US President Donald Trump’s punitive tariffs and Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s perfunctory bilateral meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping in Tianjin during the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) Summit has led many in India to speculate that Trump may have unknowingly triggered a reset in India-China relations.These are expectations higher than what the Indian leadership can deliver, which particularly at this point in history, is exceptionally inept and desperate to repair relations with the US.While the Indian leadership’s inability to recognise and accept the reality that the world has undergone a transformation, spearheaded by China, in the last decade is only one reason why we will not choose to improve relations with Beijing at the cost of our ties with America, there are two more fundamental factors, the first of which is not specific to the Modi government.For the Indian public, the US is the land of dreamsFor the Indian public, the US is the land of dreams. According to the 2023 statistics from the US embassy in New Delhi, the Mission processed a ‘record-breaking’ 1.4 million visas that year. Of these, over 7,00,000 were visitor visas, 1,40,000 were student visas, and 3,80,000 were employment visas.By 2024, the number of student visas being issued to Indians had crossed the figure of 3,31,000, making India the top source of international students in the country.Some more statistics. The largest Indian Diaspora lives in the US – a population of over 5.4 million people, marginally behind the Chinese (about 5.5 million), comprising 1.5 per cent of that country’s population. This population has grown by a phenomenal 174% between 2000 to 2023, when the information technology (IT) boom happened.But that is not all. This population group punches well above its weight, primarily because of its felicity with the English language and capacity for hard work. This is the reason that from politics and academics to big corporations (IT, investment banking etc.,) and performing arts, Indians have created a space for themselves in the US mainstream. What’s more, in many spheres, especially in politics and IT, many are in the leadership positions, creating a cycle of aspiration and achievement.This successful Diaspora and its family network in India are not only pressure groups but also New Delhi’s capital investment over decades in the future of the US. It has internalised the belief that in the US’s future lies the future of India. This is the reason successive Indian governments have sought favourable visa regimes for Indian students and technical workforce.And when the Trump administration deported Indians who had tried to immigrate to the US through illegal means, the government quietly accepted the humiliation of its hand-and-ankle-cuffed citizens being deported. Our human investment in this relationship has made us desperate. And this desperation makes us forget our larger national interests.US promises career opportunities, first world lifestyle and citizenshipRemember Prime Minister Manmohan Singh putting his minority government on stake in his first term for the Indo-US civil nuclear deal? The deal, or what came to be known as 123 Agreement was signed in 2008. And thereafter the people of India rewarded Manmohan Singh by giving him a much larger mandate in the next term, turning the 2009 elections almost into a referendum on the relations with the US.Of course, the world has changed between then and now. But for us, having our day in the sun in one of the most powerful and progressive nations in the world, the change doesn’t matter. The US promises career opportunities, first world lifestyle and citizenship, an option not available even in the country with the second largest Indian Diaspora, the United Arab Emirates (UAE).With the other two major powers – China and Russia – the civilian connect is bare minimal. Despite the closest of ties with Russia and before that Soviet Union, a little over 50,000 Indians choose to live in that country. The number in China is barely 10,000. Language is not the only barrier. It’s also the perception about these countries.While the US is regarded as free, enabling citizens to lead largely equitable and fearless lives, both Russia and China are perceived as inhospitable states, with limited human independence. Moreover, both countries offer very few post education career options to foreign students, including from India.From India’s perspective, this is of great importance. We don’t only want trade and technology. We also want employment and the possibility of settling down in another country. Historically, distance from the motherland makes us love it more. According to a 2023 media report, in the decade of 2011 to 2022, 1.6 million Indians renounced their citizenships, and by 2024, the population of Indian Diaspora had reached 18.5 million.The top destination for them is the US, followed by other western-oriented nations like Australia, Canada and the UK.Consequently, India’s relations with the US are largely steered by public sentiment. It’s a toss-up between national desire and national interest. And interests defer to desires, also because the policymakers who are to frame and drive India’s foreign policy also have personal interests (in terms of family) in perpetuating ties with the US, at the cost of other relations.The second factor is historical and stems from our experience of colonialism. And this is more specific to the BJP-RSS governments than others. After the 1857 rebellion, when the Hindu right wing thought started to emerge, it found its vocabulary, ideological inspiration as well as institutional support from the colonialists, who were seen as superior, hence worthy of close friendship, loyalty and emulation.RSS’s desire to be America’s best friend at any costAfter independence, this loyalty and fandom were transferred to the US, which had emerged as militarily the most powerful and the ideological heir to the British after World War II. During the Cold War, as the Congress-led Indian government drifted towards the Soviet Union, which the Hindu right-wing abhorred for its godlessness, and the US forged close ties with Pakistan, the extended Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) family worked on building its network in the Diaspora in the US, hoping to replace Pakistan at the US high table.It was with this aim that during its first stint in power, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led Vajpayee government signed the first US foundational agreement, and the Modi government signed the remaining three. Not only that, but the Modi government also risked India’s historical ties with Russia, by committing to buy more defence equipment from the US as a demonstration of its loyalty and to meet the US demand of military interoperability.It also joined the navy-driven quadrilateral grouping (Quad) with the US, Australia and Japan with the aim of containing China, which it both feared and envied. While the US feared maritime challenge from China in the region it had unilaterally dominated for decades, hence the attempt to stymie it, India neither had a maritime rivalry nor competition with China.The South China Sea has never been Indian Navy’s area of interest, much less operations. But in the company of other navies in the Quad, India experienced a high of maritime power. Hence, like others, it also started voicing provocative inanities like freedom of navigation. At a time when the leading power of Quad, the US, has no interest in grouping, India along with Japan during Prime Minister Modi’s visit to that country before he attended the SCO summit, urged for strengthening it.Interestingly, leading independent American analysts, such as Jeffrey Sachs, have decried Quad, urging India to quit it, strengthen relations with Russia and improve them with China.Today, India’s foreign policy is at sea because for the last decade it was driven not by national interest, but by a 100-year-old (RSS was founded in 1925) desire to be America’s best friend at any cost. It believed that friendship with the global bully would help it become the regional bully in the absence of real national power.Hence, the policymakers in South Block are not burning the midnight oil in finding ways to improve ties with China despite the border problem and import dependency; rather they are tapping old contacts, Republican party fundraisers and lobbyists to see how it can tide over the current deadlock in its relations with the US.The twin blinkers of desire and desperation are preventing Indian government to see that the sun has started to set on the US and the Global North. In doing so, it has turned its back not only towards the Global South, but the rising sun, too. Dark days ahead.Ghazala Wahab is the editor of FORCE magazine. She has written Born A Muslim: Some Truths About Islam in India (winner of Book of the Year Award, non-fiction, at the Tata Literature Live and Atta Galatta), edited The Peacemakers, and Dragon On Our Doorstep: Managing China Through Military Power (with Pravin Sawhney). Her new book The Hindi Heartland: A Study has just come out.