Prime Minister Narendra Modi has claimed that while earlier we were distanced from everybody, under him we are now friends with everybody. Since Modi has been in charge of foreign policy for 10 years, let us compare his 10 years with Jawaharlal Nehru’s first 10 years.
Nehru set out on uncharted territory. The world was divided into two warring camps and every other country had joined one or the other. We were the first colony to emerge from imperial bondage. Hence, while “we look(ed) upon the world with clear and friendly eyes”, our foreign policy had to be as independent as our newly won domestic independence. Moreover, it had to be based on the values that had informed our unique freedom struggle: fierce opposition to all forms of domination but through non-violence. An early manifestation of independent thought and action was our voting against the partition of Palestine despite being neither Arab nor Muslim, for partition solves nothing, it only aggravates hatred and bitterness.
Both camps initially looked on our independent stand with suspicion but shortly came to realise that without an honest peace-broker nothing could be resolved. And India became that peace-broker, whether by chairing the Neutral Nations Repatriation Commission in 1953 that led to armistice in the Korean peninsula or by being trusted by all belligerents to conclude the Geneva Accords in 1954 without even being a formal participant in the talks. Nehru’s envoy, V.K. Krishna Menon, managed it simply by making himself available for mediation and ironing out misunderstandings between the contending parties. It led to Nehru’s India helming all three International Commissions of Control and Supervision in Indochina. Nehru, thus, emerged as the world’s much-needed man of peace and the world turned to India to lead UN peace-keeping forces in Gaza after the Suez war of 1956, in Cyprus, and in Congo.
So convinced were the sceptics in both camps about India’s indispensability in a divided world that when Nehru went to the US in 1949, he was received with great warmth and honour. And when he visited China in 1954 and the Soviet Union in 1955, millions lined the streets to greet him. India’s profile in the world had, and has, never been greater.
Meanwhile, Nehru’s India took the lead in vigorously advocating and diligently promoting global decolonisation. Virtually every emerging nation of Asia, Africa and Latin America, even Yugoslavia in Europe, followed the Nehruvian lead in proclaiming non-alignment as the core of their foreign policy. Where we started out all alone, two-thirds of the UN member-states followed in our wake. And Modi claims we were distanced from everybody?
What is Modi’s ten-year record in foreign policy? He has wrecked our relationships in the neighbourhood, putting the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) in deep freeze, aggravating hostility with Pakistan, overplaying the Sheikh Hasina card in Bangladesh, and alienating Nepal by grossly, but unsuccessfully, interfering in their internal affairs, especially during their delicate process of Constitution-making. He ended 35 years of peace and tranquillity with China by whispering one thing in Xi Jinping’s ear and quite another in the US president’s. Palestinians just don’t trust us anymore and Benjamin Netanyahu, with whom Modi expressed “total solidarity”, faces charges of genocide in Gaza.
On the war in Ukraine, Modi has reduced foreign policy to a bearhug with Vladimir Putin without mentioning the U word and another bearhug to Volodymyr Zelensky without mentioning the R word. Because we now lack the courage to make our stand clear, Zelensky slams India the minute Modi flies out of Kyiv. Foreign policy does not mean being everything to everybody. It means having the courage to stand up for the choice you have made. Modi lacks that courage and thinks he can make up for it by engineering overseas Indians to rally to his personality cult.
Aiyar is a former Union minister and social commentator.