April 22, 2014
There are over 6 million Indian citizens working in the Middle East. That is more than the population of Finland. This provides some context as to why India has now actively started to build its relations further with the region. It also raises the question as to why it has waited for so long to do so.
Trade between the two regions is expansive. India receives over $35 billion per annum in remittances from the Gulf. Combined, the Middle East is the country’s largest trading partner and cities like Dubai are sometimes in humour called the “fifth metropolis of India.”
Throughout the 1950s and 60s, India took the initiative to engage with the Arab world, building strong ties with countries such as Egypt. In fact, India’s first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru and Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser shared a great personal friendship and were pivotal in setting up the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM). India’s engagement with the region became strained during the 1970s after many Arab nations (and even Iran) gave support to Pakistan over the Kashmir crisis. However, in the subsequent years relations began to normalize, and trade started to flourish. After India liberalised its economy in the early 1990s, its appetite for oil increased significantly, and the Middle East became the biggest suppliers, quenching New Delhi’s energy thirst. Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah’s visits to India and China in 2006 were pivotal events, equally from Riyadh’s side as from New Delhi’s and Beijing’s. From 2006 onwards, India has seen a dramatic increase in relations, both political and economic, with the larger West Asian region, including Israel and Iran.
Over the past few years, India has started to see the long-overdue evolution of its relations with the Arab world, moving from economic and diplomatic exchanges to strategic partnerships. Under the rubric of being a “non-interventionist” nation, India had managed to remain an ambivalent power in the region mostly concerned with its need to secure oil supplies. This explained India’s ties with Saddam Hussein. During the first Gulf War, India was the only country to shift its high commission out of Kuwait City to the southern Iraqi city of Basra as Iraqi forces invaded Kuwait. Asked why India did not condemn Iraqi aggression, an Indian diplomat said that “condemnation was not part of India’s nature.”
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