“Once is happenstance, twice is coincidence, three times is enemy action” wrote Ian Fleming in Goldfinger, the seventh James Bond novel.
That’s one way of viewing the Adani revelations: Hindenberg in January 2023; the indictment of Ajit Doval, the Indian National Security Adviser, in September 2024; and now the charges filed by the US Justice Department against the Adani Group and, in a knock-on effect, its downgrading to negative by Moody’s and Fitch.
All have happened in about 22 months under the Biden administration. Democratic Party presidents generally treat India shabbily. The Republican ones are better, but only slightly.
So we are entitled to ask: what’s up with Uncle Sam? After 75 years of engagement with the US one thing is certain about the relationship: regardless of which party is in power, American governments don’t like Indian governments and they let Wall Street know. It’s an extraordinary record of pokes in the eye. Whether it was Nehru or Indira Gandhi or Morarji Desai or Rajiv or VP Singh or Narasimha Rao or Atal Behari Vajpayee, the script has remained unchanged. Modi has now joined this merry gang.
There has been only one small period of four years, during the second Bush government, that there was a major change when the UPA government signed the nuclear agreement with the US. Four years. That’s all. The rest of the time US governments have been behaving very nastily.
Not liked anywhere
This continuity is fairly well known but, despite this American government approach to India, American academics keep asking why America is not liked in India and, indeed, all over South Asia. Many have even written books on this.
Some, however, would point out that America is not liked anywhere. The two books The Quiet American by Graham Greene and The Ugly American by Eugene Burdick and William Lehrer come to mind. They should become required reading for the US State Department.
Be that as it may, the academics are asking the wrong question. Instead, they should be asking why American governments dislike India. They may discover that the problem lies with America, and not India. Americans look hugely puzzled when asked about this: What, we, not like India?
This is true of even the ultra left there. It’s always beyond their comprehension that someone should think that they dislike Indian governments, even when you provide the evidence. They just can’t accept it. In psychology it’s called denialism.
Indians, meanwhile, have many explanations. It depends on who you ask: diplomats, businessmen, economists, historians, sociologists and even journalists.
Here’s a sample of these explanations. American governments love Pakistan. American governments don’t like to be defied. American governments’ worldview can’t accept India’s rise, uncertain though it is. American governments don’t like the fact that Indian governments don’t let American corporations make much money here. And so on.
It’s a long list of reasons. Each is true up to a point but even when you add them all up, a convincing explanation for 75 years of fingering India doesn’t emerge.
After all, Nehru didn’t abandon his love for the USSR. Indira Gandhi refused to be bullied by the US. Morarji went ahead with the nuclear programme, as did Narasimha Rao and Vajpayee. Even VP Singh refused to kowtow. Nor have Manmohan Singh and Narendra Modi.
So American politicians need to ask their governments: what has America gained by this stubborn animus? India also wants to know: what have we done to you that you persist for so long with your follies?