Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s first official visit to India is grabbing headlines for all the wrong reasons.
“Why India is being really rude to Justin Trudeau,” lamented Washington Post in an opinion piece. “There seems to be no end to the Indian snubbing of the Canadians, even as the Trudeaus are trying their best to disarm the Indians with a charm offensive,” the newspaper continued. Indian Prime Minister Modi remained conspicuously absent during his Canadian counterpart’s eight-day visit to India.
According to local media reports, Prime Minister Trudeau demanded a welcome similar to the one received by the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu last month. Prime Minister Modi’s office turned down the suggestion and urged the Canadian leader to cut the trip short instead.
Modi was less than keen to host his Canadian counterpart, sending a low-level minister to receive him at the Delhi airport to bring home the point.
Indian business newspaper LiveMint reported Trudeau’s lukewarm reception in New Delhi:
Trudeau’s eight-day trip got off to an awkward start after Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who often greets his counterparts on their arrival, sent a junior minister from the agriculture department to meet him at the airport. By contrast, Modi himself was on the tarmac to greet and bear-hug Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu when he visited last month.
The snub continued, with even provincial leaders refusing to receive Trudeau. In the Indian city of Agra, where the Taj Mahal is located, the state’s right-wing Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath delegated the task to local civil servants. The newspaper Times of India reported:
Elaborate security arrangements have been made in the city as Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, who landed in India with his family for a week-long visit on Saturday, is slated to visit the Taj Mahal on Sunday. However, chief minister Yogi Adityanath or any other minister from his cabinet will not be there to receive him — with all the protocol duties being left to the district magistrate Gaurav Dayal and Agra commissioner K Rammohan Rao.
Undeterred by all that cold-shouldering, Trudeau embarked on an eight-day Bollywood-themed road show filled with oriental pageantry and fanfare. The Canadian leader indulged in wholesale cultural appropriation, parading himself and his family in bizarre ethnic outfits—unfamiliar even to the locals.
Indian social media mocked and ridiculed Trudeau’s wardrobe malfunction, with one leading Indian newspaper calling out the visiting prime minister for wearing attires “typically worn by bridegrooms” during the state visit.
But self-absorbed Trudeau wasn’t going to let official snubs and general ridicule get in the way of his vanity tour. The train wreck continued with Trudeau doubling down by performing cringe-worthy Bollywood dance numbers at official receptions.
Video: Canada’s Trudeau Dancing on Punjabi Bhangra in Delhi
Trudeau’s disastrous trip is symptomatic of the Postmodern philosophy he represents. Detesting his own Western identity, he hopes to fill the resulting cultural void with borrowed fakeries that make even the natives cringe.
India’s Modi, keen to develop his country with Western capital and know-how, would have welcomed a Canadian Prime Minister who might have meant business. In fact, Modi had an excellent working relationship with Trudeau’s predecessor Stephen Harper. Trudeau, however, isn’t representing Canada. This is a vanity tour of a self-indulgent leader. Kudos to the Modi government for seeing through the phoniness of the tour and treating it with the contempt it deserved.
Video: Twitter mocks Justin Trudeau’s Bollywood outfits during trip to India
[Cover image via YouTube]
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