India poll: A view from Pakistan

Though fear-mongering about the BJP’s prime ministerial candidate and his Hindu nationalist credentials continues, many in Pakistan are of the opinion that a strong leader like Narendra Modi will, in fact, be good for bilateral relations

It is easy to see why John Oliver’s satirical take on the Indian election has gone viral in this country. The British comedian chastises the American media for ignoring the world’s largest democratic exercise and pokes fun at the apparent ‘Fox-ification’ of Indian media. Finally, he notes that the last time America heard a rags to riches story about a tea-seller boy from India, it threw an Oscar at it. This some may say is of the most sane commentaries on the Indian general election to have been produced by Western media.

But jokes apart, there has been much high commentary in the Western media about the Indian general election and expectedly much of it has focussed on Narendra Modi — widely expected to sweep the polls and become Prime Minister later this month. Several foreign magazines have written, often in depth, about Mr Modi, commonly described as a Hindu nationalist leader, and their reportage is used at home to gauge the ‘support’ (or the lack of it) that the BJP’s prime ministerial candidate enjoys on the international platform. Especially given Mr Modi’s chequered past with the West — the US denied him a visa for allegedly ‘sponsoring’ the 2002 violence in Gujarat and Europe effectively blacklisted him until recently — the coverage of his candidacy in the foreign Press has evoked much domestic interest.

And so it is no surprise that The Financial Times’s full throated endorsement of Mr Modi is the talking point this week much like The Economist’s criticism last month created ripples in Delhi’s commentariat. But while the attention paid to first world media is understandable, there has unfortunately been almost no focus in India on how Mr Modi is perceived by some of our immediate neighbours.

Let us take a look at Pakistan: As expected, sections of the Establishment there continue to take a belligerent line against Mr Modi and indeed, there is much fear mongering about him in the media as well. The most recent example of this is, of course, Interior Minister Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan’s statement that, if elected as India’s Prime Minister, Mr Modi will “destabilise” regional peace. The harsh comment was in response to Mr Modi’s statement on underworld don Dawood Ibrahim whose residence in Karachi is an open secret but for Mr Khan it was “touching last limit of enmity towards Pakistan”. Similarly, writing in The News newspaper, South Asia analyst Brian Cloughley warns in his April 14 article that, “it’s unlikely he’ll (Modi) be good for relations with Pakistan. The former tea-boy is a bellicose ultra-nationalist... Pakistan had better be prepared for sparks to fly.”

Such analysis is common but there has also been a tempering of the anti-Modi narrative in Pakistan. A good example of this is former Pakistani Ambassador to the UN Munir Akram’s article in The Dawn newspaper. He writes, that given the “disenchantment with the Congress party Government’s economic policies and performance, and Modi’s reputed credentials as an effective and business-friendly administrator”, Mr Modi is “being mainstreamed”.

He too warns that, “Modi’s rehabilitation... has potentially serious implications for Pakistan” as “although Modi has moderated his anti-Muslim rhetoric... he and the BJP could revert to the Hindu hardline if needed to secure their core fundamentalist base... leading to an early crisis in India-Pakistan relations.” 

Further, Mr Akram opines that a BJP victory will foment violent social unrest in India for which Pakistan will be blamed, “unleashing another crisis in bilateral relations”. Interestingly at the end of his article, he tones down and advises the Pakistani Government “not to take a public position against Modi or the BJP” and “open a security dialogue with India”.

A similar sense of duality is reflected in Amir Mateen’s piece in The News wherein the author notes that while, “Questions lurk about how Modi will impact India’s secularism; if he will escalate tension between India and Pakistan and roll back the existing confidence-building measures; how he might resort to jingoism in Kashmir, interfere in Balochistan or restart a proxy war in Afghanistan… not all Pakistanis think the same way. Tiny Pakistani intellectual elite also sees better chance of détente under a strong BJP leader than was possible under a weak Manmohan Singh.”

Interestingly, in recent weeks, Islamabad’s new envoy in New Delhi has walked the extra mile in favour of Mr Modi. After Mr Modi said in an interview that he will carry forward the foreign policy legacy of the BJP’s last Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee who took bilateral ties to a new high inspite of a military conflict, Pakistani High Commissioner Abdul Basit said he was “encouraged” by those remarks. Notably, he also downplayed Bihar BJP leader Giriraj Singh’s obnoxious comment that those who opposed Mr Modi would be sent to Pakistan. That statement played on the worst kind of political prejudices associated with the saffron party and, by dismissing it as high-pitched rhetoric, High Commissioner Basit made clear that he and his Government were not going to be taken in by the sound and fury characteristic of most elections.

Also, earlier this week, the Delhi correspondent of The Telegraph reported that senior Pakistani diplomats had said that Pakistan “wants the controversial Hindu nationalist Narendra Modi to become India’s next Prime Minister because it believes he will provide the strong leadership necessary for peace talks”. This, the paper noted was a considerable shift in the official line as put out by Mr Sartaj Aziz, Pakistan’s national security adviser and de facto Foreign Minister. In a previous interview, Mr Aziz had said that his Government was willing to “deal with” Mr Modi. Now, Pakistani diplomats say, that Mr Modi is in fact, “Islamabad’s preferred choice”. According to The Telegraph, Pakistani officials are hoping to grant India ‘Most Favoured Nation’ status which they hope will not only incentivise New Delhi to begin a fresh dialogue but also provide Mr Modi, who is known for his business-friendly policies, “an opportunity to open new talks without appearing weak”.

Of course, given India’s previous experience with Pakistan, be it with regard to peace talks or MFN status, these statements must be taken with more than just a pinch of salt. But that does not diminish the fact that this line of thinking, even if it is restricted to only a segment of the Pakistani establishment, is a positive development.

(This article was published in the op-ed section of The Pioneer on May 1, 2014)