Donald Trump's ingratiating conversation with Pakistan's PM causes anger in India

The one certainty about the strange, seemingly-fawning conversation between Donald Trump and Pakistan’s Nawaz Sharif, was that it would create fury within India.

US State Department officials may have grumbled about the President-elect conducting “congratulations conversations” with leaders such as Japan’s Shinzō Abe in the absence of US diplomats, which is the usual process.

And figures such as former White House spokesman Ari Fleischer may have huffed and puffed about the impropriety, or otherwise, of a foreign country releasing the transcript of such conversations.

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But it is India, predictably, that has reacted with the greatest outpouring of disdain, disbelief and no little hurt.

A day after a press release from Mr Sharif’s office suggested Mr Trump had called him a “terrific guy” and promised that he would quickly visit Pakistan, Indian media sought to pour scorn on the story.

“Did Donald Trump say all those ‘fantastic’ things about Nawaz Sharif?”, said the headline on a report by the Press Trust of India, which went on to say that Mr Trump’s campaign’s had issued a less effusive version of the conversation between the two men.

Meanwhile, Time magazine’s correspondent’s story ran beneath a headline that said: “Donald Trump’s Phone Conversation With the Leader of Pakistan Was Reckless and Bizarre”.

“There are few foreign policy topics quite as complicated as the relationship between India and Pakistan, South Asia’s nuclear-armed nemeses,” said the report. “Any world leader approaching the issue even obliquely must surely see the “Handle With Care” label from miles away, given the possibility of nuclear conflict.”

India’s Daily News and Analysis seized on a report by Forbes magazine that termed the conversation between Mr Trump and Mr Sharif “ignorant”.

“His bluster is more likely to be taken as the initial signal of his administration’s position,” said Forbes.

“When he goes on and on about how wonderful Pakistan is, and how strong is his friendship, it matters. It matters that he uses words like: very good reputation, amazing work...fantastic country, fantastic place, fantastic people.”

Indian-American businessman Shalabh Kumar, chairman of the Republican Hindu Coalition and the man who arranged for Mr Trump to attend a Hindu-American event in New Jersey before the election, told the Indian Express that the President-elect knows who is America’s “true friend”

“President-elect Trump has said that under Trump administration, the US and India will be ‘best friends’ and that he loves the Hindu and Indian people, and particularly admires Prime Minister Narendra Modi,” he insisted.

India and Pakistan have been at loggerheads ever since the partition of British India and the creation of two independent nations in 1947.

That disagreement and tension has played out by means of threats, blatant propaganda, cricket matches, diplomatic maneuvering, and on at least four occasions, in the form of deadly armed conflict.

The two countries, which earned a degree of strategic parity - and made South Asia a much more dangerous place - after successfully testing nuclear weapons in 1998, are currently involved in a long-running dispute over clashes on the border with Kashmir. Both countries claim the region.

While politicians between the two countries have worked to normalise relations, the two rivals take great offence if they perceive the other to have earned some strategic advantage, be it in the form of the delivery of a US fighter jet, an invitiation for a formal state visit, or else a warm fuzzy conversation with a President-elect better, better known previously as the boisterous host of The Apprentice.

When asked about reports of the conversation between Mr Sharif and Mr Trump, India’s foreign ministry spokesperson Vikas Swarup told journalists in Delhi: “As far as the ‘fantastic’ conversation is concerned, I have seen a bit of a rejoinder from US side.”