Banner: Prime Minister Narendra Modi with President Donald Trump at the White House in 2025. Wikipedia Commons
The Freedom From Religion Foundation Communications Director Amitabh Pal engaged in a discussion on Madison’s community radio station WORT with “World View” show co-host Gil Halsted about the recent meeting between President Trump and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
Listen below –
These two heads of state got together at the White House in Washington, D.C., a few days ago. The summit showcased Trump’s transactional nature, with the focus largely being on two of his current central obsessions: trade and immigration. (A sideline was Trump’s pushing of U.S. weapons on India, with the Modi government making vague undertakings to purchase F-35 fighter jets.)
If India was hoping to get a bit of Trumpian indulgence because of the past bonding between the two similar-minded leaders and due to India’s strategic utility against China, it was in for a disappointment. Instead, Trump has threatened “retaliatory tariffs” down the road and has already flown a few hundred undocumented Indian immigrants back to their home country.
What was kept in the background was the alleged Indian targeting of Sikh separatists in the United States. The Biden administration has formally charged an Indian official over one such assassination attempt, but it’s unclear how the Trump administration will follow up. And what was left almost pretty much unspoken was the ideological glue that binds Trump and Modi together: an aggressive religion-inflected majoritarian nationalism.
Amitabh Pal and Gil Halsted, who have followed these two politicians closely, talk about these aspects — and more — of their relationship. Read more and listen to the show here: https://www.wortfm.org/the-trump-modi-bromance-can-it-last/
