N Sathiya Moorthy 11 November 2024
Call him ‘Lady-killer’ of a different kind, but US President-elect Donald Trump holds the distinction of being the only one to have gone to the Oval Office by trouncing women rivals. It is another matter that Hillary Clinton (2016) and Kamala Harris (2024) are the only women — both Democrats — to have come this far close to the White House in the nation’s long history of ‘democratic’ elections.
The fact that Joe Biden could defeat Trump in 2020, however controversial the latter sought to make it out to be, goes only to show how Americans preferred another man to Trump, and Trump to any woman, American or ‘non-American’. This kind of argument will continue to do the rounds until the next presidential elections, when TV anchors will be asking their guests: ‘Is US ready for a woman President?’ Ask your Indian friend or cousin who is a voter in the US, and he (especially if it is a she) would tell you how from homes to offices, the average white American is a misogynist, and may remain so for a long time to come. Their sense of equal rights for women is a thus-far-and-no-further concession. A Hillary Clinton can become Secretary of State, a Kamala Harris could become the Vice-President, but it stops there — and it should stop there — or so it seems.
Yes, courts in the country have reserved orders against the President-elect, and they have until January 20 to come up with their verdicts. That is when the US Constitution says Trump can take over from Biden. Once President, Trump gets the mandated immunity due to an incumbent for the next four years. Indians are not unfamiliar with popular mandates trumping court-ordered convictions and sentencing, mainly in corruption cases against senior politicians, starting with that of J Jayalalithaa in 2001. In a nation that claims to be the most modern and most influential in the post-War world, Americans are still following norms and traditions fit for an era when Americans were a divided, and not a federated nation, and were travelling on horse-back through the harsh winter months. There is no reason other than conventions and consequent convictions that they have to vote for a new President on the ‘Tuesday after the first Sunday of November’, every four years. Crazy, did you say, in this year of science and rationalism?
Unless the American courts want to stop him, Trump is here to stay.
Howdy Modi?
Yes, in India in general and southern Tamil Nadu in particular, there are people that Kamala Harris with her Indian/Tamil background deserved to win, and her election would have made a lot of difference to bilateral relations in every respect. Going by four years as Vice-President, such constructs are not supported by facts. Yes, she might not have been directly involved in the ongoing FBI probe alleging official India’s involvement in a conspiracy to kill a ‘Khalistani-American’, but she had not done anything positive for the betterment of bilateral relations with her mother’s land for Indians and India to have any big hopes for the next four or eight years, if she had been elected President.
For starters, the US media reports have consistently pointed to her constant identification with her Jamaican father’s background rather than her Indian mother. In the past four years as Vice-President, she did not seem to have made any attempt to visit India, or any other part of South Asia. The closest she came to India was to the ASEAN Summit, midway through her vice-presidency. It’s not that President Biden or anyone else nearer home would have stopped her from visiting India and her mother’s parental village, Thulasingapuram in Tamil Nadu, if she had wanted, but she simply did not care.
In contrast, during Trump’s first term, even his daughter Ivanka Trump visited Hyderabad, to inaugurate a three-day Global Entrepreneurship Summit, in the company of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, in 2017.
Then, there was the ‘Namaste Trump’ road-show in Ahmedabad and the ‘Howdy Modi’ return-event in the US. Reams were written about it at the time, and reams will now be written now, recalling the two occasions and the bonhomie that marked the hug-and-wave relations between the two leaders, and its imminent return to cement bilateral ties at a crucial time in bilateral history.
Roses and thorns
Going by pre-poll American media reports and post-poll analyses, many Indians who were traditional Democrat voters had gone the Trump way, if not to his Republican side for good. Of course, Republicans did have a substantial share of Indian-American voters and also elected legislators through the past years. How far they were influenced by the Modi-Trump bonhomie from the latter’s first term as President but there are already expectations in India that the duo would hit off as well this time too with mutual benefits for both nations.
Modi did not lose time to congratulate Trump, nor did the latter delay in responding. Even during his campaign and addressing the Indian/Hindu community in the US, Trump had said that if he were elected President, India and Hindus would have a true friend in the White House. He has said as much while accepting Modi’s congratulatory message, first on the social media platform X and later in a telephonic conversation.
Does it mean that it would all be a bed of roses for India now? Or, would it still be a bed of roses and thorns as used to be the case under Trump 1.0? In political terms, yes, India can count more and more on a Trump presidency than during the predecessor Biden administration. It would be especially in terms of the so-called Khalistani issue and attendant American allegations of human rights violations and murder-attempts involving Indian officials who had gone ‘rogue’ while working in India’s Washington mission. However, would and could a new administration undo all damage that has already been done in this case even if Trump so desired? That is a question only a reality-check after he became President can provide the answers.
Deep State, what…
There were also grey areas in bilateral relations at the commencement of the Ukraine War, when India decided to procure cheap Russian oil against American bidding and those by America’s Western allies. Biden may have started off on a wrong foot, possibly the West also did not expect New Delhi to stand firm on its decisions, be it on oil-import or UNSC-UNGA votes blaming Russia unilaterally, time and again, for the war. But by the time it was time for Biden to pack up and go, administration officials had begun claiming credit for what was not theirs by any stretch of imagination. That was when US officials claimed that it was only on their advice that India imported cheap oil from Russia, if only to check against runaway oil price-hike in global markets.
Another tough decision that India took early on was to clarify that the country was not there in any military alliance at the global level. The US too has moved away to create a separate AUKUS security alliance with the UK and Australia, leaving Quad to deal mostly with non-traditional security and the like. Will Trump try to reset the clock on either? Or, will his presence back in the White House revive old tensions in America’s China relations and try to adversely impact the possibilities of India improving broken ties with China? After all, the two Asian giants finally ended the Galwan stalemate, unilaterally created by China, and now hope to build on the benefits in the coming months and years?
Of course, there are two related areas in which a hard-line Trump stand, namely, on immigration and trade, will affect India and strain India relations. The President-elect has not minced words on trade protectionism and denying locals’ jobs to immigrants (including Indians). He has also promised to create more and more manufacturing jobs nearer home. It could mean a slow down, if not a cut-down, in American investments in India and other Third World nations. Much of it anyway now is in the high-end services sector, and will Trump touch them, too?
(The writer is a Chennai-based Policy Analyst and Political Commentator. Email: sathiyam54@nsathiyamoorthy.com)
