PM must be realistic on India’s overall interests

Three countries loom large on India’s foreign policy radar this week. The United States, where Narendra Modi has just been on what our ultra-patriotic TV channels scream was a triumphal visit. China, which the same shrill channels warn, is playing false again and must not be allowed to get away with it. And Israel, where our media is already gloating that Mr Modi will be received more royally than Donald Trump, President of Israel’s principal international protector, was. There is also always Pakistan, apparently whimpering on the sidelines from devastating surgical strikes and Mr Trump’s latest blow against a notorious terrorist but nevertheless ready for fresh mischief.

These are not necessarily irreconcilable correlates. Since a country can’t reshape the world, it must make the best of the geography in which it finds itself. That might make for some seeming inconsistencies in transactional relations but those inconsistencies will remain unavoidable exceptions rather than the rule if they are features of an independent policy that serves the national interest without abandoning coherence or credibility. Even while establishing diplomatic relations with Israel a quarter of a century ago and laying the ground for Mr Modi’s historic trip (no Indian Prime Minister has trodden that path before), P.V. Narasimha Rao stressed that he sought “justice for the Palestinians”. So far as one recalls, Mr Modi has not uttered a single word to express human concern for displaced Palestinians, reveal any understanding of the political dimensions of a historic tragedy, or raise his own moves above the level of rank opportunism.

China presents a daunting challenge. Australia’s withdrawal during Kevin Rudd’s prime ministership from the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue should have reminded India that too close an embrace with America has been the kiss of death for many Asian governments. Maverick he might be, but Subramanian Swamy is entirely right to warn that India needs “long-term engagements with China for the benefit of both nations”. Supporting that advice, Sputnik International quoted Deep Kisor Datta-Ray, author of The Making of Indian Diplomacy: A Critique of Eurocentrism, to stress that India should “engage China to realise infrastructure and development projects” in “eliminating the everyday squalor of Indian life”. Ambitious young Indians for whom US green cards and H-1B visas are life’s ultimate prize would disagree with his thesis that American merchants of death want to “sell arms to us and thereby ensnare us in their military-industrial complex”.

Whatever the truth of that charge, the only sane response to Gen. Bipin Rawat’s boast that the “Indian Army is fully ready for a two-and-a-half-front war” can be that hostilities on even one front would be disastrous for the suffering multitude. China and Pakistan must both be rebuffed but contradicting the Army Chief’s bravado, Dr Swamy warns that bad ties with them would be “a defence nightmare for India”. A failed Pakistan would also be calamitous for the region, bringing the scourge of religious fundamentalism, drugs and terrorism right into our territory. India cannot afford not to evolve a modus vivendi with Pakistan and China.

The India-US equation is more complex because Washington has become used to client states in Asia and Africa.

Dr Swamy is right to assert there can be no viable partnership until the Americans accept “we are not junior partners of the US; we are equals”. That was also the central point of my book, Waiting for America: India and the US in the New Millennium. India is still waiting. George W. Bush hoped to sell Indians pizzas, air-conditioners, kitchen appliances and washing machines so that American companies like GE, Whirlpool and Westinghouse raked in the profits. Mr Trump hasn’t yet been so explicit, but we do know that whatever money his Tribeca Developers makes here is repatriated to the US. An equal relationship is impossible so long as our leaders are so obviously flattered to shake hands with and hug whites. It would be surprising if Mr Modi’s trip to Israel didn’t owe something to American urging.

Several reasons have been advanced for India’s equivocal relations with Israel. Statesmen like Jawaharlal Nehru, who attended the 1927 Brussels conference on imperialism, balanced their outrage at Hitler’s Holocaust with sympathy for fellow Asians in the Arab world. Indian analysts believed Jawaharlal Nehru and his successors needed Arab support on Kashmir. Hard-headed Israeli diplomats held that UN votes counted for little compared to the Muslim electorate at home on which the Congress Party relied. Either way, the era of pretence is over. But if honesty demands public admission of ties with an Israel that is India’s second-largest defence supplier, realism calls for acknowledging the only way of breaking the dangerous regional stalemate.

Reports speak of Israel preparing 18 specific targets to help India with an $80 million five-year budget. While this may appeal to Mr Modi, it cannot be at the expense of a sustainable foreign policy that carries conviction and commands respect. India cannot forget that Israel’s own attorney-general not long ago denounced as “unconstitutional” Benjamin Netanyahu’s latest law to “regularise” some of the 140 illegal settlements for more than 600,000 Jewish settlers in the conquered West Bank and East Jerusalem. The festering sore of Palestinian grievances that are a major cause for Islamist terrorism will not be healed without an immediate halt to settlement and implementation of the two-state solution the Oslo process promised. The question now is: how far will Mr Modi, flattered by attention and the promise of a huge arms package, go in his hand-holding, chest-to-chest exuberance with Mr Netanyahu?

Recognising Jerusalem as Israel’s capital would rub salt in Palestinian wounds. It would mean supporting the Zionist dream of Eretz Israel, the mythic name for an indefinitely extended Jewish homeland, at Arab expense. For India, it will be the abdication of independent diplomacy.