The West's Last Tantrum and Asia's Inevitable Dawn

ACUTE ANGLE

- Anand Neelakantan

Donald Trump, in a fit of pique that has become his trademark, recently labelled the Indo-US trade relationship "a totally one-sided disaster!" The irony is, for once, he may have stumbled upon a grain of truth—just not the one he intended. His administration's decision to slap a punitive 50 per cent tariff on Indian goods is indeed part of a disaster, but it is a disaster of the West's own making. It is the desperate, flailing tantrum of a fading power, and it has done more to re-align the world order than two decades of diplomatic hand-wringing. It has pushed India to finally look in the mirror and then look next door, to China.

Western powers constantly lecture us about who our friends should be. The latest absurdity is being penalised for purchasing Russian oil, a move India's foreign ministry rightly pointed out is steeped in hypocrisy, noting "it is revealing that the very nations criticising India are themselves indulging in trade with Russia." We are being punished for a "vital national compulsion" by nations for whom it is not. This isn't about principles; it's a colonial hangover, a thinly veiled racism that bubbles to the surface whenever a non-white nation asserts its own interests.

The West, whether led by Great Britain in its imperial pomp or the US in its current state of decline, has always viewed us through the prism of the white man's burden. A civilisation as ancient, complex, and spiritually diverse as India—one that refuses to fit neatly into the simplistic boxes of Abrahamic faiths—has always been an uncomfortable reality for them. Trump's tariff, which he imposed after a "zero-for-zero" deal failed to materialise, is not a trade calculation. It is the raw, unfiltered expression of this discomfort, an echo of a racist past they pretend to have overcome.