US President Donald Trump’s trade advisor Peter Navarro continues to speak out against India amid dwindling global relations between the South Asian country and the US.
In light of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s evident camaraderie with his Russian and Chinese counterparts, Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping, making headlines at the (Shanghai Cooperation Organisation) SCO summit in Tianjin, China, Navarro issued another scathing statement. Urging India to choose America over Russia, he told reporters on Monday (US time), “Shame to see Modi getting in bed – the leader of the biggest democracy – with two biggest authoritarian dictators, Putin and Xi Jinping.”
“Not sure what he is thinking,” he added. ” Particularly since India has been in cold war, sometimes hot war with China for decades.”
Earlier into his address, he noted, “The road to peace, in many ways, runs at least partly through New Delhi. It’s time for Modi to step up. I have great respect for Modi, I love the Indian people.” The Trump aide went on to send a firm message to the Indian leader, saying that he hopes Modi comes around to “seeing that he needs to be with us, Europe and Ukraine, not with Russia on this.”
What Navarro said against India: Fox News interview
Despite claiming to love Indians, Trump’s senior aide, who has repeatedly accused the South Asian country of profiteering off its purchases of Russian oil, continued his incendiary tirade against India over the past week.
“I would just simply say to the Indian people, please understand what’s going on here. You’ve got Brahmins profiteering at the expense of the Indian people. We need that to stop,” he said during an interview with Fox News on Sunday.
Reiterating his previous claims, he again called India a “laundromat for the Kremlin’s money,” dubbing it the “maharaja of tariffs” as the country was hit by 50% duties – the highest rate set by Trump on the global scale.
Navarro invoked the ‘Boston Brahmins’?
His use of the word “Brahmins,” in turn, fanned a new controversy altogether. Political leaders has since tied the invocation to the ‘Boston Brahmins‘ instead of its relation to the Indian caste system. Trinamool Congress MP Sagarika Ghose and Congress MP Karti Chidambaram were some of those who insisted that Navarro was referring to the old elite of Boston in the US context.
“Boston Brahmin was once a widely used term in the US to refer to the American New England wealthy elite. Brahmin is still a term used in the English-speaking world to denote social or economic elites (in this case, the rich). The illiteracy on X is astonishing,” Ghose wrote on X.
While Navarro directed his criticism at Modi, California Gov Gavin Newsom continued aiming his verbal attacks at Trump. Sharing a clip of Modi, Putin and Xi at the SCO summit, he took a jab at the US president, saying, “But have no fear, Trump is sending the Guard to Chicago,” in reference to the deployment of National Guard troops in cities like Chicago and New York City amid the administration’s crime and immigration crackdown bids.
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