THE POWER OF YOGA AND GOOD PR

The Modi Government deserves full credit for launching the International Yoga Day and celebrating India’s soft power. But the related talk about India redefining its global role and position will be just that, if not buttressed by at least a decade of double digit economic growth 

Now that the International Day Yoga is well behind us and our newsfeeds are slightly less crowded by photos of people doing yoga in the far corners of the world, it is time to take a holistic, larger-picture view of the event and see what it really means for India in terms of securing national interests abroad and promoting public priorities at home. First, the fact that the Government has been able to successfully deliver this project in a relatively short time is important in its own right. The Government gains more confidence from the domestic public, which has suffered under a near paralysed regime in recent years. At the international level, such an initiative helps announce India’s reinvigorated presence under a new regime. 

In recent years, India has been reluctant to take on a global leadership role, even though after independence it had sought to position itself as the voice of the newly-decolonised developing world. IYD marks a change in that approach. It is a good start towards becoming a more visible power although it is still too early to say if this will result in India pursuing a more determined and purposeful foreign policy on hard issues such as humanitarian interventions and multi-lateral trade pacts. The second major takeaway from IYD is the cultural narrative that it has generated. IYD helps India take effective ownership of one of its most important civilisational contributions to mankind. It is also the distinctive trademark of a Government that is unabashed about its indigenous identity. Put together, these factors have led to IYD being hailed as a potent symbol of Indian soft power. This is fine but it’s important to issue a cautionary note: Soft power means little, if it is not backed by hard power in terms of economic growth and military might.

This is where the Modi Government still needs to fill in the blanks. While it deserves full credit for the diplomatic success that was the IYD, let there be no illusions that all the talk about India reclaiming its position and redefining its global role will be just that, if not buttressed by at least a decade of accelerated economic growth in the double digits. Yes, the Modi Government has kickstarted the reforms process necessary for development and progress, but there is still a long way to go and many already feel that it is not doing enough. This raises the question: Should the Government be spending its precious resources on promoting soft power when its hard priorities are still to be addressed? There is no one correct answer here, especially since this is not a zero sum equation. But it’s important to ensure that the Government does not conflate putting up a good show with good governance.

The people see through that. Also, it is important to understand the limits of soft power in achieving hard goals. For example, China was one of the first co-sponsors for the IYD resolution at the UN but that did not stop Beijing from also blocking India’s efforts at the UN to censure Pakistan for releasing 26/11 mastermind Zaki-ur-Rehman Lakhvi. In this, China was guided by its own hard-nosed geo-political imperatives, primarily propping up Pakistan as a foil to India in South Asia. Similarly, there is nothing to suggest that America will give any concessions to India, in say, defence negotiations or US visas for Indian workers, even though the US is the second home of yoga. 

Let us also keep in mind that Indian soft power is not a new phenomenon. Long before the Modi Government launched the International Yoga Day, Swami Vivekananda had taken yoga, along with Eastern spirituality, to the West. Today, yoga is practiced all over the world. It is a multi-billion dollar industry and universally acknowledged as an Indian export. Almost all of this has happened organically at the people-to-people level. Bollywood has also been an important source for Indian soft power. The Indian diaspora has played a crucial role in giving Hindi films a large overseas market. Indian films in general are quite popular in the sub-continent. Similarly, Indian fashion, cuisine, the arts and literature all have a global footprint. India’s vibrant pluralistic democracy offers yet another source of soft power. But while each of these may have won the Indian people much goodwill and admiration around the world, they haven’t really helped further Indian interests per se.

In fact, studies show that despite the country’s increasing soft power around world, global opinion about India hasn’t really changed as much as it could have. A 2006 survey by the Chicago Council on Global Affairs showed that American attitudes towards India, for example, were in fact slightly negative. On major foreign policy concerns for India — such as a permanent position at the UN Security Council, the involvement of foreign troops in India-Pakistan conflicts and global trade practices — there was little support from the American public. A 2012 Pew Global Attitudes survey that looked at how India’s neighbours viewed the country produced a mixed record. Analysts from Bangladesh and Sri Lanka observed a “trust deficit”; those from Pakistan and Nepal criticised India for having a big brother attitude. Only Bhutan and Afghanistan had strongly positive views of India. 

Princeton scholar Rohan Mukherjee adds more depth to this study. He argues that “the impact of a country’s culture and domestic institutions” can be measured in the number of individuals visiting the country for education, immigration and tourism. In each of these cases, he finds that “although the influx of international students, migrants, and tourists has been growing over time, it is still far short of the pull that other major powers exert on these international flows.” He also notes that, “A similar picture emerges when one looks at India’s relative attractiveness as a destination for investors, a metric that speaks to the quality of India’s domestic institutions, political culture, and business climate”.

One important reason for this poor show is that post Nehru, the Indian Government did not much of make an effort to incorporate soft power as a foreign policy tool. It is only in the past two decades or so, since liberalisation in the 1990s, that the state has again taken an interest in promoting India’s soft power. In 2004, the Ministry of Overseas Indian Affairs was set up to manage relations with the Indian diaspora and in 2006, the public diplomacy division under the Ministry of External Affairs was established. The Indian Council for Cultural Relations has been around since the 1950s but its centres around the world are not a patch, on say, China’s Confucius Institutes that came up much later but already have a much bigger global footprint. And there’s nothing in India to even begin the comparison with America’s Peace Corps, the UK’s British Council, France’s Alliance Francaise and Germany’s Goethe Institut. If Prime Minister Narendra Modi is serious about Indian soft power, this is a good place to start. 

(This article was published in the op-ed section of The Pioneer on June 25, 2015)

Gateway to a Bright Future

Building Tripura’s trade ties with Bangladesh is part of India’s efforts at boosting friendly neighbourly relations. This will help integrate the rest of North East into Indian economy and open way for trade with South East Asia

Generally, political freedom betters economic opportunities. However, there are cases when newly independent regions find themselves worse off. This is what happened to India’s North East in 1947. The country gained Independence from British rule and awoke to “life and freedom” as India’s first Prime Minister put it, but Partition and the consequent establishment of East Pakistan (liberated in 1971 to become modern-day Bangladesh) meant a large part of the new nation found itself cut-off from the ‘mainland’, almost overnight. 

The erstwhile kingdom of Tripuri received a raw deal. Part of the ancient kingdom directly under the British crown became present-day Bangladesh in 1947 while the rest of it joined the Union of India in 1949. So Tripura, as we know it today, is landlocked on three sides by Bangladesh while other North Eastern states are left with a tenuous geographical connect to the rest of the country through the ‘chicken’s neck’. 

The economical implications of these changes have been devastating. The new lines disrupted the old business patterns and nearly destroyed the region’s commercial eco systems. Road links from North East, which passed through East Pakistan, were severed; the Assam Railway segment was cut off from Indian Railways; Bengal’s jute industry was decapitated and the loss of Chittagong Port meant that Indian tea and timber industries had to take a circuitous route to Calcutta (now Kolkata) Port. 

It is only when one understands the scale of disruption during Partition can one appreciate the importance of the first India-Bangladesh border haat set up in Tripura. The marketplace has the potential to revolutionise bilateral trade and dramatically improve living standards of border populations in both countries. 

Inaugurated on January 13 by Minister of State (Independent Charge) for Commerce & Industry, Ms Nirmala Sitharaman and Bangladesh’s Commerce Minister Mr Tofail Ahmed, this market is located in the southern Tripura district on Indian side and Feni district on Bangladeshi side. It opens once a week and nationals from both countries living within a 5 km radius can trade locally produced goods and crops. 

The specialty – currencies of both countries are accepted and no local taxes are imposed on the sale of 16 designated items which includes crops, spices, minor forest products (excluding timber), fish, dairy and poultry products and cottage industry items. Four other border haats have been planned in Tripura – one in Sipahijala district, two in Dhalai and a fourth in north Tripura. 

It is no coincidence then that Tripura is being prepared as a nodal point. The region has historically been one integrated economic unit and it is in the fitness of things that pre-Partition trade and communication links be restored to leverage the full potential of the region. Political stability (in India and Bangladesh) and infrastructure development (such as AkhaurahAgartala rail link) will be other key factors. If these factors can be aligned and Tripura-Bangladesh ties strengthened, the whole project that can be quickly scaled up to bring the rest of the North East under its ambit. This, in turn, can serve as India’s gateway to South Asia as envisioned in the North East Vision Plan 2020. 

This article was published in the May-June edition of India Perspectives, the flagship magazine of the Ministry of External Affairs, Government of India

CRUCIAL INDIA-VIETNAM BILATERAL

Defence cooperation between the two nations has not received the public attention it deserves. The previous regime had taken important steps to strengthen ties, and the present Government has continued with the thrust. It’s part of India’s growing global maritime footprint

Amidst all the hullabaloo over the Modi Government’s first anniversary, the three-day visit of Vietnamese Defence Minister Phung Quang Thanh received little attention. But that should not take away from the growing importance of the India-Vietnam bilateral, for both countries, particularly in the security sector. Vietnam is engaged in a bitter territorial dispute with China, which is looking to turn reefs in the South China Sea into islands that can host airstrips and other military facilities, according to aReuters news report. Vietnam would like India, the other big regional power, to stand up to Chinese belligerence in the South China Sea.

India, on the other hand, is trying to restrain China from taking full control of some of the world’s busiest sea-lanes as well keep the dragon out of its own immediate neighbourhood, the Indian Ocean Region. China had made the stunning revelation last year that it had sent submarines into the Indian Ocean. And more recently, the Pentagon in its report on the South China Sea also noted that Beijing is looking to increase its presence in the Indian Ocean region.

It is plausible that China is seeking to do so through ‘logistics’ overtures, rather than obvious military means (though that must not been ruled out either; only last year, China moved an oil rig, flanked by its naval and coast guard ships, into Vietnam’s exclusive economic zone, sparking a major diplomatic crisis) but the end result that it has in mind is the same.

Hence, with China’s assertive strategies in mind, India and Vietnam have now agreed to strengthen their defence and military cooperation. On Monday, at the end of delegation-level talks, Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar and his Vietnamese counterpart General Phung Quang Thanh signed a five-year-long vision statement as well oversaw the signing of a memorandum of understanding for cooperation between the Coast Guards of the two countries.

Notably, while Gen Thanh was meeting with Indian officials on Monday, four Indian warships set off for the South China Sea. The Eastern Fleet deployed stealth frigate INS Satpura, anti-submarine warfare corvette INS Kamorta, the destroyer INS Ranvir and the INS Shakti fleet tanker to the region, to participate in a four-day maritime exercise with Singapore’s Navy. The four Indian warships will also be making port-calls in Indonesia, Australia, Malaysia, Thailand and Cambodia.

But that’s not all. On Tuesday, China released a White Paper on its military strategy which emphasises increasing the country’s naval reach to “open seas protection”. This is the first time that China has officially taken on the role of regional security provider so far from its shores and called for “active defence”. Clearly, this is a thinly-veiled threat to its smaller neighbours such as Vietnam but also the Philippines, Malaysia and Brunei, all of whom have maritime disputes with China. It is equally a challenge to India’s dominance in the Indian Ocean region. 

Notably, the Chinese White Paper also outlines plans to build lighthouses in disputed islands in South China Sea — and just in case anyone thought that Beijing wasn’t serious about implementing these measures, the Chinese transport Ministry conducted a groundbreaking ceremony for the construction of two multi-functional lighthouses in the Spratly Islands (which Vietnam claims as its own) on the same day that the Defence Ministry launched the White Paper.

That China released its White Paper less than 24 hours after Vietnam signed a defence pact with India was, of course, coincidental, but it does underline the immediate import of the situation. The Vietnamese are reportedly keen that India train their submarine personnel and there is already some joint military exercises that are ongoing. India is also looking at selling the BrahMos supersonic cruise missile to Vietnam. But the deal is yet to be finalised. Meanwhile, India is continuing with its oil and gas explorations in Vietnamese blocks in the South China Sea, despite recent Chinese objections.

Last year, there were at least three high-level interactions between India and Vietnam in as many months. External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj visited Hanoi in August 2014, and President Pranab Mukherjee made a high-profile state visit in September. During Mr Mukherjee’s visit, India extended Vietnam a $100 million line of credit specifically for defence procurement. In October 2014, Vietnamese Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung came to India and it was during this trip that New Delhi agreed to supply four patrol vessels to Vietnam to improve the latter’s maritime security capabilities.  Prime Minister Narendra Modi has also been invited for a visit later this year.

The deepening of ties with Vietnam started with the Manmohan Singh Government. There were several high-level visits during the UPA Government’s second term and there was a strong political push to deepen military ties, despite the Government’s general penchant for playing safe and not doing anything that might upset China. The incumbent NDA regime has thankfully continued with the UPA’s efforts to improve ties with Vietnam and will hopefully do so with more vigour and decisiveness, of the sort that has become the hallmark of Mr Modi’s diplomacy.

As such, India and Vietnam have   traditionally had strong bilateral ties,  even if the people-to-people connect has somewhat waned in recent years. Indians today may no longer chant slogans such as ‘Amaar naam, tomaar naam, Vietnam Vietnam’ which was popular in the 1970s Bengal, but political support has remained steadfast. Vietnam has emerged as an important regional partner for India in South East Asia and can be expected play a prominent role in the Modi Government’s Act East policy. India and Vietnam already cooperate in various regional forums such as the Association for South-East Asian Nations, the East Asia Summit, the Mekong Ganga Cooperation and the Asia Europe Meeting

Apart from India, Vietnam has also been looking to firm up its defence ties with other powers including the US. In fact, the US has agreed to partially lift its arms embargo against Vietnam, specifically permitting the sale of American defence equipment.

This article was published in the op-ed section of The Pioneer on May 28, 2015

MODI’S FOREIGN POLICY DOCTRINE

The Prime Minister has spent a significant amount of time in his first year in office improving the quality of India's engagement with the world. He hasn't made any major policy turnarounds but his out-of-the-box approach to diplomacy has made all the difference

This time, last year, as India prepared for a Modi Government to take charge, few had imagined that the Prime Minister would emerge as an international showman in his first year in office. The man had no significant political experience at the national level, his election campaign had a negligible foreign policy component, and there were many in Lutyen’s Delhi wondering if the chaiwallah’s son, whose spoken English was supposedly below par, would be comfortable at the global high table. Even those who were expecting Mr Modi to prioritise foreign policy, like this columnist, had underestimated how significantly he’d seek to improve the quality of India’s engagement with the world.

In the 12 past months, Mr Modi has travelled to as many as 18 countries, participated in a bunch of multilateral summits and hosted several world leaders at home. He has energised a moribund foreign office, unshackled Indian diplomacy from stiff protocols, and talked up the India Story. He hasn’t really made any major policy turnarounds but his assertive and out-of-the-box approach to diplomacy has made all the difference. Let’s take a look at some of the defining features of his foreign policy, as they have emerged in this past year.

South Asia Focus: It all started with the grand inauguration that was attended by eight heads of Government from the neighbourhood, including the Prime Minister of Pakistan. The spectacle reiterated India’s position of influence in South Asia, and made clear that it is in the sub-continent that India’s global engagement will always be rooted. The star-studded show was followed by Mr Modi’s first foreign trip to Bhutan, and then Nepal, where the Prime Minister would go again, later in the year, for the SAARC summit. Next in the South Asia line-up was Sri Lanka. Soon after winning the presidential election, Mr Maithripala Sirisena came from Colombo with the promise of improving relations with Delhi, and, weeks later, Mr Modi paid a reciprocal visit. Then, in April, Afghan President Ashraf Ghani made his first state visit to India. Though some of these tours were more high profile than the others, they were all considered to be reasonably successful.

But the real measure of how India’s South Asia policy has been shaping up under Mr Modi lies not so much in these incoming and outgoing visits but in his administration’s prompt and elaborate rescue, relief and re-building programme in Nepal and the ongoing ratification of the India-Bangladesh land border agreement. In both cases, Mr Modi showed how much of difference can be made by a decisive leader who doesn’t have to look over his shoulder and second-guess himself all the time.

Re-discovery of the Indian Ocean: There was a time when India was the dominant power in the Indian Ocean but that was more than 2,000 years ago. In the more recent past, the Indian Ocean has been Indian only in name because this country has had neither the political will nor the economic might to take on a greater role in the region. Also, India’s involvement in the Indian Ocean region has always been anchored in Sri Lanka, and as that island nation fought a bloody civil war, Delhi became stayed away from ocean politics. However, with China making forays into India’s maritime neighbourhood (and India’s own ability to be a regional security provider having somewhat improved), India seems to be keen on strengthening its position.

Hence, we had Mr Modi’s three-nation Indian Ocean tour of Seychelles, Mauritius and Sri Lanka earlier this year. In Mauritius, Mr Modi promised to upgrade sea and air links on the Agalega islands (which provide India a crucial foothold in the Indian Ocean) while, in Seychelles, he signed an agreement to develop infrastructure on Assumption island and also gifted a provided a Dornier aircraft for surveillance. The strategic implications are obvious. But while it is heartening to see India take a lead in the Indian Ocean region (which, by the way, has been largely welcomed by the island states), the fact is that China already has more than a toehold there and the smaller nations will seek to play the big powers against each other.

Strengthening cultural linkages: It is sometimes said that while other empires were built by soldiers who conquered land and took slaves, the Indian empire was built by saints and seers who found a place in people’s souls. Unfortunately, these civilisational linkages have been ignored by our policymakers and, to some extent, even the public at large. Mr Modi, who does not confuse secularism with irreligiosity or an irreverence for tradition, has sought to change this, so that India can finally leverage its soft power (which should go beyond Bollywood and chicken tikka masala) to the fullest. And so it is that he is scheduled to visit the Great Wild Goose pagoda in China which is dedicated to famous Buddhist pilgrim Huen Tsang. Similarly, when he was in Japan last year, he prayed at the Toji and Kinkakuji Buddhist temples while in Sri Lanka, he addressed Buddhist monks at the Mahabodhi Temple and prayed at the Mahabodhi tree in Anuradhapura. While these initiatives may not bring immediate political or economic benefits, it makes diplomacy more accessible to the people and goes a long way, forgive the cliché, in winning hearts and minds.

Wooing the Diaspora: An important element of Mr Modi’s strategy to increase India’s soft power abroad has been to tap into the vast Indian diaspora. This was evident in the huge community receptions that were organised in the US, Canada and Australia. While previous Governments have also sought to leverage the diaspora, there hasn’t really been a clear or sustained outreach plan. Mr Modi has sought to reinvigorate the official Indian connection with the diaspora, hope that the latter will emerge as a political force and not just remain a source of foreign remittance.

New buzzwords: Under Mr Modi, ‘climate change’ and ‘nuclear power’ have emerged as major talking points within the larger foreign policy narrative. This is an interesting development especially given India’s difficult positions and histories on both counts. The discourse on climate change is pegged to reduction in carbon emission levels but India has consistently refused to commit to any ceilings. Instead, it has based its arguments on the principle of common but differentiated responsibility. Mr Modi hasn’t changed this position but his emphasis on clean and renewable sources of energy has not gone unnoticed. Nuclear power is, of course, linked to the climate change issue because it is an important alternate power source that can fuel India’s growing economy in a clean and sustainable manner.

This article was published in the op-ed section of The Pioneer on May 14, 2015

DEALING WITH A NEW AFGHANISTAN

The incumbent Afghan President may be more pro-Pakistan than his predecessor, but even India acknowledges that there can be no peace in Afghanistan without Pakistani support. Also, where India cannot help militarily, it should make up with economic and political support

In the run-up to Afghan President Ashraf Ghani’s maiden trip to this country, which concluded on April 29, the big question was: Has India lost Afghanistan? President Ghani was coming to India a full six months after he had taken office, during which time he had already visited the US, China, Iran and, importantly, made not one but two trips to Pakistan. Also, unlike his predecessor Hamid Karzai or, for that matter, even his Chief Executive Officer Abdullah Abdullah, Mr Ghani neither has close personal ties with India nor had he previously expressed any special interest in or support for India’s role in Afghanistan.

As such, a revision in Kabul’s foreign policy priorities was expected, and this was not just with regard to India. For example, the Ghani-Abdullah administration is nowhere close to being as anti-America, as Mr Karzai had been, particularly in the later years of his presidency. However, what came as somewhat of an unpleasant surprise for India was the extent to which Mr Ghani was tilting towards Pakistan.

Not only did he visit Pakistan twice, he broke protocol during his first trip to meet with Pakistani Army chief Raheel Sharif in Rawalpindi, and later dispatched his own Army chief to attend the graduation ceremony at the Pakistani military academy in Kabul. He also sent a handful of Afghan cadets to train in Pakistan for train and handed over a Pakistani Taliban leader to Islamabad. These were largely symbolic gestures but what caused real concern in India’s strategic circles was Mr Ghani’s effective cancellation of all of his predecessor’s military aid requests from India.

During the Karzai years, Afghanistan had repeatedly requested India for weapons, but India, not wanting to upset Pakistan, had turned down those requests. This flawed policy has now changed, thankfully, but even then, delivery from the Indian side has been excruciatingly slow. For example, the three helicopters given to Afghanistan, days before Mr Ghani’s visit, were promised almost a year ago.

Also, there have been reports that during his India visit, President Ghani and Prime Minister Narendra Modi discussed a refurbished military aid pact. Although no official papers have been signed in this regard, this is welcome news, nonetheless.

It is important to understand that Mr Ghani’s outreach to Pakistan is driven by practical considerations. One of his biggest priorities at the moment is ensuring Afghan security and, simply put, this will not be possible without Pakistani cooperation. In its perennial quest for that elusive ‘strategic depth’ against India, Pakistan continues to foment trouble and terror in Afghanistan and, unless it changes this policy, it will be enormously difficult to secure a durable peace in Afghanistan.  There’s little that India can do in this  regard, given that it does not even share a land border with Afghanistan.

Specifically, Mr Ghani is looking to Pakistan for help with bringing the Afghan Taliban, officially led by Mullah Omar’s Quetta shura, to the negotiating table. Even after 13 years of war, the Afghan Taliban are very much a force to reckon with — and since it has not been defeated militarily, it will have to be integrated politically (although, in reality, a lasting solution will include a both elements).

Unfortunately, neither Mr Ghani nor Mr Karzai before him has had much success. Several factors have impeded the peace process. One, Pakistan has routinely put a spanner in the works; two, the Taliban see no reason to compromise and is just waiting out the withdrawal of foreign troops; three, the Taliban are not a homogenous group but an umbrella organisation that covers different outfits with similar ideologies and these outfits do not always agree with each other on how best to negotiate with Government forces. None of these factors will change overnight — in fact, the situation will become even more rigid after the few thousand US forces, currently in Afghanistan, leave by 2017, as US President Barack Obama has promised. 

There is, however, a small window of opportunity between now and 2017. If the Afghan Army, with the help of US forces, can break the military stalemate (currently both parties are strong enough to hold on to their turfs but can’t take territory from the other) and change the power equation on the ground, then President Ghani can force the Taliban to the negotiating table. But, there are no indications yet of such a shift in position.

There is a new player in the mix: China, which has recently offered to facilitate talks with the Taliban. Though China has traditionally stayed away from such diplomacy, this time, it has stepped in because of the growing unrest in it Xinjiang Province, which has a large Muslim Uyghur population. Militants from Pakistan are stirring the pot in Xinjiang and China, understandably, would like to nip the problem in the bud. However, it is unclear how much direct access China has to the Taliban. If it hopes to pressure Pakistan into bringing the Taliban on board, even then it is a weak plan, because Pakistan’s influence on the Taliban is not full and complete either.

So, where does India fit into all this?

India can help the Afghan forces militarily — and this is where we should hope to see more cooperation. Up until now, military help has been mostly about training Afghan soldiers and some intelligence sharing. These are important but not enough. There is now talk of more weapons support, although having Indian boots on the ground is out of the picture.

Still, there is reason to hope that under the Modi Government, there will be a more forceful and determined Indian policy in Afghanistan, not just with regard to military aid but also on the economic front. India is Afghanistan’s largest regional donor and has made significant investment in its infrastructure and capacity-building sectors. These connections need to be furthered, also through the Chabahar port project in Iran, which will give us unfettered access to Afghanistan.

This article was published in the op-ed section of The Pioneer on April 30, 2015

EUROPE LEFT OUT OF MODI’S EURO-TOUR

The European Union bloc is one of India's largest trading partners. Yet, the Prime Minister did not travel to Brussels

Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s recently concluded his three-nation tour of Europe and Canada has been pegged a huge success. The refurbished Rafale deal that he signed in France, India’s stunning presence at the Hannover Messe trade fair, which he inaugurated, in Germany, and the Prime Minister’s now trademarked outreach to the diaspora in Canada, where he also formalised a key agreement for the supply of uranium that will fuel India’s nuclear power plants, have all been much appreciated. However, if there was one thing missing from the European segment of the Prime Minister’s tour, it was Europe itself.

As a bloc, the 28-member European Union is India’s single largest regional trading partner and one of the largest sources for Foreign Direct Investment in India. The EU also receives a significant amount of outward investment from India . Yet, neither did the Prime Minister travel to Brussels nor did he engage with the leadership of the European Union. Why?

The official reason is one scheduling problem. The Ministry of External Affairs had proposed an India-EU summit (now postponed forsometime later in the year) but the response from Brussels was less than enthusiastic. The latter dragged its feet, as it struggled to decide how best to respond to India’s continued detention of the two Italian Marines who killed two Indian fishermen in 2012. Earlier, the case was on the verge of becoming a major diplomatic debacle, as it moved at a glacial pace through the Indian judicial system, but both sides had since worked together to avoid a showdown.

However, in January this year, the European Parliament, which had just brought in a new set of leaders including Italian politician Feredica Mogherini as the High Representative of the European Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, turned up the heat. It issued a strong resolution accusing India of “a serious breach of human rights”, which rightly irked New Delhi.

After all, it was not like the two men were doing hard labour at Tihar. While one of the Marines, Salvatore Girone, is currently living in the Italian Embassy in Delhi, under a special court-ordered arrangement, the other, Massimiliano Latorre, is in Italy. After suffering a stroke in Delhi in August 2014, Mr Latorre was allowed to go home for four months for treatment. Moreover, in January, three days before the EU accused India of human rights violations, the Supreme Court had given permission to the recuperating Marine to stay back in Italy for another three months, on medical grounds.

Many believe that the EU’s hardline stance can be attributed to Ms Mogherini, who had earlier told the European Parliament that, “It’s good for everyone to be fully aware of how much of an impact the unresolved dispute of the two Italian Navy officials can have on relations between the EU and India.”

At the same time, some European diplomats have also pointed out that it’s unlikely for an individual leader to hold policy hostage in this manner. In fact, according to a report in a leading national daily, some European diplomats believe that the big boys in the club, France and Germany, let the EU mishandle the summit planning process, so that they themselves could deal with India on a one-to-one basis.

 Now, these statements need not be taken at face value but certain ground realities are hard to ignore. For example, the India-EU free trade agreement is almost done but, ostensibly due to a lack of political will, it is yet to be finalised.

From India’s point of view, it is important to understand that while our overall trade figures with the EU are impressive, they can also be deceptive. A lion’s share of that trade pie is captured the UK; bring Germany and France to the table and there’s precious little left for the smaller European nations. Moreover, India has always been more comfortable with bilateral dealings rather than multilateral engagements. In other words, India doesn’t have enough incentive to go the extra mile for the EU.

And this is just on the economic side. On the political and diplomatic side, with regard to issues like the conflict in Ukraine and climate change, there is even lesser common ground. No wonder Europe got only two-pages in the Modi Government’s foreign policy booklet, released in January this year. In comparison, Africa got 14.

(This article was published in the op-ed section of The Pioneer on April 24, 2015)

LOOKING BEYOND ECONOMIC TIES

The Prime Minister’s trip to Germany focussed on boosting trade and technology ties. But the gifts that he exchanged with his host, Chancellor Angela Merkel, offer a sneak peak into the deeper civilisation connect between India and Germany 

The importance of the relationship between India, one of the world’s largest emerging powers, and Germany, the economic anchor of continental Europe, hardly needs to be reiterated. Neither does one have to underscore the fact that the India-Germany bilateral, robust as it may be, is not exactly functioning at its optimal level.

Despite their complimentary national traits and requirements  — if Germany can benefit from access to Indian skilled labour and a large market here, India’s growth story can be fuelled by cutting-edge German technology — and equally importantly, a shared commitment to the universal values of freedom, democracy and equality, the two countries are somehow indifferent to each other. Sure, there has been increasing cooperation at the Government-to-Government and business-to-business levels, as Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s recently concluded trip to Germany shows, but at the people-to-people level, there is still precious little to talk about, beyond Bollywood and Bayern Munich.

This is especially disappointing because the two countries do, in fact, share a deeper civilisational connect that somehow seems to have snapped in the modern age. A re-discovery of this civilisational connect has the potential to truly re-invigorate the India-Germany bilateral and offer young Germans and Indians alike a fresh perspective, as they both seek to re-define their place within a new world order.

The gifts that Mr Modi and German Chancellor Angela Merkel exchanged earlier this week offer a sneak peak into the historical ties that the two nations share. Mr Modi gifted his host, who holds a doctorate in quantum chemistry, reproductions of manuscripts and papers written by Indian Nobel Laureate CV Raman who is known to have been inspired by the famous German scientist Hermann von Helmholtz to pursue a career in science On her part, Ms Merkel on Tuesday gifted Mr Modi an original first edition print of German Indologist Friedrich Max Müller’s book on the Indian spiritual leader, Sri Ramakrishna Paramhansa.

Today, Max Müller is, arguably, the most recognisable German in India. This is as it should be for few other foreigners have contributed so significantly to India’s understanding of its past and its philosophy as he. Best known for editing The Sacred Books of the East, his monumental 50-volume set of English translations of Asian religious text that was published by the Oxford University Press between 1879 and 1910, Max Müller also translated the Upanishads and the Rig Veda.

His other well-known book, that seems to have been largely forgotten in this country today, is titledIndia —What It Can Teach Us. The book is based on his lectures to candidates of the Indian Civil Service examination, on whom he wished to impress the importance of ancient Indian culture and tradition. His last major work, published a year before his death in 1900, was The Six Systems of Indian Philosophy. This was the major first publication to discuss all the philosophical systems of India.

But while there is still a reasonable amount of recognition of Max Müller and his work in India, few today remember his contemporary Indologists. For example, Arthur Schopenhauer, who worked around the same time as Max Müller and is considered to be the first Western thinker who incorporated thoughts of the Upanishads in his own philosophy, hardly rings a bell.

Schopenhauer believed that called the availability of Sanskrit literature to the West was “the greatest gift of our century”, and even predicted that ancient Indian philosophy, which he considered to be the “highest human wisdom”, would become the “cherished faith of the West”. In the preface to his best known work, The World As Will And Representation, Schopenhauer writes that one who “has also received and assimilated the sacred primitive Indian wisdom, then he is the best of all prepared to hear what I have to say to him”. Interestingly, Schopenhauer was introduced to Indian philosophy through his friend Karl Christian Friedrich Krause, a lesser known philosopher, who had mastered the Sanskrit language.

This is just a small list of a few thinkers from the 19 century. The first German to study Sanskrit can be traced to back to the 17th century to the missionary Heinrich Roth, who lived in India and is believed to have written on Sanskirt grammar but his works were never published. Later, August Wilhelm Schlegel, the first professor of Indology at Bonn University, published his famous book, On the Language and Wisdom of the Indians while poet Friedrich Rückert gained prominence with his translation of the Mahabharat.

At this point, one may rightly question how exactly the study of what obscure German philosophers had to say about India or Indian philosophy would be of any interest to contemporary Indians (or Germans, for that matter). The answer to that is simple: If young Indians (and Germans) are looking to rewrite their terms of engagement with each other and indeed with the world, they will have to find their own unique narrative. Besides, a nation that is ignorant of its past cannot hope to build a strong and secure future — and this is particularly relevant for an emerging power like India that has an otherwise robust  civilisational identity.

Two good examples of how ancient knowledge can be or is being leveraged in the contemporary world is the growing popularity of traditional Indian medicines and therapeutic practices in this country and that of Sanskrit studies in Germany. Unfortunately, the Indian perspectives on these issues have oscillated from completely ignoring the matter on the one hand to romanticizing it on the other. Since Germany has made huge progress in researching ancient India, and Sanskrit classes there are so popular today that universities can’t find enough teachers to cater to the growing demand, these ties have the potential to be leveraged further.

(This article was published in the op-ed section of The Pioneer on April 16, 2015)