Why the embrace between Hindu nationalists and American Christian nationalists can't last

Depending on how you look at it, the recent warm embrace by Christian nationalists in the United States, of Hindu nationalists in India is either very strange or, perhaps, inevitable.

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The modern American nationalist is a curious specimen: A self-described patriot whose friends and models are all in foreign countries and whose enemies are all at home. He loves America, except for: Wall Street, Silicon Valley, Hollywood, Washington, the Ivy League, the scientific establishment, the medical and legal professions, the urban centres where most of the people and the GDP are, New England, the Mid-Atlantic, the West Coast, and the cities in Texas and Florida with more than one million people.

They have even turned against the military command and the upper echelons of law enforcement, which were once sacrosanct to the right. (I might have phrased that last sentence slightly differently for an American audience, but I am sure readers of this newspaper have heard quite enough about sacred cows.) Other than that, America is the bee's knees in the estimate of the American nationalist, whose idols are Viktor Orban, Geert Wilders, and, now, strange as it may seem, Narendra Modi. Advertised as the leading voice of Indian conservatism to an American audience somewhat surprised to learn that there is Indian conservatism, Swapan Dasgupta, lately of the Rajya Sabha and often of newspaper pages, recently addressed NatCon 4, the fourth annual convention of so-called national conservatives. This is a populist-rightist faction at odds with what remains of traditional American conservatism and the old guard of the Republican Party, aligned with Donald Trump-current presidential frontrunner and, this being America, recent shooting victim.