Ab ki baar, Biden sarkar: What do we do?

India-US strategic ties will deepen under Biden, but there could be a different set of irritants

The peace we seek in the world begins in human hearts. And it finds its glorious expression when we look beyond any differences in religion or tribe and rejoice in the beauty of every soul. And nowhere is that more important than India. Nowhere is it going to be more necessary for that foundational value to be upheld,” Barack Obama said, delivering a speech at Siri Fort Auditorium in New Delhi on January 27, 2015 – just before concluding his second visit to New Delhi as President of the United States.

It was just eight months since Narendra Modi had taken over as Prime Minister of India and the “Hindutva” drumbeat had just begun, with the Sangh Parivar running “Ghar Wapsi” programmes to convert Christians and Muslims to Hindus.

Read | US Presidential Elections: Will Joe Biden be good for India?

“India will succeed so long as it is not splintered along the lines of religious faith, so long as it’s not splintered along any lines – and is unified as one nation,” said Obama. It was a clear message to the Modi Government, which had invited him to be its first Republic Day chief guest.

By the time Obama’s successor Donald Trump visited New Delhi on February 24-25 this year, Modi’s “New India” was almost six years old. The day Trump and Modi met at Hyderabad House, a violent clash broke out in another part of the capital, between those protesting against the Citizenship (Amendment) Act and those supporting it. Asked at a press conference that evening whether he had raised the issue with Modi, Trump said, “He (Modi) wants people to have religious freedom, and very strongly. As for the particular attack, I heard about it but I didn’t discuss it with him. That’s up to India.”

What Trump said that day was in stark contrast to Obama’s 2015 message, and it was indeed music to PM Modi’s ears.

But not much else that Trump has said and done has been totally sweet music.

One-sided deal

Trump, in fact, repeatedly embarrassed Modi and his government with his undiplomatic, sometimes uncouth, remarks about him and India. He not only personally ridiculed Modi on the issue of high tariff on Harley-Davidson motorcycles in India, but also belittled New Delhi’s support to countless development projects in Afghanistan, fuming at its reluctance to send troops to the war-ravaged country to join the fight against Taliban.

He even claimed that Modi had requested him to mediate between India and Pakistan on Kashmir, and he kept repeating it despite rebuttal from New Delhi.

The two leaders did put up a good show of camaraderie at the “Howdy! Modi” in Houston in September 2019 and its sequel “Namaste Trump” in Ahmedabad in February this year. Yet, Trump continued to be Trump when it came to making comments about Modi and India. In April, as he failed to take steps to control the Covid-19 pandemic in the US, he warned of “retaliation” against India if the Modi government did not allow export of Hydroxychloroquine (HCQ) to the US. In May, he claimed that Modi had, in a phone call, requested him to mediate between India and China to resolve the ongoing military stand-off in Ladakh. Delhi, of course, denied it.

Trump kept talking about his friendship with Modi and suggested that that friendship had gained him the support of the Indian-American community in the US elections. True to form, though, during the presidential debate with Joe Biden on September 30, he alleged that the Modi government was fudging the number of Covid-19 cases and deaths in India (making America look bad with its more than 200,000 deaths at the time). During the second presidential debate, he called India’s air filthy, wrongly conflating that with climate change.

When Trump took the Oval Office in January 2017, many in the ruling BJP and the Modi government had high hopes that he would translate campaign rhetoric against radical Islam and terrorism into strong action against Pakistan. His February 2017 executive order banning travel from seven Muslim-majority nations did not target Pakistan. But he and his aides did express concern over the safe havens available in Pakistan for the Haqqani Network and the other terrorist organisations operating in Afghanistan.

Then, in January 2018, Trump accused Pakistan of lying and deceitfulness and of taking US aid for years without giving anything in return. His administration followed it up by cutting off $1.3 billion in US security assistance to Pakistan. But Trump changed tack a few months later, seeking Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan’s assistance to clinch a deal with the Taliban to pave way for US withdrawal from Afghanistan. He hosted Khan at the White House in July 2019, and twice later in New York and Davos. The US finally clinched a deal with the Taliban in February 2020 – a deal that is likely to give Pakistan ‘strategic depth’ in Afghanistan and hence caused unease in India.

The Trump administration did help New Delhi in securing the release of Indian Air Force pilot Abhinandan Varthaman from Pakistan’s custody. It also got UN sanctions imposed on Jaish-e-Mohammed chief Masood Azhar despite attempts by Pakistan and China to shield him.

Ties between Delhi and Washington came under stress over the renewal of US sanctions on Iran and the consequent pressure on India to stop importing crude oil from it and over the US bid to stop India from buying the S-400 Triumf air defence system from Russia.

Unilateral Trump

The biggest irritant in ties between Delhi and Washington during the past four years has been Trump’s trade policy and actions. Trump repeatedly complained about tariffs on US goods. He did not just make fun of Modi on the Harley-Davidson tariffs, he arm-twisted India into reducing them. In June 2019, he stripped India of the Generalised System of Preference (GSP) trade privilege, hurting Indian exports worth billions of dollars. As
for the big trade deal that Trump promised he would be striking with India, the two sides have been negotiating one over the past two years but have not been able to narrow differences.

Damage control needed

With Joe Biden set to take over as President and Kamala Harris as Vice President in January, the Modi government will have a new set of challenges and opportunities to deal with in relations with the US.

Modi’s “Ab ki baar Trump sarkar” comment at the “Howdy! Modi” event 14 months before the US presidential elections, couched as it was, was interpreted by the Democrats as a call to the Indian-American community to back Trump’s re-election bid. It may come back to haunt him, if Biden were to have a lingering feeling about it.

In the wake of the US election results, the Modi government has been highlighting that both Republicans and Democrats have been in favour of closer strategic partnership with India. “Prime Minister Modi’s relationship with President Trump has been special, but you have to remember
that PM Modi’s relationship with President Obama was also very special,” Foreign Secretary Harsh Shringla said in an interview with a German TV channel.

A Biden-Harris administration is likely to continue engaging with Pakistan, with an eye on the stakes in Afghanistan. The India-US strategic convergence in the Indo-Pacific is also likely to deepen. New Delhi, however, expects the Biden administration to take a more nuanced and calibrated approach on containing China, in contrast to the Trump administration’s hurry to turn the Quad – hitherto an informal coalition of India, Japan, Australia and the US – into a NATO-like bloc for the Indo-Pacific region.

While getting the US to restore the GSP trade privilege will be on the Modi government’s mind in the early days of its engagement with the Biden administration, a big India-US trade deal will have to wait. Biden’s “Made in All of America” policy does have some of the protectionism of Trump’s “America First.”

Earlier this year, Biden not only asked New Delhi to take all necessary measures to restore the rights of all people in Kashmir, but also expressed disappointment over the Citizenship (Amendment) Act and the National Register of Citizens in Assam. Last year, Kamala Harris had spoken out against restrictions and shutdowns imposed by New Delhi in Kashmir, as did other lawmakers of the Democratic Party, including Indian-American Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal.

In all likelihood, the Modi government will not get the free pass it did from Trump on issues of religious freedom and human rights from a Biden-Harris administration. Yet, it is unlikely that either side will let these issues sour the bigger picture and trajectory of the India-US strategic relationship.