Most of us have been keenly following the US presidential elections, but what is interesting is that everyone has a point of view. If this election has been seen as one that has so sharply divided America, then it has had an equally divisive impact on India. Speaking on the NewsX-Sunday Guardian Roundtable Dr Sanjaya Baru, former media advisor in Dr Manmohan Singh’s PMO, pointed out that the US elections have never been so ideologically divided. The fact that it’s such a close race shows that this is a divide that will survive even after the results are (finally) declared for as they say Trump may go but Trumpism is there to stay. More to the point it can be argued had we not been hit by coronavirus, Trump was all set to make a comeback. His hold on the economy ensured votes from even those sections of the society that would not have normally voted Republican. But once Covid-19 hit the United States and Trump’s rather casual approach to a life-threatening pandemic raised questions about his leadership style; questions that Americans were earlier happy to overlook.
But why are Indians taking sides and getting as worked up as the average American voter? Foreign policy is not meant to be personalised, but institutionalised. Yet why does a section of India, especially those who have voted for the BJP, want Trump to win and the liberals (mostly Congress voters) are backing Biden? The answer, of course, lies in the Modi-Trump equation. Short of campaigning for him with the “Abki Baar Trump Sarkar” cheer, (however contextual it may have been it was begging to be read out of context); the PM has had Trump fiercely in his bear-hug for a while now. He has played on the ideological divide that exists in the US and used it to his advantage, even taking positions in an election year. And why not? For, as Suhasini Haider, National Editor, The Hindu, pointed out on Roundtable, don’t forget before Trump it was a Republican government that had banned Modi’s visa. Majoritarianism does tend to throw up strong personalities and personalities do have a say in determining equations between two countries; apart from structural institutions. But as Haider also pointed out, Trump was more hands-on in his approach than adhering to due process. One could argue that PM Modi follows a similar approach, whether he is sitting on a swing with Xi Jingping, playing the flute in Japan or dashing across the border to meet Nawaz Sharif, the then Pakistan PM. This has yielded mixed results but Modi was not the first Indian Prime Minister to try his hand at building personal relations through soft diplomacy.
Will the Democrats be harder on India than a Trump-led Republican government? Already the BJP is wary of Kamala Harris and her opposition to revoking Article 370. Some BJP leaders also fear that the US could raise issues of religious intolerance at the UN Human Rights fora. Speaking to NewsX, Dr Subramanian Swamy pointed out that there is a section of Indian-Americans who could egg the Biden administration to do so. And so while a Biden administration will not be markedly different from a Trump one for India, there could be some awkward moments for the ruling BJP government.