How the worm has turned. A year ago, there was significant support for the Trump-fronted ‘Make America Great Again’ or MAGA movement in a section of the commentariat in India. Several Desi Americans, too, saw Trump as a “great friend of India".

After Trump was elected, India’s EAM had a front-row seat at the inauguration. PM Narendra Modi was invited to the White House, only the third world leader after Netanyahu and the then Japanese PM Shigeru Ishiba. The Indian foreign ministry was busy spinning the MAGA MIGA = MEGA acronym of amiability.

But if a week is a lifetime, then a year is an aeon in politics. The tide has turned in the waters of the Potomac since then. Today, India’s MAGA well-wishers are clambering over each other to delete social media posts that were even remotely positive about the prospect of a Trump presidency. A MAGA supporter is now the equivalent of a leper in the collective imagination of so-called centre-right Indians and some similarly disposed Indian Americans. And they are not to blame. What’s even halfway redeemable about MAGA grandees like Laura Loomer, Howard Lutnick, Peter Navarro, and even Donald........

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