India’s wolf diplomacy against United States is backfiring

If the Narendra Modi government thought its chest-thumping response to Barack Obama's comments would shut down critics in the West, it got its calculation horribly wrong

Addressing the United States Congress on June 22, Prime Minister Narendra Modi described the relationship between India and the US as "our calling for this century".

"Our trusted partnership is like the sun”, Modi said, "that will spread light all around."

Less than a week later, it's also spreading a lot of heat, and the calling has turned angry. What was supposed to have been an all-time high in India-US ties has descended into furious name-calling and public shaming. What was supposed to be a strong, mature relationship appears to be a fragile, tense equation between partners itching to have a go at each other.

While neither side is blameless, one thing is clear: The Modi government is doing neither itself, nor India, any favours by departing from the country's longstanding diplomatic practice of expressing frustrations with friends in private conversations with them, not in media amphitheatres.

It all started with a comment by former US President Barack Obama in an interview with CNN's Christiane Amanpour, where he suggested that US President Joe Biden nudge Modi on ensuring the rights of Muslims in India. A failure on Modi's part to do so, he said, could lead to India "pulling apart”.

Within hours, a man whom Modi had described as a close friend, became a pariah for the government and the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma referred to Obama's middle name at birth, ‘Hussein’, and suggested that those who agreed with the former US leader would be targeted in his state.

This, just after Modi had delivered a sermon in Washington on how India under him was a tolerant land that embraced diversity, and where there is no discrimination.

Hordes of trolls then turned Sarma's dog-whistle into a loudspeaker of bigotry, attacking Obama, and of course, Muslims.

But Modi's ‘new India’ was still not done. Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman joined in, alluding to the many Muslim-majority countries bombed by the US under Obama. That's an interesting way to defend oneself from allegations of majoritarianism. Sure, Muslims get lynched and face daily harassment and lawless violence, often State-sanctioned, but at least we haven't killed people elsewhere, right?

Next came Defence Minister Rajnath Singh, calling out "Obamaji" and reminding him of the countries his administration bombed. Meanwhile, the Ministry of External Affairs, which is supposed to be the voice of India internationally, hasn't said a word.

Yet if the Modi government thought this chest-thumping response to Obama's comments would shut down critics in the West, it got its calculation horribly wrong.

BJP leaders and trolls has also been viciously attacking Sabrina Siddiqui, a Wall Street Journal correspondent of mixed Indian-Pakistani parentage, who had asked Modi a question on his human rights record at a brief press conference with Biden at the White House on June 22. On June 26, White House spokespersons repeatedly came to her defence and condemned the attempts by members of Modi's party to attack her. The White House also made it clear that it was the Biden administration that had insisted on the press conference so that questions could be asked of Modi — questions he doesn't field at home.

"We are certainly committed to the freedom of the press, which is why we had — we held a press conference last Thursday, which is why we thought it was important for you all to be — to hear from both, not just from the President, but also from the Prime Minister, and for journalists to be able to ask a question," White House spokeswoman Karine Jean-Pierre said.

It shouldn't be a surprise that things have escalated following the attacks on Obama and on Siddiqui. The question: Will Modi's team learn from this episode?

Historically, India has reserved sharp public commentary for clearly defined enemies and rivals — such as Pakistan or China — and for organisations that it believes have fundamental biases against it. These include the Organisation of Islamic Countries and the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom, for instance. It has avoided public spats with friends and nations it sees as potential partners, aware that raising the temperature visibly only makes it harder to cool things down. That is even more true in the age of social media and hyper-nationalist sentiments.

Yet, especially over the past couple of years, that approach has changed. External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar has openly locked horns with European and American critics who have pointed fingers at New Delhi's refusal to criticise Russia's war in Ukraine unequivocally, and India's dramatically increased oil imports from Russia.

In 2022, friendly Singapore's envoy was summoned by the foreign ministry to protest comments made by the Southeast Asian nation's Prime Minister, Lee Hsien Loong, critical of the state of Indian democracy.

All of this mirrors the aggressive ‘wolf diplomacy’ that China's foreign office has adopted under President Xi Jinping, marked by threats and trolling from Beijing, directed at those who question it.

Forgotten in the storm over Obama's comments is something else that he said in the interview to Amanpour — that what makes India-US ties incomparably stronger than US relations with a country like China is the shared constitutional commitment to democracy and free speech in New Delhi and Washington.

By blurring that line, the Modi government is hurting India and its global standing.

(Charu Sudan Kasturi is a senior journalist whose work focuses on international relations, trade, energy, and technology. Twitter: @CharuKasturi.)

Disclaimer: The views expressed above are the author's own. They do not necessarily reflect the views of DH.