Sunanda K. Datta-Ray | Twist in American Dream: Will Trump raj help India?

Perhaps not quite. The 47^th US President does crave the world’s adulation even if withdrawal from WHO and the Paris climate agreement appear to begrudge any of the service and sacrifice that leadership also entails.

In a sense, he and Narendra Modi face not dissimilar dilemmas. Both are political outsiders. Both exalt the nitty-gritty of routine administrative responsibilities with grand notions of personal consequence. Neither shows any trace of the humility on which a silver-haired woman bishop dwelt as an essential component of leadership when speaking at the Washington National Cathedral as part of Mr Trump’s inaugural ceremonial. On the contrary, the US President publicly denounced Bishop Mariann E. Budde, leader of Washington’s Episcopal Diocese, as a “so-called bishop” and “radical left hard-line Trump hater”.

Like Mr Modi, Mr Trump too explicitly claims a super-human, indeed a divine, mandate. Being neither historically nor institutionally entitled to such grandeur, they are trying to invent it. Mr Modi’s unfailingly resplendent sartorial presence conjures up an ancient sacrosanct monarchy. Mr Trump’s territorial ambitions extending to Canada and Mexico, Panama and Greenland recall another head of state who redesignated himself “His Excellency, President for Life, Field Marshal Al Hajj Doctor Idi Amin Dada, VC, DSO, MC, Lord of all the Beasts of the Earth and Fishes of the Sea and Conqueror of the British Empire in Africa in General and Uganda in Particular”.

Actually, the splendour of that bombast is not too far a cry from the US Senate’s initial proposal to designate the ruler “His Highness, the President of the United States of America, and the Protector of their Liberties”. The first US vice-president, John Adams, was comfortable with that as also with sonorous references to “His Elective Majesty” and “His Mightiness”. That may have been partly because American notions of the presidency were shaped by their perception of King George III as an absolute ruler. Americans didn’t realise that the power he wielded didn’t flow from any divine right or from his mother’s ceaseless urging: “George, be a King!” It was the handiwork of lobbyists known as The King’s Friends. Even a future US founding father like Benjamin Franklin swelled with monarchical pride when he attended King George III’s coronation in 1761.

Burning royal effigies and toppling kingly statues came much later. So did the presidential rhetoric of Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address; Franklin D. Roosevelt’s heady declaration that “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself”; and John F. Kennedy’s noble exhortation to “Ask not what your country can do for you. Ask what you can do for your country”. All that goes with an egalitarian George Washington setting the tone for republican disdain for frills and fancies by accepting the simple, no-nonsense title of “President of the United States”. Like Winston Churchill who rejected a dukedom, taking pride instead in being “The Great Commoner”, a plain President was far more appropriate for the leader of a world in which one out of every ten persons languish below the poverty threshold, children, representing the future of mankind, account for more than half of the world’s poorest inhabitants, and despite the ramshackle glitter of tycoons like Mukesh Ambani, 24 per cent of the global poor are Indian.

Not that India’s movers and shakers are unaware that the indigent world can be clothed out of the trimmings of the rich, citing Oliver Goldsmith in She Stoops to Conquer. On April 4, 2011, even before New Delhi sent directives to state governments, the late Sudarshan Agarwal, former governor of Uttarakhand and Sikkim, wrote to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, saying: “It is with deep anguish that I am writing this letter as a concerned citizen of this country about the colossal wastage of food at weddings and other social functions in the country. It is painful to see 100 dishes being served to 1,000 or more guests at several of these weddings… Last year, a minister in Karnataka had a wedding reception for 30,000 guests in a pandal where he had put 350 air-conditioners. I sincerely feel that we need to revive the guest control order which limits the number of dishes that can be served at dinners/lunches and also limits the number of guests.”

He added: “Unfortunately, ministers themselves have not set an example. A couple of years ago, a Union minister had his daughter’s wedding at a heritage hotel in Jodhpur and it is reported that 60 private aircraft landed in Jodhpur carrying the invitees for the wedding. People are no fools; they understand everything.”

Many European leaders also fear that Mr Trump’s return to the White House could mean a momentous, almost apocalyptic, shift that might disrupt alliances and play havoc with economic relations. Only Vladimir Putin, who upholds the absurd theory that the last American presidential election was “stolen” from Mr Trump, thinks a Trump presidency might end the Ukraine war.

Other US rivals and adversaries like China, Iran and North Korea expect new tensions and heightened anti-Western agendas.

Ironically, South and Southeast Asia, a region that includes many US allies, partners and friends, take a more placid view of Mr Trump’s return. It does not arouse the same strong emotions in Japan and South Korea or among Asean members that it does in some Nato countries. The fawning pleasure with which India’s media lapped up evidence of external affairs minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar accorded the honour of a prominent front-row seat at the inauguration displayed no disapproval of Mr Trump’s autocratic tendencies and contempt for liberal internationalist ideals.

Being almost as transactional as the Republican Party chief himself, the region has long conducted relations with Washington on the basis of common interests rather than common values. Indians expect Mr Trump to be even more committed than Joe Biden to the Quad and the AUKUS nuclear agreement with Australia and Britain. India hopes for increased trade, improved technology transfer and, above all, greater scope for young men and women whose training and skills can benefit a US seeking to realise Mr Trump’s “Make America Great Again” dream. Despite the racist comments of white supremacists, California-born Telugu Brahmin Usha Chilukuri Vance, a practising Hindu and the first ethnic Indian US “Second Lady”, could be the forerunner of a future that also means more wrangling over H-1B visas whose holders Norman Matloff, professor of computer science at a California university, famously called “indentured servants”. That twist of the American Dream augurs interesting times.