A kite maker in Amritsar, India, shows a kite with a picture of Donald Trump on Nov. 6.
Narinder Nanu/AFP by way of Getty Photographs
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Narinder Nanu/AFP by way of Getty Photographs
CHENNAI, India — On the eve of the U.S. presidential election within the southern Indian metropolis of Chennai, one retired skilled mentioned he was all in for Donald Trump: “He’s the right man,” mentioned Bala Raja, 84, sporting an NYC cap.
Male voters particularly helped Trump win final week’s U.S. election. However hundreds of miles away — even in Besant Nagar, the Chennai suburb the place Kamala Harris’ mom Shyamala Gopalan was raised — Indian males like Raja echoed that Trump assist.
And why Trump? Peacemaking, they mentioned.
“He will control everybody,” Raja mentioned after worshiping within the Varasiddhi Vinayaka Temple that overlooks the seaside the place Harris as soon as strolled along with her grandfather on visits to her mom’s start nation. “He will control the Chinese and the Russians,” Raja says.
Raja mentioned he believed that Russia wouldn’t have invaded Ukraine if Trump was in energy: “[Trump] would have stopped the war.”
Beside him, one other man nodded. When Trump was in workplace the primary time, R. Srikanth mentioned, Russian chief Vladimir Putin did not dare invade Ukraine. This time round, “He’ll talk to Putin,” Srikanth mentioned of Trump. “The world wants some sort of peace so everybody can grow.”
The 2 males, like Trump, didn’t elaborate on how the U.S. president-elect would finish the wars or what insurance policies he would possibly pursue to persuade the combatants to sue for peace both in Ukraine or Gaza.
The world’s most populous nation has persistently held favorable views of Trump. In a June ballot by the Pew Analysis Heart, 42% of Indians mentioned that they had confidence in Trump, one of many highest international scores at the moment.
A villager watches the 2024 U.S. presidential election ends in a home in Vadluru, India, the ancestral village of the mother and father of Usha Vance, spouse of Vice President-elect JD Vance, on Nov. 6.
Idrees Mohammed/AFP by way of Getty Photographs
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Idrees Mohammed/AFP by way of Getty Photographs
By gender, 51% of Indian males within the ballot mentioned they had been assured in Trump, and 32% of girls. Solely in Ghana, Nigeria and Bangladesh did the next proportion of males categorical confidence in Trump. Indian media declare that India hosts extra Trump-branded actual property than every other nation on the planet besides the U.S.
The thought in India and elsewhere of Trump as a peacemaker is a current phenomenon, says Sumitra Badrinathan, an American College political scientist. “There’s a lot of people across the world who do believe this narrative that Trump is going to end the wars. It’s not unique to India,” she says.
That narrative — that Trump will finish international conflicts — was always repeated by the president-elect and his surrogates on the marketing campaign path, in particular person and on-line. It is a theme he repeats in his social media, invoking the slogan “peace by power.”
That rhetoric, filtered by WhatsApp teams, satisfied Indians similar to 29-year-old engineer Goutam Nimmagadda, who watched the sundown by the Chennai seashore on the U.S. election day, Nov. 5. “He wants to stop wars and all of that,” Nimmagadda mentioned, referring to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and Israel’s warfare towards Hamas in Gaza. “Probably that’s the reason people say that maybe Trump would be better for the world.”
Milan Vaishnav, director of the South Asia Program on the Carnegie Endowment for Worldwide Peace in Washington, D.C., says perceptions like this could maybe be greatest understood by India’s expertise underneath the primary Trump administration.
Hindu monks carry out a ritual for the victory of Donald Trump forward of the U.S. elections, at Maa Baglamukhi Shakti Peeth, Dilshad Backyard, in New Delhi on Nov. 3.
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Ritik Jain/Reuters
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi loved shut relations with Trump, and was even feted with a campaign-like occasion billed as “Howdy Modi” at Houston’s NRG stadium in September 2019. The next February, India responded with a “Namaste Trump” occasion, the place some 100,000 individuals crammed right into a cricket stadium.
“The U.S. relationship with India really wasn’t something that was caught up in turmoil [during the first Trump administration]. In fact, you could argue that it went from strength to strength,” Vaishnav says.
In a second Trump administration, analysts say the Indian authorities expects to construct on its U.S. commerce ties and hopes to duck punitive tariffs. The Indian authorities may face much less strain on its human rights file and over its buy of Russian oil, regardless of Western embargoes.
The nice and cozy relationship between the 2 leaders can also be an element, Vaishnav says.
Individuals learn U.S. election information at a roadside tea store in Lucknow, India, on Nov. 7.
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Rajesh Kumar Singh/AP
Maybe, he says, that could possibly be a motive why Indian males particularly might view Trump as a peacemaker. “They see similarities between Modi and Trump,” he says. “One of the things Modi has tried to do is position himself as a peacemaker,” Vaishnav says, referring to the Indian prime minister’s summer season conferences with Russian chief Vladimir Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. The conferences had been six weeks aside and in every, Modi hugged his host.
“It’s this idea that we live in this chaotic world,” says Vaishnav. “There’s a lot of instability, there’s a lot of global volatility. And we need these sort of larger than life strongman figures to essentially stabilize that system.”
There could be another excuse altogether why some now imagine that Trump will finish battle. “I think we have to consider the simple explanation,” says Badrinathan of American College, “which is that they did not hear any other message. This is the only one they heard.”
