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

BJP’s embarrassing ‘u-turns’ on Bangladesh and Nepal

New Delhi’s de facto blockade of Nepal choked the nation’s economy, cut off its oil supplies, created genuine hardship and provoked a groundswell of hostility among ordinary Nepalis. This, and the behaviour that accompanied the episode, was a blunder of such Himalayan proportions that the only country on earth whose relationship with us has been fraternal enough for us to maintain open borders with it, now mutters about turning towards China instead.

Telling then, of the current strain in relations, is the fact that once Prime Minister KP Oli was sworn into office for the second time on February 15 this year, the first leader to visit his country was his Pakistani counterpart Shahid Khaqan Abbasi.

One astute observer told me privately that “PMO took its eyes off the ball”. But when decision-making has been so centralised in the Modi regime that every ministry has to send its important files to the PMO for clearance, how many balls can Mr. Modi and his beleaguered minions keep their eyes on?

India’s mess in Nepal adds to the growing sense of disquiet amongst students of Indian foreign policy about the Modi government’s management of relations on the subcontinent. A combination of arrogance and ineptitude is all-too-often visible where subtlety and pro-active diplomacy could have delivered the desired results. A raid into Myanmar in hot pursuit of terrorist sanctuaries had six precedents under the UPA, but each had been shrouded in a discreet silence; the Modi government chose to announce their one raid with such bellicose rhetoric that it embarrassed Myanmar, the violation of whose sovereignty New Delhi was trumpeting. Relations with three of our neighbours – Pakistan, Nepal and most recently, the Maldives – are worse than they have ever been. If we don’t soon embark on a serious course correction, the only question will be who we are going to alienate next.

There have been successes, but these have almost entirely been in areas where Mr Modi and his party chose to follow the path already laid by successive previous governments without upsetting the delicate balance upon which this balance rested.

One of the Prime Minister’s greatest achievements is that he has reversed the BJP’s formal opposition in Parliament to the Indo-US Nuclear Deal and to the seminal Land Boundary Agreement with Bangladesh—both of which were UPA initiatives and both of which were wise policy reversals by the NDA Government of the positions the BJP had taken in opposition.

In the election campaign, Modi had breathed fire and brimstone about Bangladesh, accusing it of sending millions of illegal immigrants into India and promising that the moment he won the election, they would all have to “pack their bags” and leave India for home.

Bangladeshi officials had publicly and privately expressed their disquiet that any attempt to do this could be deeply destabilising for their politically fragile state. Within weeks of his victory, however, Modi’s Foreign Minister was all smiles on her first official visit abroad—to Bangladesh. Illegal immigration wasn’t even mentioned in Dhaka. (However, the BJP government in Assam has unwisely reopened the issue, and disquiet is mounting in our friendly neighbour.)

The Land Boundary Agreement with Bangladesh concluded by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, which Indian diplomats had considered vital to removing bilateral irritants, had never been implemented because UPA couldn’t win the BJP’s support in Parliament to ratify the territorial swaps required. But now the Modi Government is the biggest votary of the Land Boundary Agreement, which the Opposition co-operated fully in ratifying.

The BJP had been virulently critical of the Indo-US nuclear deal, Manmohan Singh’s signature foreign policy triumph. They had even supported a no-confidence motion against the UPA government on the issue of the deal. Yet, in a quiet and under-reported move, the Modi government wisely ratified the India-specific Additional Protocol, a UPA undertaking to grant greater access to India’s civilian nuclear sites to the UN’s International Atomic Energy Agency.

Where you stand on foreign policy, in other words, depends on where you sit. Your stand is different when you’re sitting in South Block and not in Gandhinagar.

The cerebral American politician, New York Governor Mario Cuomo, once memorably observed that you campaign in poetry, but govern in prose. Hard reality, he suggested, replaces the fights of policy fantasy that afflict those without power.

Welcome to the foreign policy world of Narendra Modi.

This is the concluding part of a three-part series by Congress MP Shashi Tharoor on the Modi Government’s foreign policy. The first part of the series can be read here and the second part here.

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