Speaking to CNBC-TV18, Dhume said recent rhetoric and policy actions from Washington had unsettled public opinion in India, even as Rubio attempted to steady the relationship during meetings with Prime Minister Narendra Modi and External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar.
“I think it’s very clear that over the past year or so, US-India ties have lost momentum,” Dhume said. “It’s also very clear that large sections of public opinion in India have been quite shaken by what they’ve seen as hostile statements and hostile actions emanating from Washington.”
Rubio, who described India as one of Washington’s most important strategic partners during a joint conference with Jaishankar, pushed back against suggestions that bilateral ties had weakened. He also expressed confidence that a trade agreement between the two countries could be finalised within weeks.
Dhume, however, said Rubio’s outreach should be viewed in the context of his diplomatic role. “He has to say what he has to say; that’s his job,” Dhume noted, while adding that Rubio remains one of the few figures within the US administration capable of repairing the relationship.
“This is a deep relationship. There have been 25 years of building it,” he said. “If there’s anyone in the US government who can actually set about repairing this, I would say it would be someone like Secretary of State Marco Rubio.”
The comments come at a sensitive time for India-US relations, with concerns growing in India over American trade rhetoric, visa restrictions and recent political messaging from Washington. US President Donald Trump recently endorsed a social media post referring to India as a “hellhole”, even as he later praised bilateral ties during a virtual address at an event hosted by the US Embassy in India.
Dhume also warned that Indian technology firms and professionals should prepare for a tougher US immigration environment, saying the H-1B visa programme is unlikely to revert to the more liberal framework seen during previous administrations.
“It’s very clear that the MAGA movement that elected Donald Trump is hostile to immigration,” he said. “There was a belief in certain quarters that it was hostile only to illegal immigration and not to legal immigration.”
Rubio had earlier clarified that recent changes to visa and green card policies were not targeted specifically at India and were part of a broader overhaul of the immigration system. But Dhume argued that domestic American politics had fundamentally changed the environment surrounding skilled-worker visas.
“I personally think that the odds of the H-1B going back to what it was like during the Biden era, or before that, are very, very slim,” he said.
The remarks come amid reports showing a sharp drop in new H-1B visa approvals involving major Indian IT companies, including Infosys, Tata Consultancy Services and Cognizant.
Dhume also suggested that some Indian outsourcing firms may have stretched the original intent of the programme, even if they had not violated any laws. “The US is rebooting it,” he said.
On broader strategic issues, Dhume expressed scepticism over the future significance of the Quad grouping involving India, the US, Japan and Australia. His comments come ahead of the Quad foreign ministers’ meeting scheduled in New Delhi.
“The signal it sends is that the Quad is less important to the US than it used to be,” he said, pointing to the absence of a Quad summit since Trump returned to office and Washington’s growing focus on rebuilding ties with China.
Rubio, however, described the Quad as an important alignment of four countries capable of shaping global developments and reiterated that India remains central to America’s Indo-Pacific strategy.
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The diplomatic outreach also comes against the backdrop of ongoing US-Iran negotiations. Trump has said talks with Tehran are “proceeding nicely” and insisted there would either be “a great deal or no deal at all”. Iran, meanwhile, has maintained that progress has been made but no agreement is imminent.
Dhume said the ideal outcome would be an Iran that abandons nuclear ambitions and allows full commercial movement through the Strait of Hormuz, one of the world’s most critical energy shipping routes.
“The best-case scenario for the world would be an Iran that gives up any ambition to own nuclear weapons, opens the Strait of Hormuz, and allows shipping to resume,” he said.
