem plays before films.
Modi remains a popular figure, however,
despite a recent move to ban large-denomination currency notes — to combat tax
cheats — that left the economy reeling. Indians have suffered job losses and
waits in long bank lines during the more than two-month crisis, but Modi has
repeatedly played on nationalist sentiment, exhorting Indians to have patience
for the long-term good of the country.
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