US Secretary of State Marco Rubio heads to India this weekend doing something he has not done yet -- a multi-city tour of a country where he will seek to build ties beyond government meetings in the capital.

But in the backdrop to Rubio's visit lies a question -- how does India, long courted by the United States, figure in the norms-shattering and highly personalised worldview of President Donald Trump?

Since the late 1990s, US presidents across party lines have put a top priority on wooing India, overlooking disagreements out of a conviction, believed firmly if stated discreetly, that the world's largest democracy would serve as an ideal counterweight to a rising China.