Why India likes Trump

Ever since India's independence from British rule in 1947, its relations with the US, except for a few years, have been frosty at best. But with the presidency of Donald Trump, they have seen a big upswing. Though he is a butt of many jokes, derided at home and made fun of, even by his allies, Trump is somehow widely liked in India.
"He is the best American President for India that we have ever had," is the common refrain in India, even among many thoughtful Indians.
There are some qualifications, of course. His protectionist policy of imposing tariffs on imports into the US is bound to hurt the Indian economy. But when you consider that the US trade deficit with India is only one-twelfth that the US has with China, matters are put in better perspective. Beijing has much greater reason to be concerned about Trump's protectionist moves than New Delhi. Which is why Beijing has threatened to retaliate against Washington by imposing its own tariffs on American goods coming into China. For instance, China is a big consumer of soya, much of which it imports from the US. Soya exports from the US are bound to suffer. New Delhi, on the other hand, in contrast to Beijing, has simply kept quiet and not taken any retaliatory measures.
There are other reasons why Trump's star is shining in India. There are now an estimated four million ethnic Indians residing and working in the US, the second-largest non-American community, after the Hispanics. Indians occupy the top economic rung in the US and quite a few have taken the next step of actively getting involved in American politics. Ethnic Indians now hold important positions in various aspects of American life. Nikki Haley is the US envoy to the United Nations, Fareed Zakaria a highly respected TV anchor and commentator.
Indians have been successful entrepreneurs, particularly in the Information Technology (IT) field. Indian doctors are found practising all over the US. In brief, Indians in the US are hugely successful and admired by Americans for their hard work and enterprise. So much so, that they now constitute an important political lobby.
In geo-politics, too, there has been a great shift in Indo-US relations. Under  Prime Minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, Washington was hostile to New Delhi's policy of "non-alignment", which meant keeping a safe distance from the Soviet and American blocs. Those were the days of the Cold War and US foreign policy was mainly run by the hawkish Secretary of State, John Foster Dulles. "If you are not with us, you are with them (the Soviet Union)", he liked to say. So, India, along with other "non-aligned" nations, was placed in the Soviet camp by him. Pakistan, on the other hand, happily allied itself with the US and became part of a military anti-Soviet pact, the South East Asia Treaty Organisation (SEATO). In return it got arms and economic aid from the USA. The strange phenomenon in those days was that the USA, a democracy, got along better with military dictators than with other democracies.
The equation began to change when Indira Gandhi's son, Rajiv, became the Indian Prime Minister, following her assassination. US President Ronald Reagan warmed towards him. It was a great triumph for Rajiv and relations between the two countries started warming up. The liberalisation of the Indian economy and the nuclear deal brought both nations even closer together under the administrations of Bush senior and Bush junior.
Meanwhile, Pakistan was fighting its own demons in the form of terrorism. The Mumbai terror attack coming a few years after the destruction of New York's World Trade Centre, united Washington and Delhi in their fight against terror. When Trump said that Islamabad was not doing enough to curb terrorists in Pakistan, it was music to Indian ears. Trump is no great orator but the following passage in his address, outlining his Afghan policy, illustrates the common ground that India and the US now tread:
"We will no longer use American military might to construct democracies in far-away lands, or try to rebuild other countries in our image. Those days are over now. We are not asking others to change their ways of life, but to pursue common goals that allow our children to live better and safer lives."
Well put and what a complete change from the Cold War days of John Foster Dulles!
Rahul Singh is a former Editor of Khaleej Times