`ELEVEN years ago on this day, the Make in India initiative was launched with a vision to add momentum to India`s growth and tap into our nation`s entrepreneurial potential. It is gladdening to see how #11YearsOfMakeInIndia has contributed to furthering economic strength and laying the foundation for Aatmanirbharta. It has encouraged innovation and job creation across sectors,` tweeted Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi this past Thursday.

The nationalist grandstanding was not anything unusual for the Indian PM; it is just what he has been peddling to Indian voters for 11 years.

What makes it worthy of notice at this point when the world is teetering on the brink of the new order is that Modi`s brand of Indian nationalism is unwittingly clashing with the ultranationalism of American President Donald Trump.

Just as Modi has been preaching a new greatness for India so too is the American president selling the same kind of special sauce to his voter base.

On the face of it, none of this would have been a problem. After all, the two sets of ultranationalists, Trump`s MAGA (Make America Great Again) base and Modi`s BJP MIGA (Make India Great Again) base are separated by thousands of miles. If anything, during Trump`s first term and the visits each leader paid the other, it seemed to be a recipe for bromance. Thousands of non-resident Indians gathered in Texas cheered on Trump and Modi. Arguably, the vast majority of these NRIs were eager supporters of Modi`s Hindu nationalism, which preached that Hindus were special, resurgent and the only `true` Indians. In simple terms, many Indians those who support Modi at home and abroad formed the MIGA base and believed that India was about to be the next superpower.

Clearly, Operation Sindoor was part of this MIGA projection of power. Last May, India calculated that it could attack alleged terrorist bases inside Pakistan and create a spectacle of dominance that would advertise its power both to the MIGA base at home and regional countries. Much has been written about the obvious blunders it made, but the important thing vis-à-vis US-India ties is what happened afterwards. President Donald Trump, eager to burnish his credentials aspeacemaker, took credit for the ceasefire. PM Modi, who presents himself to his MIGA base as a demigod, could not allow this. This was the beginning of the end as far as the US-India relationship was concerned.

Then came the tariffs. Once again, warring narratives on either side revealed the constraints of both leaders. Trump long in love with the subject of tariffs saw in them a means of bringing India to the negotiating table. His lingering annoyance over Modi`s refusal to give him credit for bringing about an India-Pakistan ceasefire likely increased his urgency to impose them. In Trump`s eyes, India could not have it both ways protect its market by refusing to allow Americans to sell agricultural products and also present itself as asuperpower.

At Modi`s end, Hindu nationalism was the focus.

The refusal to allow in dairy products is due in large part to the centralisation of the Hindu identity as Indian identity. The sanctification of cows and cow-related products as part of the Hindu nationalist ethos meant that the market could never be opened to American products that could contain beef byproducts. To Trump and MAGA, this sort of thing was anathema. Just as Hindu supremacy preaches the resurgence of Hindus and their creation of a global network, so too does Christian ultra-nationalism say that these sorts of reservations have to be bulldozed in its own bid for dominance.

Domestically, the BJP tried to spin the tariffs as a magic MIGA moment in which Indians could build India and buy Indian. Shrill Modi waxed lyrical about how this was a moment in which India could become self-sufficient. Then they started to predict the imminent collapse of the US,now that it was no longer interested in being friends with them. Irate Indian commentators, steeped in the swoon of nationalism for over a decade, declared that they did not need trade with the US and were better off without it.

It is these same delusions that kept a large section of Indians from seeing what was about to happen with the H-1B skilled worker visas. When the $100,000 per applicant fee was announced recently, they were stunned. Few saw how ultranationalist Hindutva has led even tech workers to believe that they were indispensable to Americans who they perceived as too unskilled to do the jobs they were doing in the US. Some American publications highlighted the spread of Hindutva in the US, which was not seen as a welcome sign. Add to this the allegations that Indian companies were misusing the programme to bring in underpaid workers and the writing was on the wall. To MAGA ultra-nationalist commentators, like the recently deceased Charlie Kirk and Trump strategist Steve Bannon, Indians had to go so that Americans could take back the jobs that were meant for them. Just as Hindutva preaches Hindu entitlement, so too does nativist white Christian nationalism preach its own brand of entitlement.

Indians hold over 70 per cent of H-1B visas. The new fee applies to new applicant s but even those in possession of the visa are likely to face trouble with renewals as companies realise that the administration does not want them to have foreign workers on their payroll if they want to stay on its good side.

The advent of AI and the increasing availability of local US workers means that it is unlikely that these policies will be reversed in the near future.

However loudly the MIGA base may shout about America`s decline, in the clash between Hindutva supremacy and its `Make India Great Again` slogan and the Christian nationalists``Make America Great Again` dominance the latter has prevailed.

Modi and Trump may make up and even strike a trade deal but the architecture through which the Hindutva-fuelled Indian middle class pursued the American dream has collapsed. • The writer is an attomey teaching constitutional law and political philosophy.

rafia.zakaria@gmail.com