Before he was elected to a second presidential term, Donald Trump had hugged and kissed the American flag as a token of reverence. He was speaking at the conservative action conference at Oxon Hill in 2024. A decade before this, Trump’s ‘Howdy Modi’ event had also made similar gestures.While entering Parliament house as prime minister, Narendra Modi knelt at the threshold of the ‘temple of democracy’ and paid his respects. However, within months, the two authoritarian friends began flouting their own constitutional systems and established traditions and tried to impose their partisan agenda. Modi and Trump came to power with their own playbooks, though the former gladly accepted the latter’s suzerainty. Despite this, the two also borrow from each other whenever it suited their scheme of things. For that matter, spin dictators everywhere have their common toolkit. Institution capture using the existing loopholes, launching false cases against political rivals and throwing them in jail, creating a culture of fear among the minorities, selective war on ‘infiltrators’, system change and manipulating the elections to gain maximum political leverage are some of the areas where the two authoritarians have borrowed from each others play book. Tinkering with the electoral system has been an important tool for spin dictators everywhere. In this regard, Trump has heavily borrowed from Modi’s playbook. We have had columns narrate how the Chief Justice of India was removed from the selection panel, and the patently partisan role of the incumbent chief election commissioner Gyanesh Kumar. For Trump, messing around with the electoral system is more complex because in the United States, the conduct of polls falls under provincial governments. Despite such restraints, Trump had declared, early on, he would “nationalise” the future voting. His action plans included reshaping the electoral rules, the referees, and the information environment to tilt the playing field before a single vote is cast.As in India, the US also has the practice of ‘re-districting’, or the periodic delimitation of constituencies. Hence, Trump told an audience: “In four years, you don’t have to vote again. We’ll have it fixed so good, you’re not gonna have to vote.”More recently, he said, “We should take over the voting… The Republicans ought to nationalise the voting.” For this, Trump has evolved a five-step plan for election take-over. These are: Prepare the ground with false election narratives, replace impartial officials with political loyalists, change rules using false election narratives before votes are cast, control the environment during voting, and attack the courts and certification. However, Trump’s plan is bound to fail because the US system has many inbuilt guardrails. Elections are controlled by the states – not by Trump’s executive branch. Moreover, courts have, in the past, largely upheld the legitimacy of the present practices. So, Trump will encounter strong public ire if he tries to dump the present system which has large public participation and popular acceptance. Nonetheless, Trump had in March last year signed an executive order to overhaul US federal elections. This covered citizenship proof and limiting mail-in ballots. As per the order, Homeland and social security will prepare a list of eligible voters in the US, including in all provinces. Also, ballots will have to be put in secure envelopes with trackable bar cords.Months after his inauguration, Trump had claimed that Article II of the US Constitution gave him full powers to do whatever he wanted. “I have Article II, where I have the right to do whatever I want as president.” Using these powers, he justified firing and shifting officials and deportations of what he called illegal immigrants and infiltrators. And Modi, here, did all this without the power of Article II. Unlike our mainstream media, the West fiercely contested Trump’s claims. A UK daily had narrated how the Trump regime relentlessly prosecuted protesters, government critics, immigrants and others arrested during the anti-immigrant operations. They were accused of physically attacking officers or interfering with their duties. But most of those cases, as in Modi’s India, had ended up in not-guilty verdicts. By peddling ‘provable lies’ in court, Trump’s Department of Justice is hoping it can deter dissent by imposing legal costs and disrupting the lives of anyone it chooses to target, no matter how clearly innocent they are of any crime. In this case, India’s Modi has a far more disastrous record. Even without any special powers, it has gone on cracking down on political opponents. Reuters had reported how agencies like the Enforcement Directorate were used as ‘a weapon’ by the prime minister to force opposition leaders into joining the Bharatiya Janata Party. “If I join the BJP today, I will also stop getting summons from the ED,” it quoted a Congress leader as saying. Nearly 150 opposition leaders have been raided or questioned since 2014. This is in addition to the arrests by other agencies and local police.We also do not have any authentic figures of political activists languishing in Modi’s jails. Between 2016 and 2020, as many as 24,134 individuals have been charged with the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA) alone. Out of this, only 386 have reportedly been acquitted. A big chunk of them are political activists and agitators against Citizenship Act amendment and National Register of Citizens, and other kinds of regional agitations. Among these are ten activists languishing in jail for years.Five years back, over 50 people, mostly Muslims, had died in Delhi riots. About 2,000 people, mostly Muslims, were arrested. However, 80% of the cases resulted in acquittal as prosecution failed to produce proof. For Muslim bashing in the US, Trump can certainly borrow from Modi’s play book. And he has begun it in the earnest.Like the BJP, Trump’s Republican Party is also gripped by acute Islamophobia. For them, Muslims represent an ‘irredeemable enemy’. Muslims ‘don’t belong in American society’, ‘we need more Islamophobia’ and ‘the choice between dogs and Muslims is not a difficult one’ (ibid) are some of the outbursts by senior Republican leaders. And complaints of discrimination against Muslims have reached a record high of 8,683, nationwide, in 2025.To their embarrassment, Trump’s MAGA is equally hostile to the Hindutva crowd. Their description of Hindu groups in America range from ‘exoticization’ to ‘barbarism’, and ‘heresy,’ as well as ‘genocidal’ and ‘tyrannical’ evils. Another report said that anti-Hindu attacks in the US have grown in recent years.There were also reports of vandalising Hindu temples in Washington, Texas and Georgia. Swaminarayan temple in Kentucky was singled out for attack by Trump’s anti-Hindu crowds. Hindu priests were attacked in New York and anti-Hindu slogans came up in Texas. In many places, Hindu flags and festoons were burnt.A Republican leader mocked Hinduism and publicly ridiculed the Hanuman statue in Texas. RSS organ Organiser said there was an ‘escalating climate of hate’ from Indiana to Utah. Apparently, Trump has realised that none of his bon homie shows alongside Modi during his early years as the President yielded any support from Hindu voters. A survey showed only 16% of Indians in the US had voted for him. Clash of interests between the Hindutva groups and MAGA crowds is too sharp to ignore.Prime Minister Narendra Modi with US President Donald Trump at the ‘Howdy, Modi!’ event in Houston, Texas, September 22, 2019. Photo: The White House, Public domain via Wikimedia CommonsLastly, a word about the kind of followers of the two authoritarians. Modi can proudly boast of a loyal and obedient tribe of adherents. In India, servility and power worship have been our trait for generations. Most of us had hailed Indira Gandhi’s 20-point programme as ‘Anushasan’ but voted against her en masse soon after the Emergency was lifted.As against this, Trump’s closest aides like business magnate Elon Musk, National Terrorism Centre’s director Joe Kent, Laura L., Marjorie Tailor Greene and others had resigned due to policy differences with the super boss. Even US vice president J.D. Vance and Tulsi Gabbard have sharp differences with the boss. We are now told that FBI director Kash Patel, army secretary Daniel Driscoll and labour secretary Lowry Chavez Dever are also leaving the Trump camp. Discord has also led to the removal of the US army chief of staff and some junior officers. Attorney general Pam Bondi had left earlier.How many Modi bhakts in India have the courage to protest when they were ruthlessly thrown out of the party or government positions with or without assigning any reasons?In an age of fractured mandates, personality cults and transactional alliances, P. Raman brings clarity to India’s shifting political equations. With Realpolitik, the veteran journalist peers beneath the slogans and spin to reveal the power plays, spectacle, crises and insecurities driving India’s politics.