Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s warm — and prompt — response to US President Donald Trump’s remarks marks the first political effort at the highest level in New Delhi to try and reverse the downward spiral into which the India-US relationship has fallen since Trump slapped the 25% Russian penalty tariff a month ago on top of the 25% reciprocal tariff.
Of course, all fingers remain crossed given the flip-flops and the very public outbursts that have come to mark the Trump White House. But the latest Trump-Modi exchange has brought some relief to an establishment that was trying to work out a strategy to break the ice.
That’s why Trump’s remarks were seen as off-ramp and Delhi, waiting for an opportunity where Trump would dial back a little bit, took the opportunity. Using his own handle on X and tagging both Trump and POTUS, Modi has thrown his weight behind this move.
Delhi is mindful that a few comments from the US President, laced with praise and criticism in equal measure, may not lead to a substantive thaw but this is a gambit in the Delhi-DC diplomatic gameboard where personal equations between leaders now matter as much as the assiduously built strategic relationship.
Sources said the leadership is aware it is fraught with risk but decided it was worth taking the gamble — Modi’s photo-ops with the Chinese and Russian leaders, part of the strategic calculus to portray India cannot be isolated and that it has many suitors and partners.
Even India’s response has been calibrated. “We have followed the Gandhian satyagraha model,” said a source who is a top government official. “You hit us, surely it hurts us… but we will not hit you back. Nor will we do your bidding or sign on the dotted line. This is our message to Washington.”
At the same time, there is a consensus that getting back to the table is an imperative. “The ties had nosedived in the last month-and-a-half, and it was almost in ICU, it needed the effort at the highest level to resuscitate the relations,” a source said.
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Sources said the assessment in Delhi has been that the two establishments are not ready for a full-fledged fight on trade and that would damage the strategic ties built and nurtured over the last two-and-a-half decades.
The strategic establishments in Washington and Delhi are aligned in their assessment that the governments of the day need to sort out their differences. Trade negotiations were going “very well,” and one assessment is that jockeying by Scott Bessent, Treasury Secretary, and the hardline comments by Pete Navarro, Counsellor to the US President, cast a shadow on the agreement and led to a backing out by the US in the last minute.
Both Delhi and Washington do not want the trade rhetoric to impact their defence and security partnership as well as people-to-people ties and the movement of students and skilled professionals at all. What has also reinforced the message to Washington is that its “hard and unjustified” stance was not really yielding the desired outcome, sources in Delhi said.
The PM’s response is also significant in the context of Trump’s resentment over not being given “credit” for the India-Pakistan ceasefire. Indeed, with the benefit of hindsight, there is a growing realisation among some officials that President Trump — who has always enjoyed the limelight, from his Apprentice days to the Oval Office — could have been “handled better” on his claim that he helped stop the conflict between India and Pakistan.
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While there is no way India can accept a third-party involvement in the mediation of issues between India and Pakistan, the US has always been a messenger of sorts, including during the Kargil war of 1999 when President Bill Clinton had read the riot act to Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif.
In this case, too, Vice President J D Vance had spoken to Modi, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio had spoken to NSA Ajit Doval and External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar; Rubio had also spoken to Pakistan Army Chief General Asim Munir (later Field Marshal) and Pakistan PM Shehbaz Sharif.
So, at a bare minimum, Rubio was passing on messages between the Indian and Pakistan’s top leadership – at President Trump’s behest.
Said a senior official: “All we had to say was that we thank President Trump for driving some sense into the head of Pakistan’s Generals. Period. That doesn’t undermine our sovereignty. It could have done the job — it would have made our constituents happy as well as expressed gratitude to the US President.” But the source added a disclaimer “That’s easier said than done. Officers don’t have to contest elections.”
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This could have prevented the escalation and the cussedness of the US President for not being thanked.
The June 17 call between Trump and Modi, where the two leaders are learnt to have talked at each other, also did not end well.
The Indian side was very clear about not accepting the invitation from Trump since it did not want to put the PM in a position where he was bracketed with the visiting Pakistan Army Chief. So, it used its scheduled visit to Croatia to duck the invite.
Sources said that since then, Delhi has been careful to not schedule any calls — till the fundamental issues on the trade agreement are not settled. The officials have rejected the notion that PM Modi refused to take calls by President Trump. “That’s an inaccurate framing, we are not there yet to have a call between the principals,” the source said.
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Also, the Indian government has not responded to the verbal tirade on a daily basis from the US administration — Trump, his counsellor Navarro, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick and Bessent leading the charge, with Rubio making an occasional appearance to reinforce the message.
“We do not need to respond to the ball-by-ball commentary… it is not useful, and is often counter-productive…look at how the other partners have dealt with similar tirades, they have also adopted a wait and watch, and don’t respond to every single undiplomatic jibe thrown at them…this non-response is a powerful diplomatic messaging in times like these,” the source said.
Given this backdrop, saner voices in Washington and Delhi have been pushing the trade negotiators and the political leadership to mend ties. Delhi wants to build bridges quietly, and is keen to have a deal, before the leaders can talk or meet and then revive ties. Till then, Delhi is keeping its fingers crossed that Washington responds positively and the negotiators complete the task of sealing the trade deal — that paves the way for revival of ties culminating with a visit by the US President to Delhi for the Quad leaders’ summit.
