Trump’s 'Khundak' With India: From Pak Ties and Trade Wars to a Nobel Dream

PM Modi is going out of his way to praise Trump, most recently with the 20-point Gaza Peace Plan, notes Vivek Katju.

Over the past month, Trump has made soothing noises towards Prime Minister Narendra Modi. His peevishness towards India, though—best captured by the Hindi word ‘khundak’, meaning 'grudge'—continues.

(Photo: PTI)

US President Donald Trump’s harsh decision to impose a 50 percent tariff on Indian exports to the US has begun to bite. There are reports of layoffs by exporters of labour-intensive products such as textiles.

Trump’s announcement on H-1B visas’ curtailment has disproportionately impacted Indian tech companies and Indian techies who have been the main beneficiaries of these visas. The Trump administration has also demonstrably changed course on its South Asia policies, with Pakistani Chief of Army Staff, Field Marshal Asim Munir, and Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif being received in the White House with exceptional warmth.

Over the past month, Trump has made soothing noises towards Prime Minister Narendra Modi. His peevishness towards India, though—best captured by the Hindi word ‘khundak’, meaning 'grudge'—continues.

Modi is going out of his way to praise Trump, even when it has been premature to do so, most recently with the 20-point Gaza Peace Plan. Warmly welcoming Trump's plan, Modi called on “all concerned” to rally behind the US President's efforts to bring peace, a tweet which Trump retweeted as well.

On 3 October, Hamas responded to the plan by agreeing only to two issues:

1. That it would release all hostages in its custody as well as the remains of the dead hostages.

2. That it agreed to hand over the administration of Gaza to Palestinian technocrats.

The fundamental issues involving Gaza are not covered in Hamas’ response. Nor has it agreed to extinguish its own existence, a key Israeli and US demand.

Modi’s Premature Endorsement

Trump has naturally given a positive spin to Hamas’ response, for he hopes it will bring about a ceasefire. That is important, but it is nevertheless premature for any other leader to hail the Hamas reaction.

A cautious welcome could have been made, but that is not what Modi has done. No sooner did the Hamas response came that Modi posted on X stating, inter alia, "We welcome President Trump’s leadership as peace efforts in Gaza make decisive progress. Indications of the release of hostages mark a significant step forward”.

The important words in Modi’s post relate to “President Trump’s leadership”. Will this assuage Trump and make him change course on Indian interests? 

So far, Trump has taken three concrete steps against India:

1. Imposition of steep tariffs

2. The decision on the H-1B visas

3. Changes in his South Asia policy

While the US is couching all these significant moves in general policy terms, it is important to try to discern what has really provoked his ‘khundak.’ In February, Modi was one of the first foreign leaders to be received by Trump—and the Modi government took great satisfaction at that fact.

Trump did make it clear that he expected a trade deal with India soon, and that India should step back from being the ‘tariff king’. It was known that he wanted India to allow imports of US agricultural and dairy products, but he wanted that during his first term too.

Significantly, External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar reiterated on 5 October that agriculture and dairy were "India's red lines." The question is whether India conveyed this at the very beginning during the trade negotiations or if it left the question open?

If the latter approach was adopted, then Trump’s negotiators may have told him that the Indians were stringing them along all this while, which would have provoked his ire.

Operation Sindoor and the Ceasefire Narrative

The Trump administration conveyed its deep sympathies to India after the Pahalgam terrorist attack and stated that its perpetrators should be brought to justice.

India then launched Operation Sindoor, and the Indian Air Force did a splendid job in attacking terrorist bases in Pakistan on 7 May, although in the process it lost some aircraft. The Indian defence forces have admitted so, and it is not unusual to sustain losses in the initial stages of a conflict.

What is important is that the Indian forces redrew their plans quickly and struck Pakistan very hard on the morning of 10 May. All Pakistani airbases were successfully attacked bypassing that country’s air defences. The Pakistani DGMO contacted his Indian counterpart on 10 May and asked for a ceasefire. India agreed to a cessation of active hostilities, but before it could announce it, Trump publicly stated that India and Pakistan had agreed on a ceasefire.

Immediately after that, the Indian Foreign Secretary emphasised that the cessation of hostilities was done bilaterally between India and Pakistan. On the other hand, Pakistan not only praised Trump’s mediation but, going further, it nominated him for a Nobel Peace Prize; he desperately wants one.

Trump has repeated continuously since the past five months that he averted nuclear war between India and Pakistan. He has said that he threatened both countries that the US would not trade with them—and the threat worked.

India has denied this and said, on record, that the trade matters did not come up between Indian and US interlocutors during Operation Sindoor.

It has also given Trump no joy on his claim that he averted a nuclear war. There were no concrete signals from Pakistan during the 88 hours of air operations that it could use nuclear weapons.

What is not publicly known is what Munir and Sharif were telling the US. It would, therefore, appear that the real cause of Trump’s ‘khundak’ lies in India’s refusal to accept that he averted what was developing into a nuclear catastrophe—and that he should he rewarded with a Nobel Peace Prize for that reason.

The Nobel Dream and Trump’s Irritation with India

It will be recalled that Trump had also announced after the Balakot strikes and Wing Commander Abhinandan Varthaman bailing out in Pakistan after his plane was hit in 2019 that ‘good news’ would come soon. He did not go about repeating the use of US good offices to end that exchange between the two countries which ended with Abhinandan’s quickly being returned to India.

Did the Indian leadership think that Trump would act in 2025 as he had done in 2019? If that was so, then, it was a great mistake. 

To this primary cause of his unhappiness, India’s purchase of Russian oil despite Trump's demarche that it should not do so, has been added. His complaints that Indian oil purchases (though in his address to the UN General Assembly he also named China and NATO countries for purchasing Russian energy) are responsible for continuing Russia’s Ukraine war are wrong, but he is annoyed that India is not heeding his warning and appeal.

India’s Russian oil purchases are not as responsible for his ‘khundak’ as its rejection of his claims on stopping the India-Pakistan conflict.

Clearly, Trump wants Pakistan to play a major role in India’s western neighbourhood. It also seems that the US wants India to limit its strategic focus to the Indo-Pacific—a move that would enable him to build up Pakistan as a strategic player in West Asia. Trump is also eyeing the natural resources of Baluchistan, all of which poses a strategic challenge to India. 

Despite his praising Modi as a friend, Trump’s ‘khundak’ with India is unlikely to end anytime soon.

(The writer is a former Secretary [West], Ministry of External Affairs. He can be reached @VivekKatju. This is an opinion piece, and the views expressed above are the author’s own. The Quint neither endorses nor is responsible for the same.)