Modi must know India is not Israel
India expected US to give it a free hand during its war with Pakistan on the same lines as Israel has been given over in Gaza, Palestine.
The cardinal line which India could easily assuage in all these years of sitting in a coterie with US, quite explicitly, since around 25 years now. Remember the US President Bill Clinton five days versus five hours visit to India and Pakistan in 2000? Does US want to use India against China while China uses Pakistan against India?
But, on August 31, 2025 India, China and Pakistan were under the same roof, at the Shanghai Co-operation Organization (SCO) Summit in Tianjin, China. Minus the US!
This is what may be the ‘turning of tables’ as US President Donald Trump, who has imposed 50% tariffs on India to penalize it for buying Russian oil at highly subsidized rates, has now announced to cancel his India visit for QUAD Summit.
There are reports that India’s PM Narendra Modi has not responded to four phone calls from Trump. Modi has also not backed-up Trump for Noble Prize nomination while Pakistan has done so.
It had not been that far, when India was openly hobnobbing with QUAD - the quadrilateral dialogue consisting of US, Australia, India and Japan, an open front against China.
But, the QUAD meeting (July 1) did not name Pakistan, in the Pahalgam, Kashmir terror attack of April 22! India’s External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar came empty handed from the United States.
Another entity, India-Israel-US and United Arab Emirates (I2U2), meant to contain Iran also seems to have lost its steam.
Foreign Policy is not a knee jerk game. But, India, which typically wanted to take foreign-policy in the same stride as its domestic polity i.e. through ‘aggressiveness’ has long lost it. It reached its nadir, a moment of least hope, in its immediate neighbourhood, in Bangladesh, as the narrative of the last 50 years that Bangladesh is an anathema to the idea of Pakistan came crashing down.
India looked hapless as Bangladesh 3-times Prime Minister, Shiekh Hasina, had to flee to India, as she was widely perceived as New Delhi stooge in Dhaka, accused of high rate of human rights abuses, and there is a renewed love-affair between Bangladesh and Pakistan.
Since, the four-days war, May 6/7, which broke between India and Pakistan, halted in a ceasefire after Trump’s intervention, Pakistan Army Chief and Field Marshall Asim Munir has visited US twice, which once even included a private luncheon with Trump.
Where is India?
The answer lies that India’s sole bargain was to bank upon Israel to prevail on US, which did not happen!
India expected US to give it a free hand on the same lines as Israel has been given over in Gaza, Palestine. Israel has unleashed death and utmost destruction in Gaza since October 7, 2023, when Hamas had attacked Israel.
India should know that it is not Israel, as ‘Israel First’ is what runs through US.
Modi has been irked by the continuous repetition of Trump to have stopped the India-Pakistan war. By July 19, according to some accounts, he had already repeated it 24 times.
To make it worse, Trump is slowly adding to the number of fighter jets brought down.
The figure is now seven.
International media reports, have pointed Pakistan to have shot down Indian fighter jets, in the ‘Operation Sindoor’, which was launched in May, and which is not over yet, as it may begin any moment, owing to the claims by the Indian Army or BJP political establishment.
There is no denying the fact that China, Turkey and Azerbaijan openly supported Pakistan against India. All the three nations along with Pakistan were present at SCO.
Whom India is now to look upon?
Whom India is now to look upon, except for Russia. Russia and Ukraine are at war since February 2022.
The long proverbial Indian strategy of ‘running with hare and hunting with hound’ is perhaps now a sign of past, as US accused India to have sponsored the Russian war over Ukraine.
Indian oil refiners in the last 39 months have saved 12.9 billion USD by importing Russian oil, which US China’s hawk and Trump advisor on trade Peter Navarro considers to have benefitted Indian Brahmins!
This Brahmin aspect that US has unshackled is an attempt to delve into the civilizational caste divide of Indian society. There is no doubt that out of those Indians, who have settled or studied in US, are overwhelmingly Brahmins. Brahmins are the upper crust of the Indian society since ages.
The SCO summit, attended by more than 20 countries, is now to set up its development bank, on the lines of New Development Bank of BRICS, which is to be primarily aimed to dislodge US dollar regime.
Russia and China have long been engaged into this world-wide de-dollarization campaign. Both the nations have been quite engaged in their trade through Chinese payment system ‘The China Track’. Their trade already hit a record $ 245 billion this year tells Reuters, which also helped Russia to drastically reduce its visibility from the Western eyes.
India is also likely to be a part of this bank as well as BRICS, of which, India is to preside the next year. A large part of the world is set to abandon US SWIFT banking system.
Asim Munir also reached China. He is to attend to China’s victory parade on September 3. Everyone knows it is only China which made Pakistan compete with India.
What did India get?
China’s border disputes with India are no where gone. It may be also referred that almost on the eve of the Russian-Ukraine war, there were winter Olympics in China, which India to boycott as China had made Qi Fabao, the commander in the People’s Liberation Army who was injured in a border clash with India at the Galwan valley in 2020, as its torchbearer.
It was also then that Russia and China had declared to fight ‘each-others’ wars. The same ‘no-limits partnership’ between them has again been reiterated right now in Beijing. There was no Israel at SCO. India has skipped the China’s parade.
How is the world set to see the outcome of the Russia-Ukraine war, as European and NATO nations, closely watch SCO, BRICS etc?
The war in the Middle East is also set to take a new stage as Israel and US are to target Iran?
Iran will get Russia and China’s support. India will try a balancing act, but how will it act if Trump is to utter the K word?
K stands for Kashmir... The ultimate red-line for India.
Trump had once claimed that in Japan in 2019, Modi, had sought his help to resolve the Kashmir issue, as per The Straits Times!
How will Modi’s India navigate in the coming days is to be watched.
[The writer, Haider Abbas, is former State Information Commissioner, Uttar Pradesh. He writes on international issues.]
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