The bonhomie displayed between Prime Minister Narendra Modi and US President Donald Trump in Houston creates favourable optics for better ties between the two countries. The two leaders certainly seem to have a lot more in common than the world has known thus far. What the cheering crowd of supporters clearly appreciated on Sunday is a particular penchant for unconventionality and defying the tedium of norm and tradition.

Even then, PM Modi’s endorsement of President Trump for a second term in office strikes a discordant note and effectively jeopardises India’s position if America were to vote a Democrat to power next year. “We in India connected well with President Trump and with the words of candidate Trump, ‘Ab ki baar Trump sarkar (elect Trump again)’ rang loud and clear,” said the PM, rhyming with his own election slogan ‘Ab ki baar Modi sarkar’.

For a visiting foreign head to so casually meddle in another country’s domestic politics is not just inappropriate, it is downright irresponsible and imprudent. The PM’s finely honed political instincts may be signalling Trump’s return to Oval Office but diplomacy dictates a tempered approach. Regardless of the PM’s psephological calculations, it sets a dangerous precedent for India to align so unambiguously with the Republicans.

Elected prime ministers, Jawaharlal Nehru most notably among them, have undoubtedly chartered India’s foreign policy course. Their personality and individual ideological inclinations may also have nudged it in specific directions. But never has any head of government crossed the line in the time-honoured tradition of steering clear of partisan politics in another country. The PM is well within his authority to forge closer ties with the US even if the strategic wisdom of such unreserved devotion as was showered on Trump in Houston gets questioned in some quarters, especially in the context of the intense trade war between the US and China. What he ought to restrain is the urge to endorse Trump in an election year.

There is a reason why leaders of Nehru and Atal Behari Vajpayee’s stature followed diplomatic decorum. Temperance may not suit the PM’s style but India would be better served by institutional memory in the Ministry of External Affairs and the Prime Minister’s Office, the next time the Prime Minister is tempted to address a large audience abroad.