Prime Minister Narendra Modi offered the world a curious spectacle last week. He informed the Malaysian prime minister, Anwar Ibrahim, that he would skip the ASEAN Summit in Kuala Lumpur because Diwali celebrations were still ongoing in India. The problem with this explanation is simple and embarrassing. Diwali, which fell on October 20 this year, had concluded with Bhai Dooj on October 23. By the time the ASEAN Summit convened on October 26, the festival had been over for three days. The excuse was not just flimsy but transparently dishonest, the kind of diplomatic fiction that insults the intelligence of both domestic and international audiences.
This follows a similar pattern from earlier this month when Modi skipped the Gaza peace summit in Sharm El-Sheikh, sending instead a junior minister to an event attended by heads of State. The result was telling. While world leaders gathered in Egypt, the Pakistan prime minister, Shehbaz Sharif, stood beside Donald Trump, lavishing praise on the American president, nominating him for the Nobel Peace Prize. Trump, clearly delighted, called the tribute “really beautiful” and joked that he could go home satisfied. Modi, in the meantime, was nowhere to be seen, his absence reducing India’s representation to a junior minister lost in a sea of global heavyweights.
The pattern is unmistakable. In West Asia, India was absent from a crucial peace summit. In Southeast Asia, Modi chose virtual participation over physical presence. What connects these absences is not scheduling conflicts or festival commitments but something far more troubling for a nation that claims to be a rising global power. Modi is running away from multilateral engagements because he fears being in the same room as Trump.
The consequences extend beyond missed photo opportunities. In West Asia, where India has carefully cultivated relationships with both Israel and the Arab world, Modi’s failure to attend the Sharm El-Sheikh summit meant India had no meaningful voice in shaping post-conflict arrangements in Gaza. In Southeast Asia, a region critical to India’s Act East policy and its broader Indo-Pacific strategy, Modi’s virtual attendance relegates India to a peripheral player. When leaders make the effort to show up, they signal commitment. When they dial in from home, they signal irrelevance.
The most consequential casualty of Modi’s avoidance strategy may be the Quad. India is scheduled to host the Quad summit this year. Yet there is no date set for this gathering and the likelihood of it happening grows dimmer by the day. Not that such an opportunity will necessarily arise. Under Trump 2.0, the Indo-Pacific has been systematically deprioritised. When the Australian prime minister, Anthony Albanese, met Trump at the White House on October 20, the Quad was not even mentioned. The grouping that was supposed to be the cornerstone of regional security architecture has been reduced to an afterthought in Trump’s strategic thinking.
This represents a fundamental shift in American priorities. Trump has made it clear that he seeks friendly relations with China. He speaks openly of deals and accommodation, of putting trade and transactions ahead of ideological competition. On Taiwan, he has downplayed the risk of conflict, saying he does not believe China wants to invade the island nation, refusing to rule out discussions about Taiwan’s status as part of broader negotiations with Beijing.
If the strategic competition with China is no longer the organising principle of American foreign policy, then India’s utility to the United States of America diminishes dramatically. The past quarter century has been characterised by what can only be described as American benevolence toward India’s rise. From the nuclear deal under George W. Bush to defence technology transfers and intelligence-sharing that accelerated under Barack Obama and continued into Trump’s first term, the US treated India as a strategic asset worth cultivating. That era of strategic altruism appears to be ending.
Into this vacuum has stepped Pakistan, newly resurgent in Trump’s affections. The US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, speaking to reporters en route to Doha on October 26, was explicit about Washington’s intentions to expand its strategic relationship with Pakistan. His praise for Pakistan’s cooperation and his framing of the relationship as vital to regional stability would have been unthinkable just two years ago. The Trump administration has dramatically reduced tariffs on Pakistan from 29% to 19%, while India faces punishing 50% tariffs.
Modi’s Pakistan policy has rendered him vulnerable at precisely the wrong moment. His refusal to engage Islamabad in any meaningful dialogue, his reliance solely on military responses to deal with the troublesome neighbour, and his elevation of Pakistan to a domestic political punching bag have left him with no cards to play as the US rebuilds ties with Rawalpindi. Modi has repeatedly rejected Trump’s claims of having brokered the ceasefire. Sharif, by contrast, has nominated Trump for the Nobel Peace Prize twice for delivering the India-Pakistan ceasefire. Modi may be factually correct, but in Trump’s Washington, flattery matters more than facts. Unfortunately, it also hurts India’s interests.
The consequences are already visible in Trump’s policy toward India. He is selectively targeting India for buying crude oil from Russia and imposing sanctions on the two largest Russian oil companies. These sanctions come with the explicit threat of secondary sanctions, meaning Indian companies that continue purchasing Russian oil could be cut off from the Western financial system. This is economic coercion of a kind not seen in the bilateral relationship for decades.
In the meantime, the much-touted trade deal remains in limbo. Indian exporters are already suffering under the weight of punitive tariffs. In Surat, the global centre for diamond cutting and polishing, factories are operating at reduced capacity and workers have been placed on forced leave. The Diamond Workers Union estimates that 800,000 to 1,000,000 diamond workers in Gujarat face an uncertain future. In Tiruppur, Tamil Nadu’s textile hub, factories are shuttering production lines and workers fear mass layoffs. These are not abstract economic statistics but real human suffering measured in lost livelihoods and broken families.
Even if a trade deal is eventually signed, it will not reverse the damage already done. Once American buyers have found alternative suppliers in Vietnam, Bangladesh, or elsewhere, Indian exporters will struggle to win them back. Markets, once lost, are not easily reclaimed. A trade deal might address immediate economic friction, but it will neither transform Trump’s geopolitical vision, which is driving his fundamental indifference to India’s ambitions, nor will it satisfy his quixotic quest for a Nobel Prize.
This unravelling exposes the central mythology of Modi’s tenure. For a decade, Modi’s ministers and the godi media have insisted that the force of Modi’s personality drives India’s foreign policy success. Modi’s domestic political appeal rested on the narrative that he had singlehandedly transformed India into a major global player, that his personal relationships with world leaders translated into huge national advantage, that India commanded respect on the world stage only because of him.
Trump 2.0 has revealed this to be fiction. Personality matters far less than power, and relationships mean nothing without strategic alignment. Modi’s much-publicised bromance with Trump during the first term, complete with the ‘Howdy Modi’ and ‘Namaste Trump’ spectacles, earned India exactly nothing when circumstances changed.
India finds itself in an impossible position. Modi is diminishing politically at home as the hollowness of his foreign policy claims becomes apparent. Indian workers and businesses are suffering due to Trump’s economic coercion. India is struggling to maintain relevance in both its immediate neighbourhood and the broader international system. Modi’s response to this crisis is to avoid rooms where Trump might be present.
This strategy of evasion cannot hold. Every summit Modi skips is another opportunity lost, another relationship weakened, another signal sent that India is retreating from the world stage. The great irony is that Modi’s fear of personal embarrassment is guaranteeing national degradation.
India needs its prime minister to show up, to defend its interests, to negotiate from whatever strength remains, and to stop pretending that domestic political theatre can substitute for international engagement. The question is whether Modi possesses the courage to do so. On current evidence, the answer seems to be no.
Sushant Singh is lecturer at Yale University
