Big Picture: Modi’s Red Line Is India’s Red Line
Our world is getting increasingly messy and unpredictable with every passing day but there is something rather simple about India’s messaging right now: ENOUGH.
Enough of outside meddling.
Enough of unsolicited advice.
Enough of selective outrage.
And more importantly, enough of being treated like a bargaining chip in someone else’s great game.
The latest provocations didn’t come from across the border in Pakistan, or from Turkey’s sanctimonious lectures on Jammu and Kashmir. This time it was from Washington itself — led, unsurprisingly, by President Donald Trump, whose need for attention has become the defining trait of his second term.
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| Image Source: PM NaMo on X |
After the horrific terror attack in Pahalgam, where innocent Indians were killed by terrorists harboured and trained inside Pakistan, India struck back with precision under Operation Sindoor. India dismantled terror camps across Pakistan and Pakistan-occupied Kashmir. The strikes were targeted, calculated, and unambiguous. But as India conducted its business firmly and independently, Trump was busy spinning his own fantasy version of events — claiming credit for mediating a ceasefire between India and Pakistan.
He was manufacturing consent with the attitude of an international bully. The ceasefire, as India has said again and again, was initiated by Pakistan itself after absorbing significant damage from India’s swift aerial response. Washington had no role to play in it. But Trump, tone-deaf as ever, kept repeating his lines — as though facts were optional.
What followed was worse. Indian students were detained and humiliated at U.S. airports, many handcuffed and sent back. A student was forced face down on the floor while a U.S. cop pinned him with his boot — all of this, unmistakably timed to create political discomfort for the Modi government back home.
Trump assumed that India’s vibrant democracy was a weakness he could exploit; that a little manufactured domestic outrage would bend India’s leadership into concessions. He had badly miscalculated.
What Trump doesn’t grasp — and likely never will — is that India’s democracy is not fragile. It draws strength from its people, from a civilizational self-belief that runs deeper than most of Washington’s transactional politics can comprehend. India is not a client state to be handled; it is a civilization that has stood the test of time.
When Prime Minister Modi finally got Trump on the phone after the canceled G7 meeting, the conversation was blunt. Modi laid out exactly what India had done: surgical strikes on terror camps, non-escalatory but firm, driven by national security. There was no question of any foreign mediation or backdoor diplomacy. India handled Pakistan directly, as it always has — and always will. Terrorism, Modi told Trump, is not a proxy conflict; for India, it is war. A war that continues, as Operation Sindoor remains ongoing.
But Trump’s tone-deafness wasn’t confined to South Asia. Even at the G7 summit, as France’s Macron tried to broker some diplomatic room amid the escalating Iran-Israel conflict, Trump lashed out on social media — calling Macron “publicity seeking” and “clueless.” It was this circus that prompted PM Modi’s now-viral quip to Macron: “These days, you are fighting on Twitter?” This was a pointed joke that revealed the quiet exasperation with the spectacle Trump has made of diplomacy.
The bigger story, though, is not Trump’s clumsiness. It is how India’s global playbook is shifting. Modi’s visit to Cyprus was no accident. His walk along Nicosia’s Green Line, with the Turkish flag of the illegally occupied Northern Cyprus in the backdrop, was carefully choreographed. It was a message to Turkey — Pakistan’s most vocal patron — that India is not afraid to engage Ankara’s adversaries and expose the hypocrisy of Turkey’s posturing on Kashmir.
Turkey’s deepening military alignment with Pakistan has only strengthened India’s determination to build durable partnerships across the Mediterranean and West Asia — with Greece, Armenia, Egypt, and Cyprus. These are strategic alliances, designed to steadily constrict Ankara’s space, much as India is doing to Pakistan’s diplomatic maneuvering.
The old days of India treading softly for fear of upsetting its partners are gone. The new India is unapologetic about its red lines. When Modi draws one, it’s not simply his — it belongs to 1.5 billion people. And it is non-negotiable.
Which brings us back to Washington. For all its self-image as the leader of the free world, America is discovering that the world no longer orbits around it. Trump’s crude bullying, his erratic impulses, his transactional approach to alliances — all of it is weakening U.S. credibility globally. Europe has noticed. Asia has noticed. And India has noticed most of all.
India is moving ahead. With France, with Germany, with Mexico, with the Middle East. It is building its own coalitions. And in doing so, it is signaling that it will engage the United States as a partner, not as a subordinate.
Donald Trump may be used to cutting deals and pressuring smaller players into submission. But India is not for sale. Not for trade deals, not for photo-ops, and certainly not for hollow claims of mediation.
The real question, as always, is not whether India needs the United States. It is how far Washington is willing to compromise its relationship with India just to placate its old habits of indulging Pakistan — the same Pakistan that sheltered Osama bin Laden, and continues to nurture terrorists who murder civilians across India’s borders.
Israel, Trump says, has a right to defend itself. India does too. And unlike Trump’s Twitter feed, that’s not up for debate.
(Saket Suman is the author of The Psychology of a Patriot. Among other roles, he was a Special Correspondent at The Times of India and the head of Arts/Books/Culture verticals of what was India's largest independent newswire.)
(Views Expressed Are Author's Own and Do Not Reflect The Views of This News Outlet)