New Delhi, Jan. 22 -- As the 2020 US presidential elections were heating up, former President Donald Trump paid a quick visit to India where he was feted by a cheering crowd of about 125,000 at an Ahmedabad stadium, appealing to his visions of greatness and grandeur.

He got Prime Minister Narendra Modi's famous bearhug in New Delhi and Washington, and his popularity, rated on confidence levels by a Pew Research Poll released around that time, was 56 per cent in India, far higher than the Gallup Poll average rating of 41 per cent in the US.

Strutting with the prime minister in India and in Houston at a Modi event, he revelled in the reflected adulation of the masses. That was the acme of ties with India for a mercurial man swayed by emot...