‘Long live Donald Trump’: Indians express their support after shooting

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NEW DELHI – For the next seven days, men in saffron robes will crowd into a small room in the capital of New Delhi to chant a protective mantra over 100,000 times to guarantee former president Donald Trump’s safety – and make sure he wins the U.S. election.

Their shrine includes a photo of Trump and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi with the words, “Friends forever.” They take a break from chanting for a call and response: “Long Live,” cries the head priest and the rest reply, “Donald Trump.”

“The bullet hit his ear but didn’t take his life,” said Vishnu Gupta, the founder of right-wing fringe group Hindu Sena who organized the prayer meeting. “Because of our prayers he is still alive.”

Across India there has been an outpouring of support for Trump after Saturday’s assassination attempt, primarily from the ruling Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party, whose leader, Modi, famously got along with Trump when he was president.

BJP leaders and supporters are adopting the incident as part of their own struggle, and see it as yet another example of how right-wing leaders around the world are being victimized.

“Physical or otherwise, right-wing leaders across the globe are now active targets of the radical left,” Himanta Biswa Sarma, chief minister of northeastern state Assam, wrote on X.

As both sides in the United States point fingers over the country’s intensifying political rhetoric and polarization, Indians say they can relate.

BJP leaders, on social media and a string of television debates Monday night, drew parallels between the language of the Democrats in the United States and the main Indian opposition Congress Party.

Amit Malviya, the information and technology head of the BJP, said there is an “eerie similarity” between the two parties’ “dehumanizing” narratives. They both claim that democracy or the Constitution is in danger, call their opponents dictators, and weaponize caste or race, he said.

“Now if the consequences of all these rhetorical statements was an assassination bid on Trump’s life, why will it be any different in India?” Malviya said in a debate on India Today television channel. On X, Malviya described attempts on Modi’s life in the past, including bombs at a rally in 2013.

Congress leaders hit back, calling the claims “cheap politics” and pointing to the assassinations of their own icons, including Mohandas K. Gandhi, popularly known as Mahatma, and former Congress prime ministers Indira Gandhi and her son, Rajiv.

Trump and Modi famously got along, and the two visited each other’s countries, including the “Howdy Modi” rally in Texas in 2019 and the Namaste Trump tour in India in 2020.

But the economic relationship was bumpy, and foreign policy experts in India say that a second Trump administration would probably put more pressure on India to open up its economy.

For India’s right-wing supporters, the photos of Trump’s fist in the air was seen as a rallying cry. “This man almost 80, after taking several bullets gets up punching fist screams ‘Hail America’ will win this election. That’s right-wing, never start a fight but be the one to close it,” said Kangana Ranaut, BJP member of Parliament and Bollywood actress, on Instagram, adding that “leftists are clearly getting desperate.”

But for Gupta, the founder of Hindu Sena, BJP leaders are being too shy about stating the whole truth, and he unabashedly blamed the assassination attempt on those who are in cahoots with “jihadi terrorists.”

Vedmurtinand Saraswati, the head priest at the ceremony, said he read the former president’s horoscope Monday and found that Trump will return to the presidency with a higher mandate than 2016.

This is not the first time the group has sought to help Trump. In 2016, Saraswati and Gupta held prayers in support of Trump and read his horoscope, which accurately predicted a win.

“All the English-speaking television anchors laughed at us,” Gupta said, “but once election day came, they became serious.”