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27-04-2026
Bureau Report
NEW DELHI: Comments shared by United States President Donald Trump referring to India as a “hellhole” were “in poor taste” and at odds with the countries’ relationship, an Indian official has said.
Trump did not make the remark himself, but reposted it without comment on his Truth Social account on Thursday. The statement came from conservative radio host Michael Savage.
Criticizing US birthright citizenship which Trump has sought to restrict, Savage said, “A baby here becomes an instant citizen, and then they bring the entire family in from China or India or some other hellhole on the planet.”
Reacting late on Thursday, India’s Foreign Ministry spokesperson Randhir Jaiswal said the remark was “obviously uninformed, inappropriate and in poor taste”.
The comments “certainly do not reflect the reality of the India-US relationship, which has long been based on mutual respect and shared interests”, Jaiswal added.
The US Embassy in New Delhi said, “The president has said ‘India is a great country with a very good friend of mine at the top’.”
China’s Foreign Ministry did not immediately comment on the matter.
‘Hurts every Indian’
India’s main opposition Congress party called the “hellhole” remark “extremely insulting and anti-India. It hurts every Indian”.
“Prime Minister Narendra Modi should take up this matter with the US President and register a strong objection,” the party said on social media.
Indian government data shows nearly 5.5 million people of Indian origin live in the US Indian Americans and Chinese Americans are the biggest groups of Asian origin in the US.
Savage’s comment, shared by Trump, continued: “There’s almost no loyalty to this country amongst the immigrant class coming in today, which was not always the case. No, they’re not like the European Americans of today and their ancestors.”
Trump and Modi enjoyed warm ties during Trump’s first term, but relations cooled after India was hit last year with some of the highest US tariffs, many of which were rolled back this year.
India and the US are now working on a trade deal aimed at preventing any renewed tariff increases and boosting sales to each other.
Trump has repeatedly used insulting language to refer to foreign nations and immigrant communities, including recently calling Somali immigrants “garbage”.
In 2018, Trump made global headlines for referring to El Salvador, Haiti and African nations as “s**thole countries”.
United States President Donald Trump has announced what he described as a “trade deal” with India to reduce market barriers between the two countries, which have a combined gross domestic product of $33 trillion.
On Monday, Trump said he would reduce trade tariffs on Indian goods from 50 to 18 percent after New Delhi agreed to stop buying Russian oil one of the major sticking points between the two sides.
Trump said he reached the agreement with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi in a telephone call. The agreement comes at the end of the first year of Trump’s global trade war of which India had been one of the worst casualties and which had seen relations between the two countries fall to new lows in recent months.
On Tuesday, India’s commerce minister, Priyush Goyal, confirmed that the two countries would sign a deal “shortly”. A joint statement will be released when the final details have been agreed, he said. However, he gave no further details about the contents of the agreement.
