Fresh Winds May Blow Soon

Manmohan Singh and the Government he has only nominally led have frittered away the robust Vajpayee legacy in foreign affairs. If the BJP comes to power with Narendra Modi as Prime Minister, it could bring tectonic, positive changes in the country’s international relations

 In recent weeks, at least two prominent Indian commentators have opined that if Mr Narendra Modi becomes Prime Minister, as is widely expected, his biggest impact will be felt not so much on India’s economic policy but its foreign policy agenda. On April 9, soon after the BJP released its election manifesto, Firstpost editor R Jagannathan observed, “If Modi were to become PM, foreign and security policy could be in for another churn”, and go through a “sea change”. The same day, C Raja Mohan, one of the country’s most respected journalists and foreign policy analysts, wrote in The Indian Express that the “vagueness” in the BJP manifesto should allow Mr Modi “considerable freedom to put his own stamp on India’s foreign policy”. 

The focus on Mr Modi in the foreign policy sphere is interesting, given that the BJP’s prime ministerial candidate does not have a particularly active profile in this regard. Almost all his time as a senior politician has been spent in Gujarat and he has no experience with the processes that guide India’s engagement with the world. To the casual observer, he may, therefore, seem like an untested hand in foreign policy matters, and more so since Mr Modi has focussed only limited attention on the subject during his election campaign. This is not unusual since  foreign policy is hardly a talking point during elections.

But even as Mr Modi holds the cards close to him in this case, comparisons with Mr Atal Bihari Vajpayee have already begun. The last BJP Prime Minister, Mr Vajpayee is credited with taking India’s foreign policy to new highs — he tested nuclear weapons that initially led to international sanctions but eventually brought India nuclear legitimacy; he significantly improved the country’s relations with Pakistan despite the process being disrupted by the Kargil conflict; the joint declaration with China that he signed during his landmark trip to the Middle Kingdom in 2003 still forms the basic framework for border dispute talks; and, finally, it was under his leadership that New Delhi shrugged off its Cold War inhibitions and vitalised ties with the US. Indeed, when Mr Vajpayee demitted the Prime Minister’s Office, he left his successor a rich legacy of global engagement.

Unfortunately, Mr Manmohan Singh and the Government he only nominally led frittered away that legacy in this past decade. As the BJP manifesto notes, “The Congress-led UPA has failed to establish enduring friendly and cooperative relations with India’s neighbours. India’s relations with traditional allies have turned cold. India and its neighbours have drifted apart”. In response, the BJP has vowed to “build a strong, self-reliant and self-confident India” that will “regain its rightful place in the comity of nations”.

This has been interpreted by many as indicative of a “muscular” foreign policy under Mr Modi, although what exactly that means is unclear. What can be expected though is that, if Mr Modi takes up the top job, he will be a strong and decisive leader and craft a foreign policy that furthers the country’s “best national interests” (to use a phrase from the manifesto). 

Similarly, analysts have also been talking about what the BJP means when it says that it will “create a web of allies to mutually further our interests”. Does this mean India may shed its non-alignment policies under Mr Modi? This is highly unlikely. In recent years, India has forged a series of strategic partnerships with different countries while still holding onto its strategic autonomy. There is no reason to believe that a Modi-led Government will stray from that path. However, one can expect a greater emphasis on India’s role as an Asian power — particularly in the strengthening of relations with Japan, China and, to a lesser extent, Singapore and South Korea. 

India’s relations with Japan are already on the upswing and will get another big push if Mr Modi comes to power. Japan has been doing a lot of business with Mr Modi’s Gujarat and those experiences will be carried forward to the national level. Also, Mr Modi has a close personal relationship with Mr Shinzo Abe, the staunchly pro-India Prime Minister of Japan. In 2007, during his first term as Prime Minister, Mr Abe gave a warm welcome to Mr Modi in Tokyo; when Mr Modi returned to Japan in 2012, Mr Abe was in the Opposition, but the duo still met; months later in December that year, when Mr Abe returned to power, Mr Modi personally called to congratulate — a noticeable event given that Mr Modi was not a national leader.  Moreover, both men are portrayed as nationalists focussed on the country’s economic resurgence which makes their partnership almost natural.  

As regards China, alarmists have already raised red flags about Mr Modi’s comments, made in Arunachal Pradesh, on protecting India’s territorial integrity. They have been quick to assume that this means India may take on a provocative stance against China, which it can ill-afford, even though the Chinese themselves dismissed the statements as catering to domestic concerns during an election campaign. Also, there is reason enough to assume that under his leadership, India’s relations with China will realise their full potential, especially in trade. Mr Modi has travelled to China four times already and, in 2011, was received in the Great Hall of the People, a landmark event largely ignored by the Indian media.  

The BJP manifesto also says, “Instead of being led by Big Power interests, we will engage proactively on our own with countries in the neighbourhood and beyond.” This again has been interpreted as a snub to the West, particularly the US which finds no mention in the manifesto. But before reading too much into it, let’s not forget that no other country is individually named in the manifesto. Also, given Mr Modi’s reputation as a realist politician, one can be reasonably sure that he will not allow relations between the two countries to deteriorate on his watch. If anything, given Mr Modi’s emphasis on economic ties, one can expect a significant strengthening of trade relations between the two countries which have plateaued in recent years. However, the US’s earlier insult of Mr Modi will remain in the backdrop — so do not be surprised if he drops by Tehran on his way to Washington, DC.

Finally, there has been a lot of hullabaloo over the BJP’s promise to design an “independent strategic nuclear programme” by updating the current doctrine in keeping with the challenges of time. This was being widely seen as the party’s code for junking the ‘no first use’ principle; and Modi-baiters conveniently used this to fuel fears of ‘war-mongering’ by the man commonly described as a ‘Hindu nationalist strongman’ — no matter that there is consensus across India’s strategic community that the NFU needs to be revisited at the earliest.

Their bubble of vacuous commentary burst as soon as BJP president Rajnath Singh put to rest all speculation about the NFU being revised. It remains unclear why Mr Singh made such a definitive statement; the nuclear doctrine is not a major electoral plank — but it is hoped that, if Mr Modi comes to power, he will update India’s nuclear policy, as promised in his party manifesto.

(This op-ed was published in The Pioneer on April 17, 2014)