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What Mark Twain once said about Richard Wagner’s music—“much better than it sounds”—applies equally to the state of India-U.S. relations. But if you follow the public discourse in New Delhi, you might be forgiven for thinking that the partnership is coming apart.

India’s post-Cold War ties with the United States have been pronounced to be in crisis with remarkable regularity. This time, the triggers are real enough. A stream of threats and insults from U.S. President Donald Trump; his false claim that he brokered an India-Pakistan cease-fire last year; the U.S. war against Iran, including Washington’s reluctance to show any contrition for the killing of Indian sailors in the Gulf of Oman; U.S. support for Pakistan’s role as a peacemaker in the Middle East; the quiet abandonment of the Indo-Pacific nomenclature that Trump himself had championed in his first term; and his talk of a “G-2” condominium between the United States and China. Together, these have created a sense in New Delhi that the relationship is now at a crossroads.

What Mark Twain once said about Richard Wagner’s music—“much better than it sounds”—applies equally to the state of India-U.S. relations. But if you follow the public discourse in New Delhi, you might be forgiven for thinking that the partnership is coming apart.

India’s post-Cold War ties with the United States have been pronounced to be in crisis with remarkable regularity. This time, the triggers are real enough. A stream of threats and insults from U.S. President Donald Trump; his false claim that he brokered an India-Pakistan cease-fire last year; the U.S. war against Iran, including Washington’s reluctance to show any contrition for the killing of Indian sailors in the Gulf of Oman; U.S. support for Pakistan’s role as a peacemaker in the Middle East; the quiet abandonment of the Indo-Pacific nomenclature that Trump himself had championed in his first term; and his talk of a “G-2” condominium between the United States and China. Together, these have created a sense in New Delhi that the relationship is now at a crossroads.

The mood is in stark contrast to 2024, when Indian public opinion was broadly rooting for Trump’s return to the White House. Then, prayers for his election victory were being held in some quarters, and there was widespread expectation that another Trump term would surely prove better than the Biden administration years.

Trump’s abrasive treatment of India following his 2025 inauguration did much to sour that goodwill. Since U.S. Ambassador Sergio Gor’s arrival in New Delhi early this year, things have quieted somewhat, but the resentment lingers. New issues keep churning public resentment. Trump’s popularity ratings have fallen in India as they have across most of the world, although they have not collapsed in the way they have in Europe. The most recent Pew Research Center survey, conducted in early 2026, put Indian confidence in Trump at 39 percent, down from 51 percent in the previous year’s poll.

Part of the problem is the emotionalism that drives India’s public debate over foreign policy in general and the relationship with the United States in particular. No country dominates contemporary India’s mind space more than the United States. Even at the height of left-wing politics in the 1970s, the Soviet Union never loomed as........

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