OUR man in America is not who you would think, but actually his counterpart, the US Ambassador to India, Sergio Gor. The gentleman is hugely interesting. He was born a citizen of the former Soviet Union, in Tashkent, Uzbekistan, in 1986 (christened Sergio Gorokhovsky); within a decade his family had moved to the US, where he shortened his last name.
Not yet 40, today, Mr Gor not just continues to have the ears of the most powerful man in the world, President Donald Trump, he seems to be going out of his way to help India smoothen the rough road to the White House. If this goes on, mark my words, he will be a sure-shot claimant to a high Padma award next Republic Day.
Now Mr Gor’s dizzy claim to fame rests not just on the teaser bomb he dropped in Delhi on Friday, which is, that PM Modi and Trump are likely to meet sooner than later; considering that Trump has just stated that 11 “very expensive” jets were shot down during Op Sindoor, India will certainly be watching this space. Gor is also believed to have persuaded the recalcitrant US administration back home to finally sign the trade deal — and end the 50 per cent tariff agony India was being subjected to, even though we are the inheritors of a 5,000-year-old civilisation.
Moreover, he has reputedly brokered India’s entry into Pax Silica, the US-led global alliance on AI and critical minerals; don’t forget the Americans had slammed the door shut on India on this exact organisation, barely two months ago in December. (So what accounts for the change of heart?)
Now you could argue, Dear Reader, that all this is par for the course, that it’s Gor’s job to make nice with the natives — meaning, us Indians — and I use the word, advisedly, because you may have read, by now, what Gor’s very powerful colleague, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, said at the Munich Security Conference less than a week ago. It was a speech peppered with phrases like “Christian faith” and “Western civilisation” — and all the leaders in the room, mostly of fair Caucasian extraction and colour, clapped enthusiastically. It’s another matter that many of these people are constantly seeking to make deals with people of differently coloured skin tones — brown, black, yellow — who live in Third World nations like India and China, because that’s where the markets are.
According to Rubio, at Munich : “We must also gain control of our national borders. Controlling who and how many people enter our countries, this is not an expression of xenophobia. It is not hate. It is a fundamental act of national sovereignty.”
You must admire the Cuban American’s intense and somewhat desperate need to fly the stars and stripes. Note the irony, though. Marco’s Cuban family had not become American by the time he was born in 1971. As a powerful Secretary of State, though, Mr Rubio is taking a position that would disallow future Sundar Pichais from seeking a toehold in America. (Why India cannot keep its Sundar Pichais home is a good and separate question to ask, of course.)
Then there’s the free trade argument the West has been pushing at least since the fall of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War — which, admittedly, forced India to reform its own labyrinth and compete globally — and South-South nations, in exchange for opening their markets, demanded a reciprocal free movement of labour. Meaning, let the most qualified people be free to move where the jobs are; let them not be discriminated against based on the colour of their passports.
As Trump has upended the free trade argument over the last year, his Secretary of State is now formalising the New Deal — open up your markets for our goods, but don’t expect us to open our economies for jobs for your folks.
Hold on, though, for the meatiest part of Rubio’s Munich diatribe. “In 1945, for the first time since the age of Columbus, (the West) was contracting…The great Western empires had entered into terminal decline, accelerated by godless communist revolutions and by anti-colonial uprisings (italics mine) that would transform the world and drape the red hammer and sickle across vast swaths of the map in the years to come.”
Rubio’s remarks can make you splutter with anger, but better to take a deep breath. At least we know now what the Trump crowd really thinks of us — of our freedom movements across Asia and Africa, of the wars fought by men from colonised nations, like India, in the service of Western powers which had colonised them.
To think that India is considering joining the same Board of Peace — for which member nations have paid $1 billion — where, at its inaugural meeting in Washington DC on Friday, Trump demanded the Pakistan PM “stand up” as he, once again, regaled the audience with the story of how he had brought Op Sindoor to an end. Poor Shehbaz Sharif.
Here’s a second irony. Former colonial powers like the UK, France and Germany have refused to join Trump’s Board of Peace.
Certainly, it’s a wonderful thing to have Sergio Gor on your side — all nations need friends, especially when Op Sindoor claims take over the airwaves — and having Marco Rubio soon break bread with you (Gor has announced he’s coming to Delhi soon), is vindication that former colonies must always be proud of the struggles they have fought to get where they are.
Call it atmanirbharta, non-alignment, strategic independence — what you will. Fact is, India needs the US market (and therefore, easy terms on trade), but the Americans also need India. Modi must make nice with Trump, but also decide at what cost. As for Rubio, he should always remember that former colonies have long memories. That his reference to Columbus at Munich was actually an incomplete one. That Columbus may have “discovered” America, but he was really looking for India.