Bjp Ascendant At Home Tested Abroad

TITLE: BJP Ascendant at Home, Tested Abroad CHANNEL: Carnegie Endowment DATE: 2026-05-27 ---TRANSCRIPT--- unabashed.

The most unpredictable becomes a headline. The most volatile, outrageous behavior, unsubstantiated narratives, a battle of personalities. Welcome to Grant Theamasha, a co-production of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in the Hindustan Times. I’m your host, Milan Bashab. After the last round of state elections, India’s political landscape looks more lopsided than at any time in the post204 era. The BJP claimed big wins in West Bengal and Assam, continuing its march across eastern India and further solidifying its status as a hedgemonic party. But politics at home is only part of the story. Overseas, India’s facing a turbulent moment from the Iran war and Pakistan’s diplomatic resurgence to Trump 2.0’s approach to China and the uncertain future of the Quad. to talk about the BJP’s dominance, the opposition’s crisis and India’s positioning in a rapidly shifting world. I am joined this week by Grant Marsha regular Saddanand Dume and Tanvi Madan. Saddanand is the brand new senior fellow for India, Pakistan and South Asia at the Council on Foreign Relations. He is also a regular columnist for the Wall Street Journal. Saddanand congrats on the new job. Thank you and it’s good to be back. Uh Tanvi Madan is a senior fellow in the center for Asia policy studies in the foreign policy program at the Brookings Institution. Tanvi, good to have you back. Good to be back, Milan. So, we have a lot to discuss today, but let me start with the politics because I think that’s on a lot of people’s minds. Uh, we’ve had this series of recent state elections. Uh, we saw numerous headlines including the New York Times claiming that India is rapidly moving towards a one party state. The BJP and its allies now have 22 chief ministers across India. Its chief national rival, the Congress, I think, only has four. Uh Sadan let me maybe start with you. How comfortable are you with this designation of India as a kind of virtual one party state? It’s a great question and I guess it just depends on you know how you look at it right if you com if you if the term one party state uh brings to mind say a country like China or North Korea uh I think it’s a preposterous claim to make about India. If on the other hand your idea of a one party state is to compare this moment in Indian history with previous moments in Indian history. Right? So for example between 1947 and 1967 there was this one state government the Kerala government that was uh an opposition government which was famously dismissed in in 1959 or if you go to 1976 when Indra Gandhi dismissed the governments of Gujarat and Tamil Nadu and effectively Congress was the only game in town. Um I think that India isn’t quite where it was at the peak of Neu’s power or at the peak of Indra Gandhi’s power but it’s closer to that point than it has been any any time since. So I think we shouldn’t worry that India is going to officially become a one party state but I think people who do care about Indian democracy should have concerns about one party being so overwhelmingly powerful. um albeit uh at the same time being aware that this would not be the first time in Indian history when one party has been very powerful. Could I just ask you just as a kind of followup to that? Um obviously the result in West Bengal got the line share of attention. I think the results in Tamil Nadu maybe second and then Assam Kerala Buddhacher were kind of uh second and third order issues. But just on West Bengal I mean you have studied the BJP for a long time. you followed what folks on the right have been talking about, writing about, agitating about help put us in context the kind of significance of West Bengal in the kind of larger BJP sung kind of worldview or kind of history. So, you know, I wrote a column about this, right? I mean, just in terms of like, you know, looking for a parallel, right? It’s this is this is extremely dramatic, right? This is the equivalent of the the the Democrats winning Texas went if Texas the governorship of Texas if Texas had never been run by the by by the Democratic party. Um but in in in some terms in an ideological terms right obviously uh the Bengal is a place that has had uh these very these Hindu Muslim tensions that go back a long time. uh Shaman Prasad Mukherji who was the first president of the Bharatya Jan Sang which is a predecessor of the BJP who died in mysterious circumstances in Jammu and Kashmir and is a revered figure within the S ecosystem was from West Bengal. uh some people trace the intellectual roots of Hindutwa not just to Sawarker who is of course from Maharashtra um but to various figures uh in Bengal at the at the end of the 19th century and the fact that the that West Bengal has such a large Muslim population roughly about 25% of the population meant that it was often seen as an impregnable impregnable bastion for the opposition and so for all those reasons the the symbolic significance for the BJP of winning and that too winning emphatically in Bengal cannot be overestimated. I mean Dundi let me kind of ask you I think you know many people had argued that the BJP in Modi specifically had sort of reached the zenith of their power uh before 2024 and that the 2024 general elections and that outcome were a sign or a signal that it was kind of all downhill after that. And obviously we can say now that that prediction has turned out to be mistaken. What do you think accounts for the BJP’s ability to kind of not just recover but kind of regain and push into new territory and expand into new regions? I think one thing it says is we should all be cautious about making very confident predictions based on one election or or the other. Um I I you know I’d be interested Millan in hearing what you what you uh assess in terms of the latest in the literature but otherwise on the links or how much of the you know uh correlation there is from state elections and national elections. Um, so I’ll leave that to you. But I I I just in terms of the BJP’s approach, I think this says something about their broader approach to elections, right? You we we’ve often talked about it, which is they approach elections and politics uh in almost in terms of a war planning, warfighting approach or strategy, which is that they do a lessons learned of the previous, you know, loss or even victory. and particularly if there’s if there are setbacks uh and then have a campaign plan that in part what it does is try to fix those errors. So in this case you know uh one of the things we heard a lot about is uh some of the rumblings or grumbling rather uh by within the sun uh and you know the relationship between the RSS and the BJP during 2024. So, you know, trying to address that or other lessons about what went wrong and what you can fix. But there are other parts of that campaign plan, right? It is about a certain level of ruthlessness about who they think should get seats. Uh who they should attract from who are defectors from other parties. Uh a certain amount of divide and rule uh in the opposition. Um but also kind of you know whether and how to influence institutions at play uh or adapt to local conditions. I mean a funny way of thinking about this is you know uh for a party that doesn’t often talk about you know eating meat is politicians going and eating fish. Um at least they didn’t go and you know eat potatoes in their biryani in Bengal. But the fact that they will they will be take that approach uh where you are actually it’s kind of a take no prisoners got to win this election. And I sometimes wish that they had the same campaign plan strategy in thinking about second third orders and anticipating them when it comes to policy. Uh where some sometimes I think some you know policies can be put out there in an ad hoc fashion. But I think you know there is that now the other part of this is it’s not just what they do like any kind of war or conflict it you know your se success depends on how good your opposition is. as I think in this case, you know, if you have an opposition that is not uh that is kind of fighting on its own uh or each party is fighting on the election on their own or not in terms of that India alliance which you saw in in 2024 uh the the both the analogies get limited because the opposition is not behaving the same way but also it actually means that as they fight this war so to speak um they are dealing with uh a rival who who is not united and that gives them a certain uh advantage as well. But of course, you know, like anything, it also depends on in the kind of how how voters are thinking about them. And so one of the things I think is if if we thinking forward, does this mean they’ll always be this dominant or again, you know, is this now the peak uh or is it uh you know, was that the peak of the opposition? I I think it really depends on some of these elements, right? how does the opposition react or for instance how are voters thinking about the economy? Uh I think these factors still matter. I don’t think you know a a a campaign plan can necessarily uh uh defeat those uh those uh uh those elements. As an aside, I think it would be great if India’s war fighting was remotely as competent as the as as as the BJP’s electoral war fighting. This is going to get us a lot of YouTube comments now. Uh Saddan, you know, this is one of the things you addressed in your column and I think it would be remiss if we didn’t bring it up here, which was the role of the election commission and I think a lot of the campaign conversation, certainly the post-election campaign conversation has been really raising questions about the kind of evenness of the playing field and um and the way in which this election transpired. And I wonder, you know, as you sat down to write that piece for the journal, which of course we’ll link to, you know, how did you come to think about this? So, you know, I came into it as a skeptic, right? Because we’ve seen so many parties, uh, you know, going back for more more than 10 years, right? They complain about the the playing field not being level or about, you know, EVMs and so on. And I’ve sort of generally been quite skeptical. A lot of this is just uh poor losers. And so that’s where I was on this, too. Um but as I sort of got more into this I I did come to the conclusion that uh in this case there were legitimate concerns about the process. Um this is not to say that those that you know we know what the outcome would have been. Maybe the outcome would have still been the same. But but the number of deletions and the fact that they really didn’t put in place any kind of system that would allow people to appeal their exclusion from the electoral roles. Right. But it just sort of shows a kind of cavalier approach to something that ought to be sacred in a democracy which is that people get a right to v vote and that I think is is something that that that is a concern. It’s a legitimate concern and it’s been drowned out particularly on the right in India amidst all this euphoria about the victory. Uh I personally think that the BJP would have been much better served even if you’re looking at it from a partisan position from their point of view. um if they had won this in a way that was widely viewed as have fair as being fair. Um the fact that this election was tainted is just a fact and uh I think that that’s something that uh if you’re a well-wisher of Indian democracy, you should hope that this is just a one-off and that the courts and the election commission are going to find ways to make sure that this kind of thing does not happen again. So we spent a lot of time talking about the BJP and the victors but maybe just we could switch gears Saddan and then I’ll start with you and then see if Dundi wants to jump in on the the kind of opposition India alliance uh which I think it’s safe to say kind of appears in tatters after this state of elections right despite its many shortcomings the Congress party still is the largest most popular opposition party certainly the one which has the largest uh and most diverse uh kind of expanse 2029 is still quite a long time away we’re just in May 2026. But do you think that this ofar of the Congress is going to have what it takes to bring this disperate set of opposition parties together to make a real play at keeping the BJP at bay in 2029? I mean, with all the usual caveats, right, like I could end up with egg on my face in 3 years. Um, uh, you know, I’ve been saying this for a while now. I mean, Congress is not a particularly functional or competent opposition party, right? Normally, you would expect that, you know, the the rule of anti-incumbency. The very fact that Modi has been in power for 12 years and he would have been in power for 15 years by the time the next general election rolls around would give any opposition alliance a lot to work with. Right? You can go to the people and say that this guy said he was going to transform your life 15 years ago. Has he really done that? Um I worry about the opposition partly because the BJP is of course dominant, partly because it’s willing to use um all means fair and foul. Um but also partly because they’re just they they don’t seem to be uh suited to meet the moment, right? I mean I think Rahul Gandhi is a sort of unique figure in Indian politics, right? like you know sort of he’s the Diego Maradona of losing elections and when you have someone like this in charge of the most of the of the major opposition party I think anyone who follows politics has to deal with you know has to look upon the prospects of Congress with a certain degree of skepticism you want to weigh in on this one a couple of things one I think part of it is they didn’t fight as the India alliance right it was they were functioning more like bricks which is uh you a martly crew of countries who agree on one or two things, right? Uh but at any given time, you know, there are some member states not talking to each other. The others are actually fighting with each other. And so, you know, I think this is one of the differences with the 2024 general election is there weren’t there was no India alliance as such in operation uh in in any sense. They were undercutting each other. I think the other question really is also with all you know like the the caveats and the the points that Saddan made about you know kind of using uh and having the instrumentalization of institutions uh by by the state and by the hedgeimon something we’ve seen before uh especially in kind of the 70s and 80s uh and um you know just a random aside anybody who hasn’t read Sinatra Ragavan’s book uh on Indra Gandhi uh should uh that was very much an aside but you should people should read it. Um but I think the the the point being that when you’re thinking about uh beyond these issues what are what do you as the opposition really taking on. So at the end of the day and we’ve seen this in places like Hungary or others which is if you are you know it can’t just be about uh the issue you might think you care about which might be you know the what the ele election commission is doing or what’s happening with SIR um or for that matter attacking the prime minister in terms of personal attacks or saying he’s spending too much time abroad because these things don’t By now we should have learned that these things don’t seem to stick and so finding the issues that voters seem to care about and we saw this in the US as well right inflation was something uh that voters cared about it wasn’t so much the other stuff and so finding the issue whether it is jobs whether it is uh you know uh meeting voters where they are versus what you think they should be worried about at the end of the day and I don’t know that we’ve seen that from the opposition in terms of a consistent message uh cuz everybody seems to be on their own page in terms of what they’re attacking. Just one very quick thing on this mil. I think you know the fundamental you know just conceptually right. Does the Congress recognize or does a does should should does the Congress feel that the polity is broadly right of center on cultural issues and they need to kind of pivot a little bit in that direction or do they feel that actually the way to fight the BJP is by doubling down on a left of center perspective on some of these you know fraught religious and cultural issues. Um and that’s just a fundamental question that the Congress has flip-flopped on continuously for the last 12 years, right? You had this phase where Rahul Gandhi was going through his temple run phase and sometimes he’s sort of trying to do that. Sometimes he’s kind of, you know, doubling down on very old-fashioned hardline Nuvian secularism. And these are things they need to work out at a very sort of in and and you could make the case for either approach. But I think the fact that this is an opposition party that still hasn’t been able to figure out where it stands on something so fundamental um is problematic from their point of view. I mean it’s a I mean I think what the what your message boils down to is you got to pick a lane and stay in it and you got to be consistent. And it kind of reminds me of the the uh thing you would often bring up Saddan and on on many of our previous Grand Theamashas is like it seems like a trivial thing but the fact that Rahul Gandhi doesn’t know what kind of facial hair he’s going to have from a day-to-day basis like tells you something about like the lack of consistency in image, right? Yeah. Um let’s turn now to geopolitics because there’s a lot to talk about there as well. Um it seems like all of a sudden although I know the precursors were there but certainly when you look at the news that India is facing the brunt of a really nasty mix of external pressures um all of which pretty much have been exacerbated by the Iran war. We have uh oil prices that are skyrocketing. We have supply chains that are being disrupted. We have international trade headwinds. Um and there obviously doesn’t seem to be any uh definitive end in sight for the Iran war. Than let me just maybe start with you with just kind of a big picture question right which is how do you understand kind of India’s uh status or or positioning at this very tenuous geo geopolitical moment and and what do you think are the kind of top two or top three kind of major concerns it faces as it looks out at the rest of the world I think you know the way I think about it is this is like India trying to build and expand on its house while it’s being battered by storms in every direction. And so it’s not like you can hunker down and, you know, batten down the hatches and say, “We’re just going to sit this out.” You actually want to see if there are moments where if there’s opportunities to continue to grow the economy which you need because you need job creating growth but also because there are still some areas where there are opportunities even in this kind of time of turbulence um while trying to think about can you build more you know can you build that resilience up and then can you deal with these storms and so what you’ve seen I think is an India that both its external rivalries have intensified in the last few years with Pakistan and with China. None of those problems have got solved. On top of that, India’s close some of India’s closest partners have taken military actions that have complicated India’s hand. Whether that was Russia invading Ukraine in 202, whether it is, you know, the the US and Israeli strikes on Iran, not just this goound uh but in the past as well and in between, you know, the the the Gaza conflict uh as well. And so you’ve had kind of these external shocks uh that have come in addition to on top of that a Trump administration where you’d got used to having a US that was uh because it saw the world through a China competition prism in G uh saw you as a major partner uh but was also not dealing with really with your other rival Pakistan. And so you’ve had these kind of you’re being buffeted by these challenges uh while you are you know trying to see okay uh how can I continue cooperation with the US on economic security on technology on defense cooperation how can I do that diversify with Europe and Japan and South Korea and Australia who are also looking to diversify um and you’re trying to see is there a way to re-engage China economically and find moments with Russia So it’s it’s a part of the what makes this a complex uh I think time for India is that it is being buffeted by storms and yes that’s that is kind of it is I think a geopolitically perhaps I would say uh you know maybe after 2020 the most uh or maybe even above 2020 one of the most trying geopolitical moments for the that the Modi government has faced since it’s come uh to power. I’d only put it maybe above 2020 just because it’s being buffeted by in every direction and there’s you know and and maybe you know Saddan wants to jump in on this or you do which is these this is just the geopolitical stuff but every one of these things has a fallout for you economically uh and in terms of you know your space in kind of the international domain. So um I think I think it’s just a geopolitically fraught uh situation for India but it is still you do see uh you know just in terms of if you just look at Modi and his minister’s itineraries finding spaces where you can still uh uh you know uh move things forward and you know some of the some of the results of these crisis isn’t necessarily bad if it’s getting India to um sign up to trade agreements that might have taken another 10 years uh then you know those things aren’t necessarily bad at the end of the day or if it helps India think about munitions production and you know thinking about that next generation of warfare and planning for it that’s not necessarily bad but in the in the in the short term this is a problematic time s I want to kind of switch gears a little bit and ask you about Pakistan which I think is very relevant in this context and in fact you wrote a column a couple of weeks ago in which you really kind of highlighted the way in which Pakistan has kind of emerged or reemerged in the kind of front lines of international diplomacy. Um, you know, I think we’ve talked before about kind of how we got here and the mix of kind of, you know, Trump’s own preferences and Pakistan’s very savvy game and and various other things, but how worried should India be at this reemergence and and you know, is it possible that this is a harbinger of some kind of deeper more structural shift or do you think that this is a kind of ephemeral thing that it’s just going to have to wait out? So second part first I don’t think there’s a deep structural shift. I think that this is opportunistic. I think that uh the US sees a certain value in Pakistan as a mediator. Uh I’m writing something now about how some of that some of that thinking may be questionable. Um but there is a sort of you know you know nonetheless Pakistan has a border with Iran. It has enjoys good relations. There’s a kind of logic that you can spin out. There is there there there is some kind of logic. So I’m not sure if there sort of there’s a uh something permanent. The thing that should be worrying more uh for people in India is something that you know Tanvi touched upon in her last response. So to what extent does this very dramatic thaw with Pakistan reflect a US that is no longer that concerned about China. That should really be very worrisome for the Indians, right? Because let’s not forget that Pakistan’s closest ally and Pakistan’s closest ally for a long time has been China and that has not changed right so they could sort of despite the flirtation with the US particularly over the last year China is along with North Korea one of the two countries that is very tightly allied with China and so if this is a reflection of the US first of all not not particularly uh being particularly concerned about um India’s concerns about terrorism and really India’s own domestic conversation about Pakistan so far being completely out of whack with how the world sees Pakistan. That’s something should that should be worrying in and of itself. But I think that’s amplified greatly u in terms of this being seen as a reflection of something larger which is how the US sees China and that that that’s what I would be more worried about if I was in New Delhi. Uh I mean Tanvi just to stay on Pakistan for a second uh we had been chatting kind of offline uh a few days ago that you know I think we’ve all been searing seeing these kind of steady stream of statements from various sources some from the RSS and the Sun from the army including retired military some from the BJP about the need to engage Pakistan in some kind of diplomatic negotiation unspecified. Um, you know, there are enough crumbs there I think you can string together like a somebody trying out maybe a a trial balloon. Then maybe start start with you. I mean, do you take this prospect seriously? Is it are you know are we reading too much into recent statements or do you think in fact there is an attempt to kind of test the waters on whether there should be some kind of more robust bilateral conversation going on? Hey Granthamasha listeners, thanks for listening to the podcast. Putting this show together each week is a labor of love, but it takes a lot of work to put out a great show every week. If you’d like to support the work we do at Granamasha, please visit cip.org/donate. Don’t forget to subscribe to us on Apple Podcast, Google Podcast, Spotify, or on your favorite podcasting platform, so you’ll be the first to know when a new episode rolls out. I think, you know, it it’s interesting uh that that this you know, we’ve seen some of these crumbs, but I I would say I don’t know that they’re entirely unexpected. Um I would caveat any discussion on these things with uh we don’t t there are certain things you don’t tend to have visibility about in terms of India’s foreign relations and sometimes you know India Pakistan both back channels and and also because some of these things tend to be pretty close hold we don’t know what’s going on or what people are thinking so what could the possibilities be about this one you know uh it could be um something as simple as that you know this is uh a strategic communication exercise to say uh to convey to the world that it’s not India that’s being the the kind of difficult party in this uh so take on some of those arguments that Pakistan has made that India is diffident and doesn’t want to you know come to the table could be as simple as that it could on the other hand be a trial balloon u to see if this is something that Pakistan would be interested in. Uh it could be preparing the ground in terms of the public to say that look this might be something either that India might uh be interested in or um for you know and when I say public I mean the Indian public or to try to say that this is uh you know this is something that might be going on in the back background that we don’t that we don’t have visibility on right now. Um and the other you know the the reason I think um the other thing I will just say is you do have a situation uh or a set of circumstances where we have seen in the you know if you look back at India’s history when has it tended to uh try to normalize or stabilize things with a a rival or even a a partner where it’s had fraud uh uh fraud ties. one is when you’ve seen India itself uh facing a number of different uh or trying to kind of move ahead with a number of headwinds and so it’s just trying to keep things stable and so that opens that that incentivizes India to say let’s try to keep every you know especially our rivals rivalries stable but the other time has been is when India thinks its rival might be interested and sometimes both of these things work which is India is ready for this and then it assesses that Pakistan actually also might want uh this might be a good time for Pakistan or they might be sending out hints that we’re not seeing or that this is just an Indian assessment and you know there’s a lot of like um sometimes you know there’s a kind of oh Pakistan’s doing great it is uh diplomatically um uh you know everywhere it’s been thought of you know the President Trump talks about his favorite field marshal. But underlying that, Pakistan is facing headwinds too. It has a far less resilient economy. Uh it has essentially broken up or UAE has broken up with it in certain domains. Saudi is filling that gap. But then also you have in the reports um coming out this week that you know Pakistan’s had to commit a certain amount uh of troops and and and and platforms to Saudi as well as part of their deal. So you know and that’s not to mention all the f fallout that Pakistan has to deal with with the uh Gulf War uh in terms of people who work there remittances everything. So it might just be that this is a point where there is a sense that they might also be thinking about something like this. History will tell us it could be one of those moments where there’s a lot of chatter and nothing happens. Uh or this starts something again. I don’t think we’re you know we’ve seen so many of these in India Pakistan that I don’t think we should be talking about big breakthroughs or anything. Uh but it’s something to watch definitely. So I want to just jump in on that. I mean I’m um I take Dan’s point about you know a lot of this stuff being back channel and there not being too much visibility but I think that actually the ask is in incredibly hard in this case right so if you look at the uh the rhetoric uh in both countries right and I mean you have Modi a year after operation zindur saying this operation zindur is continuing uh you have belligerent statements by the Indian army chief and by the by the defense minister and also in Pakistan where asamunir is by you know by all accounts extremely unpopular and his domestic legitimacy to the extent that he has any um really rests on him having uh per being seen in Pakistan as having performed credibly in the confrontation with India last year and so I just don’t sort of I don’t see the uh I think there’s always room for back channel but I think that in terms of the atmospherics both countries have really kind of gone out on a limb and they’re going to have to find a way to walk back quite a ways is before you can sort of get to a point where public opinion in either country is going to sort of allow for something uh something resembling norm normaly uh to come back into the picture. I just I think just on that I I think this is not like talking about some major normalization process as such. I think we’re because the bar is so low, it’s just kind of would you would there be a dialogue and I would say that you could argue those conditions that Saddan laid out in a different way which is you have a you know as much as you’re hearing um some former diplomats you know you’ve had some uh uh voices from the RSS you’ve also had at the same time the Indian military saying uh you know we will if Pakistan drives anything we’ll change the geography so you have that that enables you in some ways and on Pakistan side you could have a you know Munir saying look I’ve shown because everybody thinks everybody’s portraying this as they came out of Synindur better it is actually the time when it gives you some space because you say we’ve done really well we’ve shown them that you you you can actually say to the politics and and for a prime minister Modi I’m not saying this is happening I’m saying if it does happen this is how I would see that the argument would be made is that you could see a a a a Modi saying I’ve just come out of elections. I you know don’t need to worry about uh you know my my flank my political flank and so I need some time where I don’t need yet another crisis uh upon uh upon the country and same thing with money and I think the other thing to remember beyond anything else neither side uh right now might be in a position to you know I don’t know if everybody’s built up their you know resupplied themselves but for both countries countries they get their supplies from other countries military supplies as well and everybody is dealing with their own you know Russia Israel uh US uh are kind of uh uh have expended a lot of munitions and other and probably don’t want to uh ex but not China but not China right Pakistan’s main but you think China wants a crisis right now it could be um I I think part of it is just uh I’m not saying this is happening I’m just saying from what we know of history it is actually after sometimes after a lot of belligerance that you get some of this okay maybe we should just buy some time it’s not necessarily leading to some grand breakthrough or even some normalization but it’s a buying time process and maybe it’s just the RSS signaling well if the government decides to do that uh they’re going to give them some space to do it I mean since we’ve mentioned China a couple of times we should maybe talk about uh this recent trip that Trump took to China along with a bunch of kind of blue chip American CEOs. Uh uh Thunder, maybe I’ll turn to you first since you know you have been following the China India US triangle, the China India US fateful triangle for some time. Um what are some of the big takeaways from you from the visit as you kind of reflect on you know press statements things that Trump has said uh on Air Force One and and and otherwise uh that you’ve been able to glean. I think you know the initially I my response was similar to a lot of folks that you know it it especially when after the visit finished which was there seemed to be a lot of symbolism uh and substantively you didn’t see major shifts but then you did see some interviews either done during or um you know uh uh even before the president’s trip or for example his comments during the plane ride back on Taiwan that I think you know if this is reflecting a shift on where the US stands uh on a potential uh Chinese move to take Taiwan by force if this you know we need to know more about where the the I think whether this is a a substantive shift and it would be of concern if it if it was I think the other thing is um you did see to you know And some folks have done this which has used AI to compare um uh the US and China statements and there are clearly gaps there. So you you you you know you you you understand that these are this is not a couple of countries where competition has gone away or that they agree on everything or even how to portray or emphasize things or even agree on the commitments that were made. But you did see a White House fact sheet today which embraced the the Chinese term for this phase or what they aspire to in the relationship which was a constructive relationship of strategic stability. And I think if you’re sitting not just in New Delhi but in a number of places, you are wondering is this supposed to be like during the Obama administration the Chinese had put out this new type of major power relations or like a G2 uh or because part of what you’re wondering is what is this going to mean for US policy towards China? uh what is it going to mean to US a willingness and ability to ensure a favorable balance of power in Asia and to deter China from taking assertive actions and what is it going to mean if you’re India for US policy towards India because a US that sees has seen China from a competitive lens has been useful to India in a number of ways it has led to deep cooperation and it has led both countries managing differences um uh which which otherwise would have been taken you know center stage so I think and you’re wondering if you’re in India what is this going to mean for Chinese behavior because if a China is feeling more comfortable with the US does it start pressing you uh or I would say these days it’s is it going to press you even more in a way that it is pressing Japan for instance so I think you’re watching very closely but part of what you’re trying to see is is is this just a new term terminology and the competitive policies that you know uh that exist in other domains are those still going to continue and is there scope for US India cooperation uh to continue in those and I think some of that we’ll see uh uh you know in the time ahead when secretary of state Rubio goes to goes to India s I don’t know if you had any thoughts about the China visit and kind of the both the optics and the substance yeah I mean I I I I I think that, you know, I wasn’t expecting much going into it, but I I I actually do think that even though this was mostly optics and little substance, the optics that we did see um should give people pause and you know, for concern, right? So, um I thought some of the language on Taiwan, for example, uh the fact that the president has asked a question and he sort of gets into this rant about how the Taiwanese stole our semiconductor industry. I mean, I would be I would be terrified, right? Even though there’s no sort of maybe no formal change of the in the in the government’s position or something, but this this sort of thing should be it ought to be terrifying. So, um I’m I’m not very sanguin. Yeah. Uh Dunvi kind of ended by talking about Marco Rubio’s I think it’s maiden voyage to India. It’s next week May 24th and 26th. It’ll come out probably right around the time this podcast comes out. Um, you know, I think it’s safe to say that Rubio’s visit to India is sort of set against the backdrop of a pretty I don’t know uh sluggish uh kind of USI India relationship or at least it feels sluggish to me. Um, Saddan and I think it’s Rubio has seen I think by most of the analyst class is probably the most India friendly kind of principle in the Trump cabinet. Uh, can he do something meaningful do you think to turn this around? Well, I don’t think the relationship has been sluggish at all. I mean, it’s just been it’s been it’s been hot and passionate, but in all the wrong ways. I mean, if only it were sleepy and boring and sluggish. It’s been none of those things. Uh, look, I think Rubio has his work cut out for him, right? There’s just been so much suspicion and so much bad blood and such a series of shocks. Um particularly because the you know if we’d had this conversation say in March or in April last year just before the beginning of uh operation Synindur I think that many people in India thought that India was sitting pretty. It was in a geopolitical sweet spot. You heard that term sort of bandied out about a lot that the Trump administration was going to be just as solicitors towards India as the Biden administration but with fewer with with fewer things for to to disagree about hangups, right? Um and obviously that has not turned out to be that way and and so right now what you see is a a great deal of uh concern and a great deal of suspicion. I think it was Sanjay Baru who wrote a piece a few weeks ago pointing out that the old mistrust that we thought had been put behind India behind India and the US in terms of the bilateral relationship has reared its head again and I think that uh that is certainly the case. uh that that Rubio is going is obviously a good sign, but uh I think that the amount of repair work that’s going to be going to have to be done uh is enormous and I don’t think it’s something that any one visit is going to be enough to fix. Uh you know, Thunder, I guess one of the questions I have for you is like as you think about the landscape of US India ties and you know, you’ve you’ve written one book on the US and India and China going back, you’re working on a second one. Um, where is the ballast in this relationship right now? Where is the kind of who is in the driver’s seat? I mean, it it it it seems like there’s, you know, this is kind of a a kind of very meandering, somewhat rudderless, you know, set of movements we’re seeing right now. I mean, how do you how do you explain it to people who show up in Washington and are trying to make sense of kind of, you know, who’s who’s really kind of the engine behind US India ties right now? I think you know it’s the the thing is there is only at the end of the day the major driver in the US is uh is President Trump. So you know it can you whatever else is happening and I will come to that whatever else is happening uh what because it’s such a you know personalistic administration his views and approach at the end of the day will matter and will have an effect. What is interesting to me and you know I’m often called in you know I’m accused of being an optimist on this and nobody’s ever accused me of being an optimist. This is more kind of just a a sense of uh just looking around and seeing that you would have thought given that you saw a president in some ways mood sour in India in such a personal personalistic administration that things wouldn’t have just slowed down or been sluggish that they would have not just be or you know to use Saddana’s kind of heated and passion that they would have caught fire and burned went down or it was kind of the the the the the comparison I was making which is you would have seen them not just kind of uh slow down but stall or reverse and I do think it’s worth noting a couple of things that that kind of reversal or stalling particularly in certain areas like defense economic security technology that we would have seen 10 years ago uh has not happened now is it true that and you know that’s a lower bar. Absolutely. I don’t think that is, you know, we’re taking away. But I do think you’ve not seen that kind of and I mind you I’d like to point out that as much as now there’s talk of India of you know trust that’s been broken as both of you will remember you saw a lot of that conversation in the US about India after you know the with the India India’s response to the Russian invasion of Ukraine but also particularly some of the allegations around Panu uh and and those issues. So it’s been a few years of kind of those you know storms buffeting the relationship but I think it has shown a certain resilience that didn’t exist before. Now I do think ideally you want to aspire to more than that and so at the moment it’s about making sure that you know you you you don’t have the storms just kind of making you know having those reversals take place. So I think on the one side you have seen you know that’s not being stalled or reversed and I think the other thing that has been interesting though again I don’t think this can stay insulated from how President Trump and Prime Minister Modi think about the relationship. I do think you’ve seen uh interestingly some operational coord cooperation continue in a number of different fields um some of which doesn’t involve the governments right so you’ve seen some uh tech companies go and announce investments or other things that are taking place which have frankly you know are kind of moving on their own um steam but even those you know do even businesses need signal from government so if they think that this administration doesn’t see India as like-minded or doesn’t see India as some place or puts more is going to put more tariffs on then I think even they start to assess that so I I guess where I come down to is this is a more challenged relationship than it was a year and a half ago uh but it is a more resilient relationship than it was 10 years ago and so I think uh you know it depends if you want to take the glass half full or glass half empty approach you can find enough in the relationship one thing that is missing is that strategic you know the thing that you know and I I’m not just saying this because this is what I work on but you did see strategic convergence on China being that major driver because it was the prism through which both Delhi and DC looked at the world and were assessing each other as partners and prioritizing their foreign relations and I don’t think that’s the case with President Trump he does not see competition with China as the organizing ing principle. Yeah. So let me be uncharacteristically optimistic and agree with Tanvi over here. Right. So as she was talking, I was just thinking of like two other crises in the last 30 years, right? That led to kind of lows in the relationship. um the 1998 nuclear tests and and what we fondly remember as Cobra Guardigate and you know in in in and and I think it’s sort of undeniably true that the relationship in the interim has developed um enough sort of guard rails um enough maturity comparatively right so that like so in 1998 there really wasn’t that much right in the test really they really they shook the relationship to its uh to its foundation and again you over the Cobra incident there was sort of a lot of uh I think a lot of petulence and a lot of sniping and so on which it took a little work to overcome and I think compared to both of those it is true and certainly I think some of the credit goes or much of the credit in this case goes to the government of India which has handled itself uh with a great deal of maturity on this this sort of they haven’t taken the debate they have ignored goating by the opposition they have just sort of you know stayed the course and and and recognized that the relationship is very important important to India. So I I will say that that does uh bode well uh despite all the concerns that I echoed earlier. So we’ve covered a lot of ground on domestic Indian politics, the geopolitical space, Pakistan, the US. Let me end by completely shifting gears yet again uh and kind of bringing this conversation to a close by asking both of you something that we do from time to time when we get together which is you know is there a story or an issue out there that you think is not getting sufficient attention that you think our listeners should be paying attention to in Saddan and maybe I’ll start with you. So I’m not sure if you’ve followed there was a a high court judgment in Madhya Pradesh that has basically uh allowed uh Hindu worshippers to to get exclusive rights of worship in a disputed site that had been claimed by both Hindus and Muslims. And I think that this is um important because it’s another milestone in what seems to me to be the uh unraveling of the 1991 places of worship act which basically tried to freeze these kind of disputes, religious disputes between Hindus and Muslims over shrines uh that both sides claimed. Um it seems very clearly now that that effort in hindsight uh was not sufficient and that we’re going to see this is just the latest in an example of uh many such cases that are coming down the pike. Uh Tani, anything on your mind? So I think the thing that I think hasn’t got enough attention outside India was Prime Minister Modi’s visit to the UAE but also the agreements that was signed and this comes you know a few months after and this was before the you know Iran or Gulf War but you saw the almost the entire kind of UAE establishment go to India for a few hours and sign agreements and now you’ve seen this and to me the thing is the reason to watch this is one I think sometimes outside India we don’t think about enough about India as an actor in the Middle East because the Middle East countries in the Middle East are definitely thinking about it but second what does this mean for India’s delicate balancing act that it’s always had of you know having ties with different parts of of of the Middle East whether that’s Israel whether that’s Iran whether it used to be kind of you know the Gulf cooperation council countries but now uh you know it’s it’s kind of UAE wing and a Saudi wing of that and so it is worth watching because I don’t you know used to be these things were about energy or it was about yes to some extent economics or remittances but this this seems much more comprehensive and it’s something to watch as we find out more uh about what are the implications for defense and security cooperation for technology cooperation um for the UAE financing or you know co doing things with India together on some of these fronts in ways that we didn’t and what are the implications for India’s other relations uh in in the Middle East and I think these will have implications for US interests as well as those of other countries. So, one thing that I wanted to highlight which is not really something that’s that’s been undercovered because back it’s it’s a video that’s kind of gone viral and I think it’s kind of gone unexpectedly viral. I don’t know if either of you guys have seen the short explainer video that the Indian Express economics editor Udit Musher someone I know sent it to me. Yeah. Yeah. I think I accidentally sent you twice because I saw it so many times on my timeline. And just for those who haven’t seen, we’ll link to it in our show notes. uh UT Mishra who writes very compellingly on the Indian economy for the Indian Express uh was being interviewed by another express staffer about um uh kind of the economic crisis that is facing India and in a very accessible and eloquent way he basically just laid out the facts about kind of India’s current account deficit the issues on the balance of payments front the uh real drying up of foreign direct investment um the tremendous uh pressure that is being exerted by a falling rupee which the central bank is trying to kind of prop up in various ways and you know I don’t think there was anything particularly kind of new in what he said but it was the clarity with which he spoke and putting kind of tying the different pieces together and it also to me kind of struck me as a commentary on maybe the state of economics commentary in India that uh what was so remarkable is his ability to just kind of say very basic facts in a way that came across as kind of speaking truth to power when I don’t think he was being political at all. Right? I mean, he was just kind of saying here is what the numbers say. But I actually think that because of this very kind of gauzy kind of boosterism, what what have you. We don’t see enough of that, right? And I I don’t know. I was just really struck by the fact that I’ve sent it to Sonan twice and I must have seen it a hundred times on my Twitter timeline. So, um, something for you to check out and we’ll leave it in the notes. Um, Saddanand Dume of CFR, it’s going to take me a while to get used to saying that, of CFR and the Wall Street Journal and Tidan of Brookings, thanks so much for joining. Thank you. Thank you. Grandamasha is a co-production of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in the Hindusan Times. You can find us on Apple Podcast, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. Don’t forget to rate and review. It helps other people find the show more easily. For more information about the show, to support the work we do on Grant Theamasha, and to find the writing we mentioned on this week’s episode, visit our website, grant themasha.com. Tim Martin is our audio engineer. Asen Familii is our executive producer. Additional assistance provided by Andy Rabina. Thanks for listening and see you next week. This was a Hindustan Times production brought to you by HD SmartCast. HD smart