India’s Republic Day invite to Trump: Disbelief in diplomatic circles  

India’s Republic Day is officially the country’s national day. It is when Indian diplomatic missions organise their biggest and most formal receptions, with dignitaries from host governments invited as a guests of honour.

Entwined with the apex celebration in Delhi – and herein is transmitted a diplomatic signal – is the selection of the chief guest for the occasion – generally a carefully chosen head of state or head of government friendly towards India or potentially so. The practice was set into motion in the very first year. President Sukarno of Indonesia, then an ally and soon afterwards a fellow traveller with Jawaharlal Nehru in the non-aligned movement, graced the function in 1950.

Narendra Modi’s invitation to President Barack Obama in 2015 was an inspired decision. Given France’s rising solidarity with India, the presence of President Francois Hollande the following year was equally meritorious, not to mention the honour collectively extended to ASEAN leaders this year.

In between, though, the invite to Crown Prince Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan of the United Arab Emirates was arguably debatable. But the worst move of all would unfold if Donald Trump strides the podium next year. Modi refuses to learn from his blunders. The annoyance expressed by Russia and China’s renewed hostility triggered by India entering the American orbit did not teach Modi a lesson. He is also oblivious of the need to be cautious with the current occupant of the White House.

Of course, as a matter of principle a government has to take changes in leadership in other countries in its strides. Moreover, the office of president of the USA is still the most powerful post in the world. Consequently, it is both legitimate and wise to keep an incumbent in good humour. It is not necessary, though, to be intimate with a loose cannon.

It is a matter of shame that Hindu extremists in the US who identify with Modi donated significant sums to Trump’s election campaign. Thereafter, last year, where a meeting could well have been business-like, Modi went overboard ingratiating himself with Trump. The tilt has failed to realise any far-reaching benefit for India. Washington expects New Delhi to be a bulwark against China; but hasn’t put any decisive pressure on Beijing or Islamabad to alleviate India’s troubles with them.

Trump pulled out of the Paris Climate Agreement in which India invested considerable capital. He withdrew from the nuclear understanding with Iran, which India supports. He has through Nikki Haley warned India of sanctions if it maintains economic relations with Iran, not to mention his inclination to meddle in Kashmir.

There are ways of tackling Trump. Concessions to his business interests would probably make him think twice. But India would also have to work on Congress to thwart sanctions. The bottom line is it is unbecoming to honour him on Republic Day.

In 2017, The New York Times published a letter by Judith Herman, a professor at Harvard Medical School, and another psychiatrist Robert Lifton which said Trump’s “repeated failure to distinguish between reality and fantasy and his dangerous outbursts of rage when his fantasies are contradicted” indicate that “faced with crisis, President Trump will lack the judgement to respond rationally”. Besides, more than 60,000 American mental health professionals signed a petition which stated that they believed that Trump “manifests a serious mental illness that renders him psychologically incapable of completely discharging the duties of President of the United States”.

Europe has just experienced his erratic behaviour. At the NATO summit in Brussels, he rashly remarked, “Germany (a close US ally) is totally controlled by Russia.” He has behaved despicably with the German Chancellor Angela Merkel. Fed up with the nonsense, the German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas reacted, Berlin can “no longer completely rely on the White House”.

His trip to Britain was downgraded from a state to an official visit. Queen Elizabeth, the British monarch, met him; but neither her consort the Duke of Edinburgh nor her heir Prince Charles was present. This represented a subtle diplomatic snub, quite unprecedented in the “special relationship” between the United Kingdom and the United States.

Trump’s meeting with the UK’s Prime Minister Theresa May was preceded by an interview to a British tabloid replete with careless and contemptuous remarks about her and gross and undiplomatic interference in Britain’s internal affairs and its negotiations on Brexit with the European Union. An equally exasperated May told a TV interviewer while Trump was still on British soil (weekending at his golf resort in Scotland) that he had advised her to sue the EU instead of talking to them.

At a press conference in Helsinki after a US-Russia summit, Trump sided with President Vladimir Putin rather than his administration and intelligence community on alleged Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election which brought him to power. The erstwhile director of the US Central Intelligence Agency John Brennan described this as “treasonous”.

Is such a person fit to be accorded pride of place on India’s Republic Day? It is a grave insult to the people of India and to the institution of India’s national day that Trump should besmirch the grand stage to mark such an important milestone.