Cooling Trump-Modi Bromance Spilling Over Into US-India Ties

Unmet expectations, perceived snubs and suspicions over relations with rivals China and Pakistan are adding to a sense of disillusionment.

- Ravi Velloor

If ever dissonance between two world leaders was so obvious, it came last week when leaders of India and the US offered contrasting accounts of a ceasefire agreed between Pakistan and India, after their four-day skirmish in early May.

Indian Foreign Secretary Vikram Misri said in a read-out that in a 35-minute phone call initiated by President Donald Trump, Prime Minister Narendra Modi had not only declined an invitation to stop in Washington on his way home after the Group of Seven meetings hosted by Canada, but also had made clear to Mr. Trump, who has been claiming that his administration brokered the ceasefire, that the halt in military action had come at Pakistan's request.

Mr. Modi was emphatic that there was no mediation involved, nor would mediation have been acceptable, Mr. Misri added.

Hours later, Mr. Trump—who had just hosted an unprecedented lunch for visiting Pakistani army chief, Field Marshal Asim Munir—repeated his claim that "I stopped the war between Pakistan and India and this man (Munir) was extremely influential in stopping it from the Pakistan side and Modi from the India side, and others."

The Trump call to Mr. Modi was to compensate for a bilateral meeting to have taken place on the G-7 summit sidelines, cancelled when Mr. Trump decided to leave for home early after Israel attacked Iran.

Those talks could have set the stage for a meeting of trade negotiators in early July that could prove rocky over New Delhi's red lines around opening up its market for agricultural produce.

While Mr. Modi cited prior commitments in declining the Trump offer to drop by—he was due to stop in Croatia on his way home—the Indians clearly also did not wish to be in Washington at the same time as the Pakistani General.

The Trump lunch for General Munir has startled Indians because it is unusual for an American president to deal directly with the military chief of a foreign power.