India resists bullying

In barely a week, Prime Minister Narendra Modi has signed a string of agreements in Tokyo and held a fence-mending summit with Xi Jinping in Tianjin. On paper, the two Asian powers couldn’t be further apart: Japan has been America’s closest ally since World War II, while China has become Washington’s chief rival. Yet India is now deepening ties with both.

Although, it seems a normal diplomacy, it is anything but. It’s the geopolitics driven by US President Donald Trump’s tariff tantrums and his habit of treating partners as pawns. Delhi, long a champion of “strategic autonomy,” is discovering that autonomy isn’t just a doctrine; it’s a necessity.

Trump’s return to the White House has been marked by a scorched-earth approach to trade. Having expanded India–US ties in his first term, he has now slapped tariffs on Indian goods to punish Delhi for buying Russian oil. Worse, he has personalized the dispute, targeting PM Modi himself. Such behaviour is unprecedented for a US president dealing with a major democratic partner.

Rather than submit, India has quietly chosen to diversify its options. In Tokyo, Modi strengthened cooperation with Japan on commerce, technology and security. In Tianjin, he sat down with Xi to cool tempers after years of frozen ties and a deadly border clash. The message is clear: India will not be painted into a corner.

The irony is that Trump’s bullying has achieved the opposite of what he claims to want. By riding roughshod over allies such as Canada, Australia, Japan, South Korea, and now India, he is pushing them to work more closely with one another, and even with Beijing. The US is not being abandoned; India still values the partnership with Washington for long-term security and economic growth. But the volatility of Trump’s foreign policy has made Delhi hedge its bets.

China, too, is recalibrating. Xi Jinping is not walking away from dialogue with the US, but he is shoring up relations with Russia, reaching out to Europe and, more importantly, reopening channels with India. When both Beijing and Delhi, otherwise fierce rivals in South Asia, see merit in lowering tensions, it says something about the state of the evolving new world order. Given Trump’s belligerent unilateralism and an out and out transactional approach to relations with the other countries including the allies like India, New Delhi is rightly looking to diversify its geopolitical and trading options. Under the circumstances, standing up to Trump rather than surrendering is the only dignified option available to Modi government.