India, Feb. 19 -- History often surprises us with impossible parallels. In today's turbulent geopolitical landscape, two seemingly unrelated figures - US President Donald J Trump and India's Leader of the Opposition, Rahul Gandhi -are, in their own ways, responding to a shared seismic shift: the rise of a confident, nationalist India that no longer seeks validation from old power centres, whether at home or abroad.

One individual, rooted in transactional values, speaks from the vantage point of a superpower accustomed to commanding global deference. The other, bearing the entitlement of a political dynasty that once ruled India as its fiefdom, mistook Western approval for diplomacy. Their personalities differ, their vocabularies diverge,...