Why is Modi avoiding his 'dear friend'?

Prime Minister Narendra Modi built his global image by projecting himself as the supreme leader, focusing his government’s diplomacy on an orchestrated, outsized reputation of himself as the man who gets things done. He craved the big stage, hugged heads of States, and turned multilateral summits into a political theatre of self-projection.

But ever since his last encounter with US President Donald Trump, in Washington in February 2025, the light seems to have gone out on his swagger. Modi’s new normal is to avoid meeting with Trump, a tendency that is not just making him look timid but, more crucially, hurting India’s national interests.

Skipping an expected pull-aside at the G7 in Canada, declining to travel to Egypt for the signing of the Gaza peace treaty and now staying away from Kuala Lumpur for the ASEAN and East Asia summits have a common denominator — Donald Trump, and possibly a fear of his repeated public claims about a US-mediated ceasefire to end the four-day India–Pakistan conflict in May. But this fear of Trump’s blunt talk and the cost of avoidance is already greater than the risk of engagement.

The first cost is reputational. For a decade, Modi never missed a photo-op with global leaders, especially an American president. Visibility was his trump card, so to speak, his claim to being ‘Vishwaguru’ — an appellation used interchangeably for both self and nation in Modi’s schema. So, the retreat from the world stage looks like an admission of weakness. The contrast is almost embarrassing given that India’s bilateral relationship with the US is currently so full of friction.

Trump has slapped steep tariffs on Indian exports, raising total duties on many goods to 50 per cent, and keeps implying that India has quietly agreed, under US pressure, to limit imports of Russian crude oil and gas.

The flop show of Tianjin

When Trump brags about US mediation in brokering the ceasefire, Modi fields foreign ministry officials to issue India’s denials, instead of taking him on at level. This abdication of responsibility allows Trump’s version to dominate headlines. When the prime minister is absent from the room, others write the story.

The second cost is substantive. Three vital Indian interests cannot be left to bureaucrats. The first is Pakistan. After the Kashmir flare-up in May, India’s consistent stance has been that no third party should mediate. Yet Trump’s repeated insinuations create the opposite perception. Unless Modi pushes back directly, personally, Washington will assume it can appoint itself mediator whenever it pleases.

India has tried to roll back Trump’s punitive tariffs, protect its labour-intensive exports and maintain agri-import red lines. But Trump is transactional; he acts only when he can claim a visible concession from another leader. That means any breakthrough will happen only when Modi himself bargains across the table and owns the compromise in public.

The third is people. Millions of Indians study, work and build businesses in the US. Their fate hinges on US visa rules — particularly the H-1B visa — its deportation policy and the Indian government’s public posture on the exercise of these policies. Images of Indians in shackles on a US military transport earlier this year sparked outrage at home and embarrassment abroad. Only a prime minister can raise such issues credibly and demand assurances.

Modi apologists think his silence is prudent, while in fact it’s evasion, with a high attendant cost to the nation. Because Trump’s style — a bit like Modi’s own before his retreat — is about self-projection and grandstanding, avoiding him makes India look like it can’t stand up to a bully. Timidity does not become a leader with a ‘56 inch chest’.

India’s desperate search for new friends

The ASEAN and East Asia summit experience illustrates the folly. Modi’s absence denied India a vital platform. The summit gathers not only Southeast Asian leaders but also partners from the Quad and beyond. India’s ‘Act East’ policy depends on its leader showing up. A virtual presence offers no scope for corridor diplomacy, photo-line influence or quiet deal-making. By staying away, Modi forfeited yet another opportunity to counter Trump’s narrative distortions.

Likewise, the Egypt summit in Sharm el-Sheikh was an opportunity for India to project moral authority as the voice of the Global South and the non-aligned world, balancing its ties with both Israel and the Arab states. Modi’s decision to decline Egyptian President El-Sisi’s invitation handed Trump an uncontested platform to portray himself as peacemaker between India and Pakistan, let Pakistan’s prime minister claim the spotlight, and reduced India to a spectator correcting the record from afar.

The longer Modi avoids direct negotiations, the more Washington reads it as surrender. Trump respects only visible strength, and not reading this right can only harden into strategic disadvantages.

Three deliverables and three red lines need to guide the re-engagement. First the deliverables:

1) A timeline to roll back tariffs to sustainable levels

2) A joint reaffirmation that India and Pakistan handle disputes bilaterally

3) A clear commitment to protect Indian workers and students through fair visa and deportation procedures

And the red lines:

1) No US claim of mediation on Kashmir

2) No distortion of Indian oil policy

3) No suggestion that Delhi has accepted punitive duties as part of a deal.

After years of boasting about his personal friendship with US presidents — from the ‘Howdy Modi’ spectacle with Trump in Houston to the ‘Namaste Trump’ rally in Ahmedabad — his sudden avoidance looks pathetic. When the man who once campaigned for Trump with the slogan ‘Abki baar, Trump sarkar’ starts hiding from him, the world mocks and chuckles and India cuts a sorry figure.

Views are personal

Ashok Swain is a professor of peace and conflict research at Uppsala University, Sweden. More of his writing may be read here