Published on The Asian Age (http://www.asianage.com/columnists/foreign-policy-worthy-indian-dream-576)
By editor
Created 17 Jan 2014
Who in India would disagree with Saudi Arabia’s ideology being a ‘threat to the world’? While the BJP has little understanding of the Islamic world, Modi perhaps has even less so.
Who in India would disagree with Saudi Arabia’s ideology being a ‘threat to the world’? While the BJP has little understanding of the Islamic world, Modi perhaps has even less so.
The year 2014 has seen the public discourse in India shift to internal political drama, even turning the Devyani Khobragade saga into India, like the proverbial David, catapulting diplomatic pebbles at Goliath-like US. The rise of the Aam Aadmi Party stole television time from a resurgent Bharatiya Janata Party under “I-have-a-dream” Narendra Modi and the Congress’ “I-do-not-want-power” Rahul Gandhi.
The AAP now plans to contest national elections, due in less than five months. For the third time in independent India’s history a popular upsurge is propelling new political players onto the national stage. Earlier this happened in 1978, when Indira Gandhi, lifting Emergency, called elections, and again in 1989 when Vishwanath Pratap Singh, resigning from the Union Cabinet over corruption, reaped a storm of popular discontent to oust Rajiv Gandhi. Both experiments ended in disaster, the second even resulting in economic meltdown.
The worry is that, distracted by the domestic drama, the Indian political elite may allow the external environment to shape itself irrespective of its impact on Indian interests. Two elements are significant: the rise of China and the mushrooming of radical Islam. President Park Geun-hye of the Republic of Korea is visiting India from January 15-18. Ten days later Prime Minister Shinzo Abe of Japan will be the chief guest at the Republic Day parade. Two important nations on the periphery of China are engaging India seriously. The Republic of Korea will discuss the stalled $12 billion Posco project and cooperation in civil nuclear energy. Japan wants to enlarge its investment footprint in India and move towards closer engagement in the military and security areas. Both these visits impinge on shared concerns about China and a stable future security order in Asia.
The second element to be factored into Indian policy-making is radical Islam. The issue can be trivialised like the former home secretary R.K. Singh throwing cheap punches at his former boss or it can be seriously examined by all political parties and prime ministerial aspirants. The Islamic world has borne the impact of three developments in the last few years: the survival and re-emergence of Al Qaeda; the hope of the Arab Spring as its antidote dissipating with developments in Syria and Egypt; and the Shia-Sunni rivalry complicated by the US-Iran nuclear engagement.
Indian foreign policy is currently in the second phase of its growth. The first was non-alignment during the Cold War. The second began with the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1990 and the Indian economic meltdown in 1991. Is it a coincidence that it took cataclysmic events to force India to a new path of pragmatism, still wrapped in old labels, but in effect re-balancing India’s relations with the US, the West and their old allies in the Asean, to India’s East?
The rise of China and the spread of Saudi patented radical Islam lurk on the Indian periphery without yet a serious debate on recalibration of Indian, foreign and domestic policies to deal with them. On China, Congress follows careful engagement, gentle balancing by low-key cooperation with countries on the Chinese periphery that share Indian concerns and scepticism. The BJP largely followed the same policy under the leadership of Prime Minister A.B. Vajpayee and his chief aide Brajesh Mishra, who was an old China hand. However, there is a body of opinion amongst Indian Marxists and businessmen, seeking Chinese goods and capital, that India should open the door to China even while China continues to arm Pakistan and squeeze India along its entire periphery. Is a different calibration of India’s China policy possible? India needs an approach that is fearless and yet non-provocative, principled without being prescriptive, and thus seen in Asia and beyond as India’s soft power backed by military muscle.
The US engagement with Iran, which began with the US accepting Russian mediation for the Syrian regime surrendering chemical weapons, and was essentially a face-saver for the US, is rewriting many existing paradigms. US secretary of state John Kerry has been crusading for a settlement between Israel and Palestinians, moving on a track parallel to the nuclear parleys with Iran and the forthcoming Geneva II meeting on Syria. The eventual death of Ariel Sharon, former Israeli Prime Minister, man of war and then of peace, symbolises that the past is evaporating. Israeli defence minister Moshe ‘Bogie’ Ya’alon called Mr Kerry “obsessive” and “messianic”. “Let him take the Nobel Prize and leave us be,” he added.
Separately Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, talking to the Iranian foreign minister Javed Sharif, characterised the Saudi political and religious ideology as a “threat to the world.” Who in India would disagree with the Syrian assessment? The problem is that while the BJP has little understanding of the Islamic world, their prime ministerial candidate perhaps has even less so. The Malayalee and Muslim lobbies, with votes and remittances ensured by pleasing the expatriates in the Gulf, drive the Congress obsession with the GCC countries, particularly Saudi Arabia. All recent accounts from and about Pakistan surmise that Barelvis/Sufis are beleaguered by the growth and aggression of the Deobandis/Ahle Hadith. Shias are being targeted to homogenise the belief around the regressive Saudi variant of desert-based puritanism. That Mulayam Singh Yadav or Behen Mayawati or Didi Mamata etc will understand these dilemmas is too much to seek as their votebanks will drive their perception, not potential challenges to India. Whether the AAP can quickly weave complex economic and strategic themes into their discourse for the Lok Sabha elections remains to be seen. Otherwise India is facing a third popular revolution frittering away the public desire for change and fulfilment of an “Indian dream”, which politicians with fractured visions neither comprehend nor seek.
The writer is a former secretary in the external affairs ministry. He tweets at @ambkcsingh
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