Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi appeared in a virtual capacity at the ASEAN summit (Association of Southeast Asian Nations) in Malaysia. On the contrary, US President Donald Trump attended the meeting in Kuala Lumpur before his Japan visit.
While Minister of External Affairs S Jaishankar struck up a meeting with US State Secretary Marco Rubio in Kuala Lumpur on the sidelines of the biannual meeting, the country’s leader steered clear of being physically present at the gathering. His conspicuous absence from has since been credited to avoid US President Donald Trump and any talks related to Pakistan, as per a new report.
Why PM Modi skipped ASEAN summit in Malayasia?
Answering the hefty question surrounding Modi’s decision to stay away from the event, people familiar with the matter said that the Indian PM wanted to avoid meeting Trump this week in Malaysia, according to Bloomberg. They further insisted that the Indian leader’s choice amid strained India-US relations was all because of the American president’s repeated attempts at taking credit for a ceasefire between India and Pakistan following the former’s retaliatory Operation Sindoor in May.
Sources pushed that by doing so Modi decided against any possible discussion about Pakistan with Trump. Emphasising his stance as a global “peacemaker” whose “solved” multiple wars on international grounds, Trump has consistently maintained he personally “stopped India-Pakistan war.” However, New Delhi has repeatedly refuted any third party’s involvement in the matter.
India-US relations have been on the rocks not just in the direct aftermath of the April Pahalgam terror attacks that prompted New Delhi to launch Operation Sindoor against Pakistan-based terror infrastructures. The South Asian subcontinent has also been facing off with the Trump government over heightened 50% tariffs due to its Russian oil purchases.
Consequently, the POTUS and his top officials have endlessly mounted up further tariff threats against India, while occasionally backtracking to maintain that both countries still shared good ties. Although Indian reports have long contended that a bilateral trade deal is in its final stages, it has yet to be finalised.
Other experts on why Narendra Modi skipped Malaysia summit
Much like Bloomberg’s sources, Harsh Pant, an international relations professor at King’s College London, also suggested that Modi may have sat out the ASEAN summit to avoid a potentially awkward exchange with Trump.
“If he [Modi] was there and ended up in a meeting with Trump, I think with Trump’s proclivity to say all kinds of things publicly and the expectation that Modi would also reciprocate publicly, [it] would have created an awkward situation,” the South China Morning Post quoted him. With trade deal negotiations still in sight, Pant noted “wariness about Trump” as having been a crucial factor influencing Modi’s decision.
On the flip side, Uday Chandra, an assistant professor at Georgetown University in Qatar, argued that PM Modi had a tendency to primarily attend summits like the G20, where India could situate itself as an equal. “In contrast, Asean-centred meetings, while important regionally, often operate via consensus decision-making and hence, dilute India’s voice amid a crowded field of middle powers,” he said.
Meanwhile, on the Indian side of things, it is evident that the upcoming Bihar elections played a significant role in keeping Narendra Modi away from the ASEAN summit in Malaysia. With the state polls slated to be held on November 6 and 11, the Indian PM, who is also Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) senior leader launched the National Democratic Alliances (NDA) campaigns in Bihar’s Samastipur and Begusarai just days ago.
