Howdy meets Namaste in an illusion of ‘optics’
- Shruti Sundar Ray
- Feb 26, 2020
- 3 min read
President Trump and Prime Minister Modi may continue to charm the Indian diaspora in the United States but the interests of this community converge with neither Trump nor Modi
President of the United States Donald Trump received a warm ‘namaste’ on his first state visit to India—Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s strategic hugs, a customary felicitation stole, riots on the streets (not protesting him, for a change), a stadium filled with enthusiastic supporters, the whole shebang. The visit could not have been more perfectly timed.
With Pakistan’s blacklisting on the Financial Action Task Force (an inter-governmental body aimed at curbing terror funding) less than imminent and an agreement on a comprehensive trade deal indefinitely deferred, the optics of India-US solidarity has soared in importance.
Heading this Hindi Amriki bhai bhai brigade are the Indian diaspora in the US. The spectacle of events like ‘Namaste Trump’ and ‘Howdy Modi’ is targeted at this diaspora, a constituency that wields political capital in both the US and India. Non-resident Indians (NRIs) and Persons of Indian Origin (PIOs) have not only been major benefactors of Modi’s electoral campaigns but are also growing as a vote bank for Trump.
The American-born Confused Desis of the 2000s have come of age in the 2010s, garnering recognition and representation be it in Hollywood (à la Mindy Kaling or Aziz Ansari) or the Silicon Valley (à la Sundar Pichai or Satya Nadella). With this newfound cultural acceptance of the Indian-American has come a greater aspiration for political assertion. Conservative in social values and individualistic in economic values, a section of this demographic epitomizes the new ‘right’ that has risen to power in both the United States and India, and is in part responsible for its rise to power.
Ironically, it is the same demographic that has been badly hit by Trump’s policies on immigration (such as a change in the H1B visa regulations) and trade (such as duties on Indian exports). The Trump-Modi camaraderie, the drum beating about common national interests, the talks about talks moving forwards—are all aimed at assuaging the likely discontent within Indian-American circles.
When Trump shares the stage with Modi at Motera, a suburb of Ahmedabad whose claim to fame is that it is hosting the President of the United States, calls him a ‘true friend’ and praises the religious tolerance of the nation at a time of communal riots in the streets of the national capital, the Indian-American constituency is the one that is being placated. The messaging is clear. It will be business as usual for Indians in the United States despite the polarized headwinds in the motherland.
The economic clout of the Indian diaspora is not to be trifled with, with India leading the world in remittances as of 2018 (the US makes for over 20% of these). In Indian politics, they wield influence disproportionate to their numerical strength. Their heft becomes visible when the government introduces policies such as relaxation of voting norms for NRIs and easing of foreign income flow rules. Trump makes an undisguised appeal to the value he sees in this community when he commends the diaspora ‘titans of business‘ and ‘pioneers of science’ for enriching the US.
But with Trump’s ‘America First’ in full swing, the Indian-Americans’ lack of real political heft in the US has been revealed to them. And with racist rhetoric on the rise there, the Indians in America have every reason to feel unmoored. Events such as ‘Namaste Trump’ and ‘Howdy Modi’—Trump himself tries to create a parallel between the two—remind the Indian Americans of their unique hallowed place in both India and the US. Allusions to Bhangra and Tendulkar and Bollywood and Holi, sold as ‘soft power’, are meant to balm the egos of a populace that placed it eggs in the Trump-Modi basket for ideological reasons and is now aggrieved by how the eggs hatched when the same ideologies were implemented.
Fears stemming from the same ideology continue to be stoked with sternly worded references to Pakistan. The ‘defence first’ myth, fed to and regurgitated by a particular section of the Indian-American demographic ad nauseum, continues to hit its mark, with the signing of new weapons deals worth $3 billion.
In their quest for identity assertion, this class of Indian-Americans has bought into the optics of India and the US being natural strategic partners without realising that it is just that—optics. When ‘America First’ meets ‘Make in India’, Indian-Americans are left nowhere.
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