Trump’s Provocative Diplomacy Meets Modi’s Swadeshi Triumphalism

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Trump reached for diplomacy by provocation; New Delhi responded with a flourish of “Swadeshi” triumphalism.

By TRH Foreign Affairs Desk

New Delhi, October 22, 2025 — As US President Donald Trump spoke in the Oval Office of his “warm relations” with Prime Minister Narendra Modi—while, characteristically, dragging Pakistan into the frame—India’s government machinery was busy amplifying Bharatiya Janata Party MP Praveen Khandelwal’s claim that Diwali sales had “broken all records.” Trump reached for diplomacy by provocation; New Delhi responded with a flourish of “Swadeshi” triumphalism.

Trump once more inserted Pakistan while speaking on India. The government spokespersons gave more strength to “Swadeshi.”

Trump reiterated his claims of trades stopping India-Pakistan war. “Just spoke to Prime Minister Narendra Modi…we talked trades…we just hope that there is no India-Pakistan war…we stopped the war and trade was involved,” said Trump, while speaking to reporters after lighting the Diwali lamp in the Oval Office yesterday.

In Trumpian realism, India-Pakistan is now hyphenated with no sherd of doubts. The might of the Indian diaspora in the American politics came to a naught in preventing Trump to weave a geopolitics orbit with Pakistan as a spoke.

At Sharm el-Sheikh, Trump spoke of India-Pakistan peace with Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif behind him. Trump’s repeated hyphenation of India and Pakistan comes couched in praise of Modi.

Unlike other envoys of major nations who celebrated Diwali in New Delhi by partaking the festivities, Sergei Gor, the US ambassador to India, was missing from the fervour. He had come visiting India last week to complete the formalities of his appointment as Trump’s man in New Delhi. By all accounts, he appears to stick to his role as a visitor to New Delhi as Trump needs him more in Washington to manage internal politics within the MAGA camp. Gor’s faceoff with billionaire Elon Musk and others who have fallen off with Trump is now well-known.

Modi sympathisers are rationalising the drift of the US away from the Indian orbit to the claim that “America cannot stand another China.” On the other hand, a section of the diplomatic community believes that Trump has revived the hope for a multilateral world with his “isolationism.”

At Sharm el-Sheikh, Trump showed his durbar, as leaders of the Middle East and Europe stood as courtiers of a king. There seems no hint of an American pivot in global geopolitics taking backseat.

China indeed is standing firm against the “bully” Trump. Beijing speaks firmly against anti-China actions of the Trump administration. China also is hurting Washington by turning off taps of critical minerals and zero soybean import from the US.

Geopolitics often makes for strange bedfellows. Pakistan, bound in iron-clad embrace with China, seems to be inhaling a dose of Trumpian delusion. It may be premature to read too deeply into the tentative thaw between India and China, yet an emerging eastern axis — Russia, China, and India — appears increasingly willing to de-hyphenate itself from Trump’s brand of unilateralism.

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