US President Donald Trump’s Indian trump card, Narendra Modi is in an angry mood nowadays, sulking like a jilted lover, huffing and puffing. Unwilling to bring out the lovers’ tiff in public in his personal capacity, he is employing his party BJP to aim barbs at New Delhi’s now estranged lover Washington – much in the style of Hollywood stars who employ their publicity agents to accuse their ex-lovers of sexual harassment, or blackmailing.
BJP leaders are foaming at their mouths and hurling abuses at OCCRP (Organised Crime and Corruption Reporting) which in its 2023 report exposed stock manipulations by the businessman Gautam Adani under the blessings of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, with whom he enjoys close relationship. Earlier in 2021, OCCRP came out with a report revealing how the Modi government was using Pegasus spyware against journalists who dared to expose its misdeeds. The OCCRP has thus become Modi’s bête-noire. But Modi from his official position cannot afford to engage in a confrontation with OCCRP which is backed by the US State Department and powerful sources like George Soros and the Rockefeller Foundation. Such a confrontation will mean a direct conflict between New Delhi and Washington.
Two months ago, Modi had to face a similar embarassment, when in October the US charged Vikash Yadav, a former intelligence officer of Modi’s government, and another Indian Nikhil Gupta suspected of being an undercover spy, in connection with the plot to kill the Sikh Khalistani leader Gurpatwant Singh Pannun, who lives in the US. The evidence against them points out their direct links with the intelligence department of the Indian Home Ministry which is headed by Modi. In the face of these stark revelations which are in the global public domain, Modi cannot shrug his shoulders off them. He is yet to clarify his position on the controversial allegation.
Even earlier, Narendra Modi was pulled up by the US State Department when in 2023 it came out with its report on religion, which detailed incidents of violent attacks on minorities like Muslims and Christians under his regime. Releasing that report, no less a person than Antony Blinken, the US Secretary of State said: “In India we see a concerning increase in anti-conversion laws, hate speech, demolition of homes and places of worship for members of minority faith communities.”
Modi’s modus operandi
How is Narendra Modi coping with these pressures from his counterpart in White House ? He has resorted to a cunning device. Instead of jumping into the arena of conflict and confronting the US himself, he has employed his publicity agents to take on the US allegation. While Nishikant Dubey and Sambit Patra have issued press statements in his defence, other BJP party spokespersons have come out with a series of posts on X accusing the US “deep state” (meaning the intelligence agencies) of nursing “a clear objective to destabilize India by targeting Prime Minister Modi.” One of these posts alleged that these agencies “turned to OCCRP, instructing the organization to provide material aimed at damaging PM Modi’s and India’s image.” Another BJP spokesperson Sudhangshu Trivedi has raised his fingers at a `foreign hand’, accusing Sonia Gandhi of collaborating with George Soros (because of her membership of the Soros-funded Forum of Democratic Leaders-Asia Pacific Foundation, which had often been critical of the Modi government). George Soros has become BJP’s latest bête noire whom it is raising as a bogey who threatens `national security’ – in other words, Modi’s security. It is accusing Soros of attacking the Modi government through his proxies like the Open Society Foundation, Human Rights Watch and OCCRP.
Both the OCCRP and Washington have come out against BJP’s allegations. On December 2, OCCRP refuted them, stating that it “maintained independence” and its “journalists and member centres around the world can pursue stories they think are important and worth telling.” This is in sharp contrast with the Indian media’s role of genuflecting at Narendra Modi’s feet. A few days later, on December 7, the US embassy in Delhi dismissed BJP’s allegation as “disappointing” – a mild term sounding like a lover’s unhappiness.
It was now Narendra Modi’s turn to respond to his Washington partner’s complaint. He resorted to the modus operandi that is usually followed in an affair, where a sulking lover makes the beloved jealous by demonstrating love for the beloved’s rival. He had already taken that step by moving closer to Russia through a deal on oil supply defying US sanctions. In a further similar gesture of an affront to his partner in White House, on December 9, at the Rising Rajasthan Summit in Jaipur, Modi shared the stage with Gautam Adani, the businessman who has been indicted by a US court for bribery of Indian officials (thus implicating the Modi government) and security frauds. By trying to protect Adani, is Modi jeopardizing his ties with the US ? How will Washington react to Modi’s gesture of defiance ? Will it kick him out from its agenda of economic and foreign policy related interests, if he no longer serves them ? Or, does it still need him for some other purpose – nefarious and underhand in which Modi is an expert ? Will it then try to woo him back by offering consolation sops in the shape of concessions in trade deals and military assistance ? Let us await the outcome of this present standoff that the pair is going through.
The tight US-India embrace
The present tensions between New Delhi and Washington look like a temporary tiff, as between two lovers. Both know that they have to remain attached to each other – driven by their lust that has to be consummated in the bed of financial and military ties. They will come back to the same old position of tight embrace that they have been enjoying during all the past decade, since neither can afford to untie it.
Since 2014, when Narendra Modi ascended the throne in New Delhi, strategic cooperation between the US and India has deepened. The US has become a major supplier of defence equipment to India, has conducted joint military exercises, and signed agreements to expand India’s access to high-end American defence technology. In exchange, India is allowed to enjoy a trade surplus of $ 36.75 billion with the US – thanks to its export of products like diamonds, packaged medicaments and refined petroleum among other things which are made available to US consumers at cheap price. Further, US investments in India in different projects in terms of dollars has gone up to around $ 49.56 billion.
Given this inter-dependence between India and the US, and the stakes they have in continuing it, neither of them can afford to break their ties. At the most, they can quarrel over petty disputes like lovers have in their daily lives, whether as live-in-companions, or as drop-in- companions.
Sumanta Banerjee is a political commentator and writer, is the author of In The Wake of Naxalbari’ (1980 and 2008); The Parlour and the Streets: Elite and Popular Culture in Nineteenth Century Calcutta (1989) and ‘Memoirs of Roads: Calcutta from Colonial Urbanization to Global Modernization.’ (2016).
