In an inverted and unintended way, US President Donald Trump may prove to be India’s best friend. Even if he follows up his public bullying and childish tantrums with actual sanctions.

Trump has been particularly prickly over India’s refusal to bend its knee to the US trade hegemony and to forsake its time-tested friendship with Russia. He wants India to stop buying oil and arms from Russia and China, while Europe continues to do so. He himself is keen to make up with Xi Jinping after sensing a Chinese backlash to his tariff war that the US may find difficult to handle.

Trump is still hoping that India will cave. New Delhi’s first response has been a matured and measured statement from the Union ministry of commerce and industry.

“The Government has taken note of a statement by the US President on bilateral trade. The Government is studying its implications. India and the US have been engaged in negotiations on concluding a fair, balanced and mutually beneficial bilateral trade agreement over the last few months. We remain committed to that objective," it reads.

If only Trump looked back 27 years over his shoulders, he would know that India keeps calm and emerges stronger from such threats and hostility.

India has a very potent response template ready from former PM Atal Bihari Vajpayee’s playbook: do what you have to, stay calm even if allies abandon you, build capacity at home, and go about your business. They come back.

In spite of being in a coalition government, Vajpayee went ahead with the nuclear tests in May 1998, knowing fully what was to come.

Immediate sanctions across continents followed, including........

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