India’s massive welcome for President Donald J. Trump last week showed it will remain a real nation-state into the next century—while America probably won’t [India rolls out the MAGA carpet for Trump, by Anita Kumar, Politico, February 24, 2020]. Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government is implementing common-sense citizenship laws to protect India’s national identity. Much like China, India is consolidating itself as an empire with a solid ethno-religious core. Its laws provide a model for how a nationalist American government could undo at least some of the damage from decades of out-of-control immigration. But rather than imitating them, Trump is using the visit to make an identity-politics appeal to Indian-American voters who will never support him anyway.
The welcome was impressive, with over 100,000 Indians cheering “Namaste Trump!” and 46 million watching on Indian TV. Maybe this is what Donald Trump thought being president would be like: huge adulatory crowds, displays of patriotism, and traditional cultural celebrations [For a President Who Loves Crowd Size, India Aims to Deliver, by Peter Baker, New York Times, February 23, 2020]. There was also a serious purpose in consolidating the U.S.-India alliance to check China [The global significance of Trump’s India Visit, by Brahma Chellany, The Globe and Mail, February 27, 2020].
Yet the U.S. media provided mostly sneering coverage. Partly this is because, since September 11, 2001, journalists have become paradoxically eager to defend Muslims. And Prime Minister Modi’s governing BJP party can fairly be called a Hindu nationalist party. Thus, President Trump could be smeared as cozying up to a “strongman”—meaning a democratically-elected leader that Leftist journalists don’t like (Salvini, Bolsonaro, Orban, etc):
- Trump in India: Anti-Muslim prime minister puts on a big show, bamboozles our president, by Heather Digby Parton, Salon, February 26, 2020
- Trump concludes India visit without major agreements, by Kevin Liptak, CNN, February 25, 2020
- Trump Speaks to Massive Indian Crowd, Mispronounces Almost Everything, by Jamie Ross, Daily Beast, February 24, 2020
Yet while President Trump and Prime Minister Modi didn’t agree on trade, the president did secure a major arms sale, consolidating the military alliance that’s been slowly taking shape since the George W. Bush Administration [After raucous welcome in India, Trump clinches $3 billion military equipment sale, by Steve Holland, Aftab Ahmed, Reuters, February 25, 2020].
And for a man who is constantly accused of being a clumsy fool, President Trump adroitly dodged Gotcha questions about India’s new citizenship laws, saying that such domestic matters are “up to India” [‘Up to India’: Trump evades questions about Muslim-excluding citizenship law, by Anita Kumar, Politico, February 25, 2020]. Apparently, journalists genuinely believed Trump should spark a major diplomatic incident by attacking India’s citizenship policies. After all, they cheer on Mexicans meddling with our immigration policies.
India’s policies are hardly offensive. The Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) gives a fast-track to citizenship to non-Muslim “undocumented migrants” from Muslim majority countries who entered India before December 31, 2014 [Trump defends Modi but doesn’t take position on controversial Indian citizenship law, by Courtney Subramanian, USA Today, February 25, 2020]. If anything this is too soft, as it is effectively Amnesty for illegals. Why, after all, should Muslims need “refugee” status from Muslim majority countries? Excluding a group that doesn’t need real protection is common sense. Pakistan exists for a reason.
The other law is the National Register of Citizens (NRC). Though it is being implemented in just one region of India to start, the government will eventually spread it out across the entire country. It requires residents to prove they or their ancestors are citizens of India—rather than “infiltrators” (using the same term that Israel does for illegal aliens—can we adopt this too, please?). If they can’t, they will be stripped of citizenship [India’s Citizenship Law, In Tandem With National Registry, Could Make BJP’s Discriminatory Targeting of Muslims Easier, by Soumya Shankar, The Intercept, January 30, 2020].
Again, this appears like common sense. Why shouldn’t a country be able to determine who is a legal resident and who is not? And why should it allow the children of illegals to benefit from their parents’ law-breaking? The children of burglars don’t get to keep stolen property.
There have been recent violent clashes between Hindus and Muslims over the citizenship laws [At least 32 dead in riots over Indian citizenship laws, RTE, February 27, 2020]. But this basically proves the government’s point: Why should it want a hostile, undocumented Muslim population in the country when there is a neighboring country, explicitly created for Muslims? If these riots show anything, it’s that diversity is not a strength.
Leftist journalists are also angry about India’s removal of Kashmir’s special administrative status. But again, this seems like an unsurprising policy. If India is a sovereign country, why should it tolerate a special region in its country where locals have special rights over fellow citizens? [Kashmir under lockdown: All the latest updates, Al Jazeera, October 27, 2019].
As American Renaissance’s Jared Taylor has noted, suddenly Leftists seem to understand questions about demographics and political power as long as whites aren’t involved.
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