WASHINGTON: President Donald Trump’s policy on India has backfired, amid rising concern in Washington that India is growing closer to China and Russia, Congresswoman Sydney Kamlager-Dove has said. In an interview with HT, the lawmaker, the senior-most Democrat on the House Foreign Affairs Committee’s South and Central Asia subcommittee, which deals with India, also castigated the majority Republican Party for its silence on the growing US-India crisis. Edited excerpts:

Congresswoman Kamlager-Dove, you were one of the first representatives in Congress to speak about the sharp deterioration in the India-US relationship. Why did you choose to do that? And what do you think about where we are right now in our relationship?

I represent the 37th Congressional District in Los Angeles. We have a very large South and Central Asian diaspora community. I also serve as the ranking member on the South and Central Asia Subcommittee on Foreign Affairs. So I’m the highest-ranking Democrat on that subcommittee. I joined the Foreign Affairs Committee because I think that diplomacy is an incredibly important soft power tool that we have used in the past quite successfully.

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We have endured a very longstanding and positive relationship with India. We have withstood bumps in the road, but we have had administrations that really see and value the relationship with India. And in fact, President Biden took some very important strategic steps towards solidifying an enduring relationship with India. We made strategic developments around technology with the Quad, with AI and with defence tech. You couldn’t have had a better partner than President Joe Biden. He actually queued up a relationship for Donald Trump to take and run. And instead of doing that, he’s essentially tanked it in less than one year. I don’t want to sugarcoat it, so I’m telling you the truth. And so, unfortunately, there’s a lot of rebuilding that has to happen because this president and the Republican Party view foreign policy through an isolationist lens, rather than understanding the importance of culture, the importance of diplomacy, the soft powers that we can use, understanding how to use tariffs and trade agreements much more diplomatically than what they’ve been doing. And what we have seen as a result of this isolationist and really erratic behaviour driven by ego is that the Indian American community has suffered. Our immigrant communities have suffered. Our standing around the world has suffered in just seven months.

There is a sense in India that the relationship has suffered because Donald Trump seems to be annoyed about the fact that India has not credited him for the ceasefire between India and Pakistan. What is the sense of you and your colleagues on this?

It is correct to say that Trump’s erratic behaviour and his reckless foreign policy style have finally backfired with regard to the U.S.-India relationship. Look, this is a president that announces fake bilateral agreements on Truth Social. This is a president who is calling around asking people to nominate him for a peace prize. This is a president who doesn’t understand cultural sensitivities and dynamics, who doesn’t actually care about history. This is a president that actually doesn’t understand and fails to utilise the diplomatic tools. This is a president who defunded USAID, that doesn’t care about disaster relief. This is a president who has defunded Voice of America. All of these things are elements of diplomacy and soft power that former presidents and members of Congress have worked to start, nurture, develop and grow painstakingly over the course of 78 years with India. And so, as I said, it has backfired. And I think we all have an obligation to kind of talk about the unintended consequences and the repercussions. There is no reason why great talent from India who are interested in coming to our colleges and universities to help with innovation and research should be punished just because they are Indian. There’s no reason why arbitrary tariffs should be tacked on to a country because somebody’s ego was hurt.

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We saw Prime Minister Modi’s visit to China for the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation summit. That image of him holding hands with Vladimir Putin and standing alongside Xi Jinping of China, seems to have made waves in Washington. How are you and your colleagues thinking about the Prime Minister’s visit to China?

I think what it shows is the failure of Trump’s failed brand of foreign policy on full display. You see how he is soft on his adversaries, but cruel to his partners.

We’ve seen a lot of interest from this administration in improving relations with Pakistan. Where is this partnership going exactly?

I’m the ranking member on the South and Central Asia subcommittee. And I will tell you that during the last Congress, every other week, we had a hearing on South Central Asia. You know, this Congress, we’ve had not one. So I would tell you that there seems to be zero interest from this Republican Congress and from this administration to talk about the very serious issues that we’re facing with the region in South Central Asia. Issues around maritime affairs, strategic positioning, critical minerals, energy, tech and a strengthening of the Quad. Those are conversations that we should be having.

There’s a sense in New Delhi that Congress – including lawmakers from both parties – have not really spoken out about the India-US crisis. What’s going on there?

Well, what’s going on is that Democrats are not in power. And so that question, I think, should really consistently be asked of Republicans. They are in the majority in the Senate, in the House and in the White House. Why are they silent? Why is the party in power silent? We also have a president that sucks all the energy out of the room and commands and demands that attention be forced on him. A lot of people, even folks in other countries, thought that this person is going to be right for my country. And he has proven to be erratic, and in fact, a bad investment for other countries around the world. And I cannot tell you how many meetings I have had with representatives from other countries who have said, you know, we’re in a pickle. Democrats are speaking about challenges with the Quad, challenging these arbitrary tariffs and calling out hypocrisy with immigration. But no one is really hearing us because the megaphone coming from the White House is much bigger.

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There’s a fear that elements of America’s conservative movement have taken to targeting Indian-Americans, mostly in the form of online vitriol. Are you worried about this?

Well, someone should place a call to JD Vance and ask him to speak up on this issue, given his intimate relationship with India. That’s all I’m going to say about him. It is unfortunate that we are seeing a rise in political violence and racism and xenophobia. As an African American woman, this is not surprising to me. But it is always unfortunate. And the MAGA movement is incredibly phobic and they have denigrated the term diversity.

I was in a hearing in the committee foreign affairs and I asked about this question of immigration and H1B visas. And the witness said that you could put every American in every college across the country, and you would still need international talent to make the company successful. So we have to re-educate our communities about H-1B visas. We need to educate folks about how many companies actually use them, and why they use them. I have a South Central Asian Advisory Committee, and I have folks from across the region that sit on it. And we talk about how to build bridges. We talk about how to build connections. We talk about immigration, and profiling, and discrimination, and how to fight against all of those things. So that’s what I’m talking about, because I see the value. And I also see the fear that is in the eyes of many folks from the Indian community. We have to talk about it, and stand up to it.