US Deportation Flights: Modi fails to stand up for the dignity of citizens or safeguard India’s sovereignty

Describing the behaviour of Indian journalists, editors and media-owners during India’s declared Emergency, from 1975 to 1977, veteran Bharatiya Janata Party leader LK Advani remembered their craven approach by saying, “You were asked only to bend, but you crawled.” Advani’s protégé, Narendra Modi, in his eleventh year as India’s prime minister, has demonstrated the same attitude towards newly re-elected United States President Donald Trump. It started well before he landed in the US on an official visit. In the union budget, the government slashed tariffs on imports on items brought in from the US. These include the Harley-Davidson motorcycles, which was a major issue for Trump in his first presidential stint and eventually led to his labelling of India as the “tariff king.” The Modi government also announced its decision to amend the nuclear liability laws and add 100 gigawatts of nuclear energy by 2047. This is supposed to create new business opportunities for companies such as General Electric and Westinghouse, another placatory move towards Trump.

If this was not enough, Modi was seen at the joint presser with Trump, where his efforts to flatter Trump were rather transparent. He referred to learning from Trump on how to keep the country’s interests above everything else and also stated that his slogan “Viksit Bharat” was “Make India Great Again,” mirroring Trump’s electoral bugle. Modi stayed silent when Trump said that he hoped to be of help in resolving skirmishes on the India-China border or denied that the American deep state, as alleged by the BJP, was behind the popular uprising against Sheikh Hasina in Bangladesh.

After Trump threatened massive tariffs on countries promoting de-dollarisation, New Delhi walked back on Modi’s push during the 2024 BRICS summit towards de-dollarisation by asking the group to adopt trade in local currencies. After the telephonic conversation between Modi and Trump last month, the White House claimed in a statement that Trump had asked Modi to buy more American-made security equipment. Trump said after meeting Modi that he wanted to sell the very expensive F35 fighter jets to India, forcing the Indian foreign secretary to later clarify that the process had not even been initiated. Mentioning certain defence contracts for which American companies could bid, India’s defence secretary had recently termed them as “carrots that we will be able to dangle before the Americans.” However, all these concessions may not satisfy Trump, who is more focussed on reducing the high trade deficit the US runs with India. India boasted of a surplus of $45.7 billion in trade with the US in 2024 when its overall merchandise trade deficit was $261.67 billion. Trump exaggerated it to $100 billion but Modi did not dare challenge him at the joint presser.

New Delhi’s conciliatory approach on these issues can be rationally defended as a desire to avoid confrontation with Trump at any cost, since India has more to gain than lose by maintaining friendly ties with him, both economically and geopolitically. However, this does not explain Modi’s willingness to appease Trump on what the Trump administration brands “illegal migrants” and their deportation to India. The term itself is contested, as “illegal” can only describe an action and not a person. In April 2021, the Biden administration instructed US immigration-enforcement agencies to replace the term “illegal alien,” used throughout US immigration law with “undocumented noncitizen.” Others prefer “undocumented immigrants” or “unauthorized immigrants.” In a press conference in Washington DC last month, Minister of external Affairs, S Jaishankar, used the term “irregular migration” and referred to “our citizens who are not here legally.” He had also said that the Modi government has “always been open to their legitimate return to India.”