Shashi Tharoor rips into Modi’s foreign policy: Part II

Narendra Modi’s whims in our backyard

The second (and more worrying) half of Modi’s report card begins with the neighbourhood, which is where any government must act with the greatest caution and sensitivity to balance our national interests with regional circumstances beyond our control.

The most glaring red herring has been the way Modi’s government has handled India’s relationship with China particularly the complete mismanagement of the situation in Doklam, which the government claimed, had been resolved in August, 2017. But the PR exercise that Modi Inc. managed to spin from that event was undone a few months later when consistent reports and publicly available satellite imagery all pointed out that the Chinese were consolidating their presence at the Himalayan plateau that directly overlooks India’s strategic Siliguri corridor.

But the inconsistency in this government’s foreign policy style and narrative is not new to be sure. In the lead-up to and during his election campaign in 2014, Modi and the BJP had constantly berated the Government of India for being unable to do anything about frequent Chinese incursions across the disputed frontier. Two years later, the same Mr Modi not only embarked on a stream of effusive meetings with both the Chinese President (with who he shared much publicised bonhomie on several occasions) and Foreign Minister, but also invited China to help modernise the Indian Railways and has removed government restrictions on Chinese investment in sensitive sectors like ports and telecoms.

As to the border incursions, the BJP government echoed the very line it had denounced when the Congress government uttered it—that since the two countries have differing perceptions of where the border lies, each patrols in areas the other considers to be theirs. What was excoriated by Modi as pusillanimity and appeasement in the Congress have now, overnight, become wisdom and statesmanship in the BJP.

The story in the rest of the subcontinent isn’t any better.

Since Mr Modi’s swearing in—a pageant of sorts that saw the premiers of Pakistan, Nepal, Sri Lanka, and Afghanistan in attendance and which was lauded as the grand inauguration of a new chapter in our international relations—India’s ties with Pakistan have witnessed more ups and downs than a child’s yo-yo.

The Prime Minister—a man who systematically obstructed the UPA Government’s peacemaking efforts with Pakistan and whose campaign speeches thrived on demonising that country — had excoriated the Congress for “serving chicken biriyani” to a Pakistani visitor. Now he was exchanging shawls and saris with his Islamabad counterpart, along with sentimental letters to each other’s mothers. (I mischievously tweeted my hope that chicken biriyani would be on Modi’s dinner menu for his Pakistani guest: it wasn’t.)

Blowing hot and cold

By inviting Nawaz Sharif to Delhi when he took office in 2014, Mr Modi was believed to have turned a historic page, and opened a new era of bilateral relations. But less than two months had passed before both countries were exchanging artillery fire across the still-sensitive border. Talks between our respective foreign secretaries were called off when the Pakistanis proposed meeting Indian Kashmiri separatist leaders on their proposed visit—something our visitors had always done and to which earlier governments had responded with confident official indifference.

In November of the same year, at the SAARC summit in Nepal, Mr Modi pointedly stared at a brochure to ignore his Pakistani counterpart as he walked past, though it was later revealed that the two leaders had met privately in a hotel suite belonging to an Indian businessman. The pattern repeated itself in December 2015. Mr Modi made an impromptu visit to Lahore to attend a celebration at Mr Sharif’s home; a week later, relations turned frosty again after seven Indians were killed by Pakistani militants at the Pathankot Air Force Base, later followed by an equally condemnable attack on the Indian Army at Uri in September 2016 and at Nagrota the month after.

In retribution, the Indian Army conducted a series of ‘surgical strikes’, lightning precision attacks, on terrorist camps operating out of Pakistani soil. While the nation rightfully applauded the swift response of our armed forces, the present government appeared to be more preoccupied with spinning the strike as the first of its kind—a testament to the supposed iron mind of their Prime Minister. This was blatantly untrue (it is now well known that similar strikes have been ordered in the past). Worse, the entire approach reflects the lack of a cohesive policy framework when it comes to negotiating the relationship with our most turbulent neighbour.

India-Pakistan relations have swung back and forth, as though they are determined more by the unpredictable moods of our leadership than on a coherent foreign policy and vision for peace, let alone a practical roadmap. One day the Government declares its “red lines” and twice calls off talks with Pakistan because its representatives met with the Kashmiri-separatist Hurriyat; the next day the red lines don’t matter.

One day the ruling party avers that talks and terror don’t go together, and that Pakistan cannot be rewarded with a visit till it makes progress on punishing the perpetrators of 26/11; the next day the PM is winging impulsively to Lahore, sending India’s surprised High Commissioner scurrying (too late) to the airport to receive his boss. This is foreign policy by whim, not by design.

To be continued. Read the first part of a three-part series by Congress MP Shashi Tharoor on the Modi Government’s foreign policy here. The final part of the series will be published on April 8

Read the full article in the April 8 issue of National Herald on Sunday (E-paper also available)

The writer is the Congress MP for Thiruvananthapuram, a former minister of state in the Government of India for External Affairs. He has also served the United Nations as its Under-Secretary General for Communications and Public Information