India Can Beat Trump Tantrums With Atal Doctrine: Stay Calm, Build Own Capability

News18

5 days ago

In spite of being in a coalition government, Vajpayee went ahead with the nuclear tests in May 1998, knowing fully what was to come.
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 the United States, Europe, Japan, Australia, and Canada. Interestingly, Russia condemned India's nuclear tests, but just as the Soviet Union did in 1974, did not impose sanctions.
But most powers wanted to stop India from nuclear proliferation by restricting aid, loans, and technology transfers. They wanted to crush India's ambitions and right to protect itself.
But as ideologue S Gurumurthy says on X: 'What happened was the opposite. India, which had a forex reserve of just $5 billion, floated the India Development Bonds for $5 billion which was oversubscribed by $1 billion. The economy did receive jerk for one year but from 2001 onwards it zoomed."
In 1999-2004, India's GDP grew robustly and by an average 6 per cent, inflation came down to under 5 per cent, and jobs grew by 60 million, he recalls.
'Most important we posted current account surplus of $25 billion for 3 years from 2002 to 2004. Never from 1950 to till now we ever posted current account surplus except those 2 years and for one year in 1976-77 — that is during the Emergency," says Gurumurthy. 'At that time I was associated with the govt responses to the sanctions. Dr Abdul Kalam, who was the scientific adviser, told me to tell PM Vajpayee to continue the sanctions for 5-6 years as that would only promote domestic R&D and scientific advancement."
Trump knows not India fought not just US EU Japan Canada Australia imposed tech and financial sanctions on India for 3 years. They thought they could crush India. What happened was the opposite. Here is the story (I was partly associated with) https://t.co/qenyb3zldj — S Gurumurthy (@sgurumurthy) July 30, 2025
What Vajpayee also did then, apparently on the advice of bureaucrat-politician NK Singh, was to unlock the power of India's diaspora. India Development Bonds were floated for NRIs and it soaked in the nationalist upsurge that followed the Pokhran blast.
On the diaspora front, PM Narendra Modi has taken Vajpayee's vision much further, and this could be a bulwark against western sanctions today.
While India found opportunity in the adversity of sanctions, the US, ironically, suffered because of the Glenn Amendment.
It restricted foreign aid to US social outfits working in the Indian subcontinent, limited defence sales and licences, curbed commercial exports, hindered trade and investments, and hit American financial institutions. Export opportunities were lost.
One surprise victim of the sanctions was the US agricultural sector.
On March 19, 1999, the Committee on Ways and Means requested that the US International Trade Commission (USITC) examine the economic sanctions imposed on India and Pakistan under Section 102 of the Arms Export Control Act (or the Glenn Amendment). This is what the ITC report, submitted in September 1999, found:
'The US economic sanctions imposed on India and Pakistan after they detonated nuclear explosive devices appear to have had a relatively minimal overall impact on India and a minimal but somewhat more pronounced adverse impact on Pakistan. Based on a telephone survey of over 200 U.S. companies and associations, the ITC found that the U.S. companies most affected by the Glenn Amendment sanctions were those involved in the sale of wheat and certain other agricultural products; industrial machinery; transportation, construction, and mining equipment; electronics products; and infrastructure development services. The ITC further found that the loss of trade and project finance support from the U.S. Export-Import Bank and the Overseas Private Insurance Corporation, as required by the Glenn Amendment sanctions, particularly hindered the ability of some U.S. companies to operate in India; that a prohibition of export credits and export guarantees by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, required under the Glenn Amendment but waived through September 30, 1999, most likely would adversely affect U.S. wheat exports to Pakistan; that the economic effects of the Glenn Amendment sanctions on the United States, India, and Pakistan are likely to be small; and that the major alternative suppliers benefitting from reduced U.S. exports to India and Pakistan under these sanctions are Japan; Europe; the rest of Asia; and Australia, New Zealand, and other South Pacific trading partners." — United States International Trade Commission Annual Report, 1999
India did not flinch when the US sent its 7th Fleet siding with Pakistan in the 1971 war. India came out stronger from the Pokhran sanctions. And India will certainly up its game a few notches faced with Trump's tantrums.
Only the US stands to lose in the long game.
Abhijit Majumder is a senior journalist. Views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely those of the author. They do not necessarily reflect News18's views.
tags :
Atal Bihari Vajpaee donald trump pm narendra modi tariff
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New Delhi, India, India
First Published:
July 31, 2025, 12:35 IST
News opinion Opinion | India Can Beat Trump Tantrums With Atal Doctrine: Stay Calm, Build Own Capability
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