No meeting with PM for US presidential hopefuls

Though Republican nominee Donald Trump had announced last week that he would meet Prime Minister Narendra Modi during his US visit, the Indian PM did not meet either Trump or Democratic nominee Kamala Harris in what appeared to be a conscious attempt to stay away from America’s polarised political landscape five weeks before the country votes for the next president.

Trump, during a rally last week in Michigan, had said that Modi was coming to see him next week. He called Modi a “fantastic man” while terming India as an “abuser” of trade. India never confirmed the meeting, and said that the meeting schedule was not fixed and was constantly evolving.

But New Delhi, HT has learnt, was clear from the start of the planning of the visit that the PM would either meet both candidates or neither. Indian officials were acutely conscious of the fact that New Delhi has no partisan preferences in American politics, and must not be seen in any way of having any preferences.

This was also the view of members of the Indian community in the US, and was the reason why organisers of the Modi’s diaspora event did not invite any elected American official, including Indian-American representatives, unlike in such events in the past.

In 2019, Modi participated in the “Howdy Modi” event in Houston with Trump, and in 2020, he attended the “Namaste Trump” event in Ahmedabad. The Houston event, in particular, left Democrats with the impression that India was backing Trump -- an impression that Delhi had to later work hard to correct. The fact that Harris is an Indian-American, and enjoys the support of a majority in the community, also may have figured in India’s calculation. At the diaspora event, Modi framed the American election in the context of democracies going to the polls globally and used it as a segue to talk about India’s election and his victory.

The fact that Modi was in the US for less than 60 hours and had an extremely packed calendar, and both Trump and Harris are also in the final lap of an intense campaign, also left little room for adjusting and aligning schedules. It is understood that Harris’s office and Indian officials were in discussions to see if schedules aligned earlier in the month, but it became clear that this may not happen. There was a similar outreach to Trump and the speculation is this may have possibly happened through his Indian-American supporters. But before any confirmation, Trump went public, an act that many in Delhi saw as typical of Trump but not necessarily one that India had to indulge him on. “There is no meeting fixed,” an official familiar with the PM’s schedule had said before the PM landed in the US.

“We will deal with who the American people elect as we have in the past. Both Democrat and Republican administrations have deepened India-US ties in the last 25 years. PM Modi has now worked with three American presidents with completely different personalities. There is bipartisan support for the India relationship in the US. That is best for ties. We have to think about both sustaining that and ensuring our diaspora does not come under any unwarranted political attack,” said a second person familiar with the broad thinking at the higher levels of the Indian government.

How Trump reacts to a meeting that he had alluded to happening, but did not happen, remains to be seen. But for now, India has stayed away from the minefield that is the American political theatre.