Editorial: Gag reflex

Caricatures, more than words, have a way of capturing the essence of events, and that’s why ruling dispensations always have a wary eye cocked towards cartoons. The present controversy over a caricature that appeared in a Chennai-based Tamil weekly magazine depicting the current state of play between Prime Minister Modi and US President Trump lays bare the hypocritical attitude today’s elected autocracies have towards freedom of expression: It's good for a boast on international fora but not good enough for practice at home.

The cartoon shows Modi sitting shackled and handcuffed as Trump holds forth alongside. It serves as a pithy metaphor both for the lack of leverage Modi exhibited during his bilateral talks with Trump in Washington last week, and for the gratuitous humiliation of undocumented Indians being sent back home in fetters. Without speaking a word, it captures the PM’s inexplicable reticence on the subject in his talks with the US President as well as the lack of vigour in presenting India’s case on any of the broader issues they discussed.

The BJP’s rah-rah bandwagon is pretending to take offence over the cartoon and the magazine’s website has been blocked and subjected to cyber and social media attacks. The perceived offence at the cartoon is just as fake as the glee professed over the optics of Modi's visit to Washington. Small courtesies, like the US President securing a seat for the Indian PM pleased them, as did Trump’s flattery of Modi as “the toughest negotiator I’ve seen—no contest.” And then, despite all the praise of “my dear friend” another batch of shackled deportees arrived in Amritsar just two days after the Trump-Modi meeting, the nation is expected to be blind to the irony of it all.

A good question to ask at the end of the PM's visit is what true purpose of India did it serve? Understandably, the trip was undertaken because there was a new American President in office who has been making the world frantic with his machine-gun fire of tariff orders and geopolitical shifts, and so it made sense to engage with him. However, after Modi’s hastily arranged talks with Trump, it’s fair to probe whether we secured what we hoped to secure, and whether we managed to assert what we ought to have asserted.

Considering optics as well as actualities, what India gained from the visit makes for a rather thin soup. On the substantial side, the Biden presidency’s decision to extradite Tahawwur Rana, who played a part in the 2008 Mumbai terror attacks, has been cleared to go through. That and the flattery apart, there were no signs that India’s interests were accommodated on any issue. The agreement to sell F-35 stealth fighter aircraft to India is being packaged as a great step forward. It’s music to the ears of its maker Lockheed-Martin, but not to the Indian Air Force. It’s an expensive plane that Elon Musk has publicly trashed, and foreign secretary Vikram Misri’s lack of enthusiasm for it was palpable.

What other cheer could we have derived? Reciprocal tariffs, affecting India the most, have been cocked for April 1; BRICS, of which we are a member, was declared dead even as we stood by; our pretence to mediate in the Ukraine-Russia war was brushed aside while China was invited; our entire bouquet of appeasements lower tariffs, lenient nuclear indemnity laws, defence and oil purchases elicited no reciprocity. And finally, we were witness to the scene of the whole phalanx of Modi’s highest advisers standing by as Elon Musk brought his little children and their nanny to a meeting with Modi. Why quibble over how a cartoonist sees it then.