Imperial Benevolence of USA towards India: Chapter 5
The benevolence of USA was not reciprocated by India and Marco Rubio received a relatively low-profile welcome during his India visit. Something did not click in his meeting with Ajit Doval India’s National Security Adviser. What happened in meeting is not revealed but the agenda is not difficult to guess. Matthew VanDyke, the arrested USA national about whom USA has not chosen to speak publicly. It was publicly announced by India that he was involved in espionage. It is certain to have come up in a dialogue between Rubio and Doval. The outcome can be guessed by the grand welcome Rubio received everywhere.
Visit to Agra
On 25 May 2026 morning Marco Rubio, flew to Agra and spent 45 minutes at the Taj Mahal with his wife Jeanette. Notice his remarks on the visit:
“I think it’s important to show respect to the culture of the countries that you visit.”
See, another act of benevolence by visiting Secretary of State. In sweltering heat Rubio endured heat wave to ensure that proper respect be offered to culture of India. But he did not choose to visit Ram Temple in Ayodhya, the place where maximum number of tourists visit and which has an airport on which Rubio’s plane could land.
American’s benevolence reeks of condescension but they do not realize it. What local culture does a Mughal King’s Mausoleum represent? We can only wonder. Did Rubio confuse history with culture?
Next he flew to Jaipur. Perhaps to please the natives. But the native Princess did not return the favour.
The Empty Courtyard at Jaleb Chowk
On May 25, Marco Rubio visited Amer Fort in Jaipur. The preparations were elaborate. Folk artists mobilised. Cultural troupes assembled. Ghoomar, Kalbelia, and Kachchi Ghodi performers arranged at Jaleb Chowk inside the historic fort complex. The district administration, police, and security agencies placed on high alert.
Every person who saw this wondered: who planned Rubio’s itinerary? The temperature sweltered at 45°C. Rubio himself commented about it aloud. “Although I’m from Miami, there is a humid hot and then there’s this hot,” said Rubio. “What time is it? It should be getting cooling off by now!” he was heard saying.
Diya Kumari, Rajasthan Deputy Chief Minister, was announced as the official host. Diya Kumari is not a routine politician. She is the daughter of the royal house of Jaipur. Her family has received heads of state for centuries. She knows precisely what showing up means in Indian social grammar, and what not showing up means. She was not in any photograph from the event. No joint statement. No post-event confirmation on official handles. No image of them together at Jaleb Chowk. The pre-visit coverage was loud. The post-visit confirmation was silent.
The folk dancers performed. The security detail mobilised. The motorcade arrived. The host was elsewhere.
In Indian political communication, that asymmetry is precise and deliberate. You honour the office with the preparation. You communicate your assessment of the occupant by your own presence or absence. Welcoming a guest is obligation. Seeing them off with equal warmth is approval. The departure video, now circulating on WhatsApp, showed junior constables and lower-level officials at the airport. No minister, no official and no ceremony.
Compare this with what happened the following week. Rabi Lamichhane, chairman of Nepal’s Rastriya Swatantra Party, visited Delhi on June 1. He is not a head of state. He is not a minister. He leads a political party. At BJP headquarters, dancers from at least five states performed for him. Senior leaders draped angavastrams across his shoulders. Regional caps were placed on his head by delegation after delegation. He met Modi for over an hour, then Jaishankar, Doval, Amit Shah, and Vikram Misri in succession. India knows precisely how to signal warmth when it chooses to. The constables at Jaipur airport were not a protocol lapse. They were a considered verdict.
Rubio had stayed at the Rambagh Palace, the heritage hotel owned by Diya Kumari’s family. The US Secretary of State was a guest in her property. He left without a relationship with the family that owned it. This is not a political snub. It is a personal one. Protocol requires presence for a friend. For a stranger who never bothered to call, the folk dancers are sufficient.
But the question remains about the timing of visit. Why in May? Why it could not wait? The fact that it was suddenly decided was revealed from the wardrobe of Mrs. Rubio.
The Dress Was a Deadline
Mrs. Jeanette Rubio accompanied the Secretary of State throughout the visit. She wore the same dress from the morning appearance in Agra to the afternoon arrival in Jaipur, traveling between cities in 45-degree heat.
This is not a fashion observation. It is a planning document.
A former model, for whom public appearance is professional second nature, does not repeat a formal outfit across a full day of high-visibility diplomatic appearances in May heat unless she had no alternative. She had other dresses. They were not packed for this weather. Why? Answer to that question reveals that visit was sudden and hurried.
Fire-fall in Indian Summer
India is in a warm climate. This is what people outside India believe before they visit in summer. Then they visit.
Europe is stated to be under heatwave as day temperature touched 33 degrees Celsius. In May 2026, Delhi’s night temperatures refused to drop below 33 degrees Celsius. Day temperatures touched 45. Local governments issued health advisories telling citizens to stay indoors. Hospitals went on public alert. Water supply strained in some areas. Power infrastructure stressed in Uttar Pradesh. Fire is falling from the sky in New Delhi and Rubio chose to visit.
India does not have four seasons. It has six. Vasant, Grishma, Varsha, Sharad, Hemant, Shishir. The monsoon alone disqualifies European seasonal vocabulary entirely. The fire fall of late April and May has no European equivalent, not conceptually, not experientially, not linguistically. One cannot prepare for it from a weather forecast. But USA has a large embassy in New Delhi. Did they not communicate with the visiting couple? Diplomatic missions have a protocol officer devoted to such matters. Mrs. Rubio packed for warm climate. She encountered fire fall. The difference between those two categories is the difference between hurried packing and planned visit.
Timing of visit
Rubio wanted to visit Kolkata specifically. West Bengal was under elections for months. On May 4 election results were announced. A new administration has to take control of a state prone to post-election street violence, and receive Home Ministry clearance. That clearance came no earlier than May 10 after new Government was sworn in.
Thus, Rubio’s team had perhaps twelve days to prepare a four-city visit across one of the most climatically extreme months of the Indian calendar. The attire proved it.
What India Already Knows
The viral video from Jaipur airport, junior constables seeing off the US Secretary of State while ministers were elsewhere, is not a diplomatic incident. It is a cultural verdict delivered through the honest medium in India. It is what people actually think, shared person to person without institutional filter.
India and the United States are, at this moment, approximately as popular with each other as India and Pakistan. This is a remarkable diplomatic achievement in the wrong direction.
The reasons are legible. Tariff pressure. H1B uncertainty affecting millions of Indian families. Rubio’s Munich speech, in which he described the end of Western empire as a wound caused by anti-colonial uprisings, burned him in every non-Western capital before he landed in Delhi. Christopher Landau’s policy confession at Raisina Dialogue, that America would not repeat with India the mistake it made with China by allowing market development, was received in Delhi as exactly what it was: a warning dressed as reassurance.
India heard all of it. India is building accordingly. Government ministries migrating to Zoho. ONDC challenging Amazon. GIFT City building a SWIFT bypass. The K-4 SLBM giving India second-strike nuclear capability from underwater. It builds one when it has decided it cannot depend on the goodwill of others.
Rubio did not arrive to repair a strained partnership. He arrived in a country that has already decided it does not need the benevolence of the United States anymore. He was received politely, as is India’s tradition, briefed the Prime Minister, visited the monuments in the fire fall, and was seen off by the police constables at the departure gate.
The King’s Clothes
Hans Christian Andersen’s emperor paraded through the capital in invisible clothes. His courtiers applauded. His subjects cheered. Only a child, with nothing to lose, said what everyone else already knew.
Gor paraded through Delhi in a bandmaster uniform. NDTV applauded. His staff cheered. A citizen in Delhi with a slow AI and seven minutes said what the educated Indians in that reception hall already knew and would never say to his face.
Rubio’s visit is not a repair mission. It was another bluff mission that did not work. Nobody said it but it is there to see. A lack of anything visible. No outcome. Nothing.
In the next chapter we shall discuss decades of benevolence of USA in Kashmir. The name of the actor is Robin. Unlike VanDyke, she was never caught or confronted. She worked behind the diplomatic immunity.
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