Eye on External Affairs—Modi’s policy to woo overseas Hindus 

The Bharatiya Janata Party's fetish for overseas Hindus, or mostly people whose ancestors or they themselves have kicked India in the teeth by throwing their Indian passports into the dustbin, came to the fore when Atal Bihari Vajpayee was Prime Minister. Indeed, in 2001, he, astonishingly, appointed a resident of the United States, Bhishma Agnihotri, as ambassador-at-large for overseas Indian affairs.

It was an attempt to appease non-resident Hindus, who increasingly constituted sustenance for the BJP and the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh. Two months after the announcement, the US State Department rejected Agnihotri’s application for accreditation as a diplomat.

The Comptroller and Auditor General in India held the Vajpayee Government responsible for “avoidable expenditure”. It admonished it for spending ₹15.95 crore on a “mission without a mandate”.

Yet, the policy of pleasing a few million Hindus was lent an unprecedented primacy in India’s external outreach under Narendra Modi. Indeed, the government machinery has been exploited as never before for limited gain to India, but securing a huge benefit to the BJP.

Rallies with Indian community

Since May 2014, India’s foreign policy has predominantly been a ballistic promotion of an individual, using the resources of the state and an embrace of overseas Hindus, primarily people of Gujarati origin, most of whom have never been Indian nationals. Such people stood by Modi when he was ostracised by the West for his suspected complicity in killings of Muslims in the 2002 Gujarat riots.

Insiders confide Modi’s conversations with his counterparts are cumbersome—and only of optical value—for he needs interpreters even to interact in English.

Central in many of his junkets are rallies with the “Indian community”. These are thanksgiving occasions, but have the utility to impress upon unsuspecting Indians how popular Modi is abroad. The truth is, while he entertains the faithful with wisecracks and deprecating remarks about pre-Modi India, mainstream media in the concerned countries, not to mention international media, hardly take any notice of the jamborees.

The wall-to-wall live TV coverage of such RSS organised functions have been underwritten by Indian taxpayers. Doordarshan has borne the cost of every single transmission. Private channels, who are competitors to DD News, have been allowed to simulcast them free of charge.

A partner in a major UK-based accountancy firm publicly asserted overseas Indians were major contributors to his 2014 election. The Delhi-based Centre for Media Studies estimated that the BJP spent around Rs10,000 crores in the 2014 general election or one-third of the total splashed by all parties. Today, according to Dr N Bhaskara Rao of CMS, BJP is spending more money than the rest of the parties put together. Hindu businesses in India are of course major donors to the BJP.

Sushma Swaraj sidelined

In Modi’s conduct of foreign policy, External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj has sadly been sidelined, other than to rescue him when the going gets tough—as it did in the case of Kulbhushan Jadhav. But, while twiddling her thumb for three years, Swaraj has cultivated over eight million followers on Twitter. However, out of her over 5,000 tweets till date, very few have been on any important bilateral or multilateral matter. She has been preoccupied with playing Agony Aunt.

Her three tweets at 4 pm IST on May 24 were: “We will help in all possible ways,” to BJP bhakts in Riyadh; “Don’t worry. Our representative will be there and meet your husband tomorrow. Consulate will do all possible for him” to a woman in Jeddah; and giving out an emergency number in Birmingham for Indians affected by the Manchester terrorist attack.

There have been cases of consular officials at Indian diplomatic missions being disturbed after working hours or over weekends only to discover the person supposed to be in distress is a foreign national over whom India has no jurisdiction.

Admittedly, the Ministry of Overseas Indian Affairs was merged with the MEA. Therefore, helping NRIs, in other words Indian nationals, who are in difficulty is India’s bounden responsibility. But, for a cabinet minister to be at the forefront of such intervention interprets to populism or not having anything better to do.

Swaraj’s sole visit to Britain was to address a regional Pravasi Bharatiya event. Apart from that she devoted a considerable chunk of her time to meeting local RSS leaders; and otherwise bumped into Lalit Modi at a dinner. Not long afterwards, she facilitated a British travel document for him, since his Indian passport had been confiscated.

As for Modi, he jettisoned non-alignment for alignment with American interests. The resultant strategic partnership annoyed a resurgent Russia and invited animosity from China. Now, after so much investment, the clinch of Barack Obama is dead in the water in a Donald Trump tenancy of the White House.

In effect, after disproportionate priority to overseas Hindus and Hindutva, coupled with a lack of understanding of India’s best interests in international affairs, the good offices of Russia can no longer be taken for granted, while in the eyes of the world the daily scraps with Pakistan have reduced India to the level of its faltering, theocratic neighbour.

London-based Ashish Ray, former head of CNN in India, is the longest serving Indian foreign correspondent.