Trump Takes Potshot at India After SCO Summit; Modi’s Tilt Toward Xi Shows Limits of India’s Leverage; Collateral Damage Affects Nita Ambani's NYC Extravaganza?

A newsletter from The Wire | Founded by Tanweer Alam, Sidharth Bhatia, Pratik Kanjilal, Seema Chishti, Sushant Singh, MK Venu, and Siddharth Varadarajan | Contributing writer: Kalrav Joshi, with additional inputs by Anirudh SK

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Snapshot of the day

September 1, 2025

Siddharth Varadarajan

Manifestly on the rebound from his curdled relationship with Donald Trump and the United States, Prime Minister Modi made the most of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation summit in Tianjin on September 1. He guffawed for the cameras with Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping, remained cosseted with the Russian President in the latter’s limousine for nearly an hour and even signed on to a ringing condemnation of the Israeli and US for bombing Iran in May – something India had refused to do barely two months ago at the SCO defence ministers’ meeting.

In his bilateral with Xi, their first in nearly a year, Modi described India and China as ‘partners, not rivals’ and “underlined” that both countries “pursue strategic autonomy, and their relations should not be seen through a third country lens”.

Before arriving in Tianjin, Modi had assured the Ukrainian President that he would convey the urgent necessity of a ceasefire to Putin. But so far, the Indian PM has said nothing about whether he passed on this message to the Russian president, even though he posted visuals of himself with Putin four times. “The images were aimed at more than one audience: the White House and television channels back home,” reports Devirupa Mitra. Chinese users of Weibo, China’s massive social media platform, also had fun with some of the images.

On his part, Trump chose not to acknowledge the ‘gang of three’ but did take to social media to resume his attack on India for buying Russian oil and weapons and imposing high tariffs on US goods all these years. India has “now ofered to cut their tariffs to nothing”, he added, “but it’s getting late”:

The SCO summit itself saw the usual shadow boxing between India and Pakistan elevated to the PM level, as this was the first time Modi chose to attend. Mentioning the Pahalgam attack, he asked, “Can the open support for terrorism by certain countries ever be acceptable to us?”. In his remarks, Pakistani PM Shehbaz Sharif made an indirect reference to India’s decision to put the Indus Waters Treaty in abeyance:

“We respect all international and bilateral treaties and expect similar principles to be followed by all SCO members. Uninterrupted access to due share of water as per existing treaties among SCO members will strengthen the SCO working smoothly and will support the achievement of broader goals for which the SCO was established.”

Sharif also spoke of recent terrorist attacks in Pakistan and sought to blame India: “We have irrefutable evidence of involvement of some foreign hands in the devastating Jaffar Express train hostage incident, as well as countless other terrorist attacks against us in Balochistan and KP provinces of Pakistan.”

In deference to both India and Pakistani inputs, the SCO’s Tianjin Declaration made a mention of both the Pahalgam and Jaffar Express terrorist attacks and called on the international community to combat terrorism “including cross-border movement of terrorists” under United Nations resolutions and strategies.

Having sent a message to the US and to Pakistan, Modi decided he’d had