Ian Hall, a Professor of IR in Australia wrote an article some six years ago asking if Narendra Modi aspired to something like Nehru's role in global affairs. Did the fellow want to lecture all and sundry on Democracy and Lurve and Peas and saying no to Violence?
The answer is now obvious. Modi, like everybody else, was transactional. The days of pi-jaw have passed.
Narendra Modi’s government led by the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which came to power in May 2014, argues that India should become a vishwaguru (‘world guru’)
The term is associated with Vivekananda and the Anushilan Committees which mobilized the Indian diaspora as well as a few sympathetic Americans and others to support the Hindu nationalist cause. Modi, quite properly, doesn't give a shit about people who can't vote in Indian elections unless they have relatives in India whom they can influence.
and, in the words of Subrahmanyam Jaishankar, the current Foreign Secretary, a ‘leading power’ in contemporary international relations—
how strange! He should be clamoring for India to become a shitty power
a power equipped with a clear vision of how international affairs ought to be organized, not merely a power that accepts the system as it is.
India won't listen to lectures. But nor will any other country. Saudi Arabia just told Biden to go fuck himself. But then, so did Macron.
But so far at least, it remains unclear in which areas Modi’s government wants to lead, and his ‘normative agenda’ is vague.
No. Modi initially wanted better relations with Obama which, by sacking Sujatha Singh, is what he got. Later he wooed Trump. Biden is useless so nobody bothers with him. Still, Chinese hostility means that India is still pretending to support Quad though China can only be defeated in the high Himalayas. Sooner or later, India will have to do asymmetric warfare.
To get a sense of Modi’s agenda, this article explores the intellectual resources he could use, and has so far used, to revive and remake ‘normative power India’ to fit his conception of the role India ought to play in international relations.
India has no fucking intellectual resources. Israel- sure. America- no question. But any intellectual resource India has can be purchased cheaply.
India’s Cold War normative agenda was grounded in a mix of socialist and internationalist ideas first assembled by Nehru and then partially reassembled by his successors.
It was useless shit. Rajiv spent a lot of time trying to put together an anti-Apartheid front. It was time wasted. Once Cuban troops left Angola, America was ready to embrace majority rule in South Africa.
Alternative agendas have been advanced since Nehru’s death in 1964, but never with any great success.
Because Nehru's China policy and 'Panchsheel' were a fucking disaster. Incidentally, Indonesia backed Pakistan in the 1965 War.
The majority of twentieth- and twenty-first-century Hindu nationalist political philosophies incorporate descriptions of the values they think ought to inform India’s behaviour and that of all states in international relations; but Hindu nationalist thinkers tend to be much more concerned with domestic social issues than with questions of international order, so those descriptions are thin, lacking specificity.
Israel is the Holy land for three World Religions- and the Indian Defense procurement Agencies. What works in India's favor is the growing friendship between Saudi Arabia and Israel.
Modi, for his part, has appealed to another source, to the late nineteenth-century Bengali intellectual Swami Vivekananda, as a guide for India’s engagements with the world.
Modi sees that the Hindu diaspora wants Hindutva and that is what he gives them. In South Asia, Religion has high income elasticity of demand. American Hindus want to go on pilgrimage to places like Ayodhya and want those places to be as clean and well equipped as Disneyland.
But while Modi’s interpretations of Vivekananda’s writings provide some sense of how he might construct a new normative agenda, what it might look like remains unclear, while Modi’s government pursues a pragmatic foreign policy that, in the main, puts India’s economic and strategic interests first.
That's fine. India can export Hindutva based services- Yoga and Ayurveda and whatever else it is that Baba Ramdev is getting rich by selling.
Normative agendas and normative power
Fuck that. Indian Americans have money and votes. So do Hindus in the UK. Indeed, there is a Hindu PM in UK. This is a group which is becoming more Conservative or Right Wing. So is India. Nothing wrong in that.
What is a ‘normative agenda’ in international affairs and how does it relate to ‘normative power’? A normative agenda lays out the ways in which a state would like international relations to be conducted: the values that it argues ought to inform the behaviour of states and other actors; the rules that it argues ought to govern the interactions between states and their citizens, non-governmental organizations, international institutions and, of course, other states; and the political, social, economic and cultural institutions that it argues states ought to build, sustain and promote within their borders and beyond them in order to uphold core values and ensure preferred rules are followed.
India wants non-interference in internal affairs. In particular, it wants to curb the influence of Leftist NGOs and International foundations. Manmohan made a start in that direction and Modi has followed through. We can expect more and more journalists and academics being put under a visa ban.
A normative agenda should also outline some means of achieving these aims: an overarching strategy and a set of policies by which a state hopes to realize its preferred international order.
Not any longer. The US is in retreat. Nobody now pretends that 'Democracy' or 'Human Rights' can feature in foreign policy.
In the most-studied case of ‘normative power Europe’, the EU is widely acknowledged to have a normative agenda that seeks to promote the spread of peace, democratic governance, the rule of law, social justice and respect for human rights within states with which it interacts and between states, as well as among other international actors.
But Italy is now ruled by what looks like a neo-Fascist. La Pen may take power in France. Orban has been re-elected and may prevail against Brussels.
Ian Manners argued that the EU could be considered a ‘normative power’ because, by his account, it tries to implement this agenda mainly by non-coercive means—by contagion or unintentional diffusion by example; by intentional diffusion through strategic communications; by procedural diffusion through rules and modes of interaction written into international agreements; by transference through conditions placed on development assistance; by overt diffusion by EU representatives in diplomatic or even political roles in target states, advocating particular modes of behaviour, rules or institutions; and by influencing in various ways how target elites think about political problems by educating emerging leaders and encouraging cultural change in key decision-making groups.
But the EU's power has declined. In China, Macron was feted. Ursula von der Leyen was snubbed. That's why she is now babbling about the Chinese threat and, ludicrously, warning Xi not to gobble up Taiwan! Biden seems to like her- i.e. she is doomed.
Under Jawaharlal Nehru, prime minister from 1947 until his death in 1964, India carved out a distinctive place in the rapidly changing international order of the postwar years, advocating internationalism as an alternative to realist power politics, promoting human rights, denouncing racism, pushing hard for the decolonization of the European empires, playing peacemaker, and advocating conventional and nuclear disarmament.
Nehru was supporting the agenda of the Americans. They wanted the Dutch out of Indonesia though, sadly, the French suckered them into the Vietnam imbroglio. Incidentally, the Americans felt that Indian military officers were on their side during the Korean War. Nehru got on very well with the American ambassador, Chester Bowles while Mountbatten- who believed the Americans liked him- remained very close to him.
The intellectual underpinnings of this normative agenda, constructed by Nehru, were radical and liberal—an amalgam of British socialist ideas
The Fabians felt that the Empire was a waste of time. Sadly, the Indians were in no hurry to bid goodbye to the British Umpire. It was America which pulled the financial plug on that enterprise.
and Indian concepts derived especially from Buddhism and the idiosyncratic ideas of Mohandas Gandhi.
Nehru genuinely believed that war war could be avoided by jaw jaw. Chou En Lai thought him a conceited windbag.
From British socialist thought, Nehru derived a theory of international relations and a critique of the existing, western-dominated postwar international order, which he perceived as profoundly unequal, divided on racial lines, involving the economic exploitation of non-western peoples by the European imperial powers, and corrosive, encouraging imperialistic ‘power politics’ instead of cooperation.
Sadly, Nehru's begging bowl diplomacy promoted the notion that darkies are too stupid to feed or defend themselves. By the late Sixties, the idea gained ground that 'basket cases' should be abandoned to Malthusian collapse.
Nehru’s vision of the international order he hoped would replace the existing one was derived largely from Indian sources, mainly from Gandhi’s syncretic blend of elements of Buddhism and Hinduism.
Gandhi, poor fellow, knew nothing of Buddhism. He appealed to Jainism, Vaishnavism and some sort of Tolstoy/Quaker hodgepodge. Sadly, the cretin also had some 'Tantric' notion about how sleeping naked with young girls would give you super-powers provided you didn't shag them.
To justify his advocacy of ‘peaceful coexistence’, for example, written into the Panchsheel agreement made with China in April 1954, and later extended to the Non-Aligned Movement, he cited the authority of the ancient Buddhist king Ashoka.
Who killed lots of Jain monks till a Buddhist chum of his too was beheaded.
Nehru also repeatedly invoked Gandhi’s injunctions not to let fear drive India’s foreign policy, to apply moral tests to the means as well as the ends of political action, and to be mindful that unjust arrangements perpetuate cycles of violence.
Nehru wanted to keep the 'martial races' and dominant agricultural castes out of power. That's why it was important to show that India could not feed or defend itself.
Indira's foreign policy was pragmatic and based on a military alliance with the Soviet Union. The Hindu Right accepted that the Americans would always tilt to Pakistan more especially with the rise of OPEC and petroleum as a weapon. Thus Vajpayee, on become External Affairs Minister, immediately rushed to Moscow where- according to Subramaniam Swamy- he guzzled Vodka with the Commissars till they saw he was absolutely sincere in wanting to retain the Soviet nuclear umbrella. But the other reason India still relies on the Russians is because India can pay for what they have to sell. The relationship is transactional.
Vajpayee did defy the Americans with a nuclear test but this uncovered the fact that China, in the Eighties, had done nuclear-proliferation to Pakistan and North Korea. Anyway, after 9/11, India was an ally while Pakistan was a reluctant and double-dealing paid agent.
Modi, on becoming PM, did sack Sujatha Singh as Foreign Secretary so as to build bridges to Obama. But the reason for their 'bro-mance' was a common commitment to the Environment. Wealthy Americans may have to spend more on air conditioning but Indians lose their lives to Global Warming.
While paying lip service to earlier Hindu nationalist thinkers, Hindu nationalist politicians, including prominent leaders such as L. K. Advani and Atal Bihari Vajpayee, as well as journalists and intellectuals such as Subramanian Swamy and Tarun Vijay, have generally preferred realist foreign policies to their idealism.
There were no 'idealists' left in the Indian foreign policy establishment move particularly after the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. Rajiv did have a bug up his ass about Apartheid but his diplomats were unenthused. On the other hand, Gorby respected Rajiv's intellect!
As Chris Ogden has shown, BJS manifestos of the 1960s and 1970s drew on Upadhyaya for guidance on domestic issues, but much less for foreign policy.
Upadhyaya was considered an imbecile. He fell off a train and died.
That, they argued, should be ‘guided solely by considerations of national interests’.
i.e. the treaty with the Soviet Union was fine.
When the BJP came into government in 1998, these realist tendencies were strengthened as the conduct of foreign policy came under the influence of the former military officer and Minister of External Affairs Jaswant Singh and the diplomat and National Security Adviser Brajesh Misra.
Misra was important. Jaswant was a fool.
These practitioners argued that India’s military power must be strengthened and a robust nuclear deterrent developed, with pragmatism as the best guide to foreign and security policy. Prior to the 2014 election, these realist ideas surfaced in the language the BJP used about foreign policy, albeit balanced with a new emphasis on building India’s ‘soft power’ as well as its ‘hard power’. Modi stated that his foreign policy would follow Vajpayee’s blend of what he called shanti (peace) and shakti (power).
but not shittiness
The work of the Hindu nationalist economist and politician Subrahmanian Swamy (b. 1939) provides a useful insight into this thinking.
Fuck off! The man is utterly crazy! Most economists are.
For him, international relations ought to be conceived primarily in terms of cultural interactions, not political ones, and cultural threats, as well as political or military threats.
Very true! We must stop kids getting kissy on St. Valentine's day due to we are proud Bharatiya people and don't do sex.
As a result, he has a different view of ‘India’s rise’ from the conventional, optimistic one. While acknowledging that economic growth and military modernization mean the Indian state is getting stronger, Swamy argues that, by contrast, ‘Hindu society today is in the process of becoming fragmented’ because it is being undermined by foreign cultural influences.
This is why everybody ignores that nutter.
In this way, Hindus ‘are being systematically prepared for psychological enslavement and conceptual capture’.
what about sexual slavery? Is it not true that billions of horny super-models from Sweden are intent on raping elderly Tambrams like Swamy and me?
To combat this, Swamy thinks India must rewrite its history and remake itself as ‘Hindustan’; introduce market reforms, but resist westernization; build military power for India’s security, the ‘recovery of lost territories’ and the defence of the human rights of all persons of Indian origin; and promote the Sanskrit language and Devanagari script to connect all Indians to their culture.
Swamy is exhibit A in my forthcoming PIL demanding that all Tambrams (except Iyengars) get 'Extremely-Educationally-Backward-not-to-say-Mentally-fucking-Retarded status with retrospective effect.
India could thus produce a Hindu Renaissance that would enable it to stand alongside other great civilizations.
Like that of Atlantis- not to mention Wakanda.
Modi and Vivekananda A member of the Hindu nationalist Rashtriya Swayamsevek Sangh (RSS: National Volunteer Organisation) since his youth and a prominent force in the BJP since the 1980s, Modi is steeped in the Hindu nationalist intellectual tradition. He knows the thought of Golwalkar, Savarkar and Upadhyaya well. He has published a book, Jyotipunj (2007), celebrating the lives, thought and actions of leading Hindu nationalists. But Modi’s own thinking on international relations—and indeed politics more broadly—is not clearly indebted to that tradition. During his time as chief minister of Gujarat, Modi appealed to others as tutelary heroes, notably to two fellow Gujaratis: Gandhi and the so-called ‘Iron Man of India’, Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel.
Patels have a lot of votes and are doing very well economically. Modh Banias have a lot of money and influence
He was particularly assiduous in cultivating Patel’s legacy, despite the latter having been a Congress Party member, praising his robust approach to Pakistan’s military adventurism in Kashmir in 1947–8 and his subsequent advice to Nehru to take a harder line with the People’s Republic of China. In 2010, as a sign of his devotion, Modi helped initiate the construction of a giant 182-metre statue of Patel—called the ‘Statue of Unity’—near Vadodara in Gujarat.
This was to highlight Patel's vital role in the integration of the Princely States- including Junagadh in Gujarat whose ruler had wanted to join Pakistan.
As Modi began to emerge as a potential prime ministerial candidate, however, he began to cultivate a softer public image, and appealed increasingly often to a different authority: Swami Vivekananda (1863–1902).
Vivekananda was a revolutionary. Had he not died then, like Aurobindo, he would have been put on trial for his life. Patel entered politics- in the shadow of his elder brother- after it was obvious that the Brits were on their way out.
Some of the clutch of Modi biographies that appeared immediately before and after his election—not all of which are wholly reliable—suggest a longstanding personal concern with the work of the Bengali intellectual.
Modi had wanted to join the Ramakrishna mission but was turned away because he did not have a College degree. I have heard that he would look at Hindi translations in parallel with Vivekananda's English writings so as to develop a feel for oratory in the latter language.
The most sympathetic ones narrate that Modi first became interested in his near namesake—Vivekananda’s given name was Narendranath (or Narendra or Naren) Datta—as a boy. Some relate that when Modi left his family (and a woman to whom he was betrothed) at the age of 18, and went wandering India for almost two years, he travelled first to the Ramakrishna Mission, the religious foundation Vivekananda created at Belur Math, Kolkata, supposedly with the intention of becoming a monk.
Why else would a young man go to a monastery? In the old days, they would have educated him and employed him as a school teacher but, because of the glut of graduates, they could pick people who already had BAs and MAs.
Modi was apparently turned away, and told to commit himself to social work instead of a religious life—advice in line with Vivekananda’s teaching about the importance of active as well as contemplative lives.
Perhaps there was a caste element to this. The name Modi is associated with mercantile, not sacerdotal, occupations. People would have thought this young man could build up an institution from scratch rather than get a cushy job in an existing place.
Whether or not these stories are credible, it is the case that since the early 2010s Modi has made repeated public appeals to Vivekananda as a guide and inspiration in his political life, in parallel with his broader effort to soften his image from that of an aggressive hard-line nationalist to that of a vikas purush (‘development man’) and more inclusive national leader.
But, in Gujarat, Modi was never seen as a 'hard-line' fellow. It was Togadia who was the macho, upper class, leader. Modi was known as a great administrator who could strike mutually beneficial deals- most importantly with the farmers.
Prior to the 2012 Gujarat state elections, he organized the Vivekananda Yuva Yath Ratra pilgrimage to encourage young people to take an interest in Vivekananda, but also to demonstrate his own devotion.
This was after Anurag Thakur lead an 'Ekta Yatra' in 2011. Arun Jaitley and Sushma Swaraj were part of this and had courted arrest. Modi was showing that he too could reach out to young people.
For all of 2012, Modi tweeted daily quotes from Vivekananda.
This was smart. Modi was building up a Twitter following.
In 2013, Modi travelled to Belur Math again, this time to display his commitment publicly by meditating in the monk’s cell.
Why? Vivekananda died young. He is an icon for youth. Modi only became an MLA at the age of 51. He was very successful in Gujarat but knew that people in other states would just consider him a smart and pragmatic 'Gujju'. Associating himself with the young Bengali genius showed he was not a parochial fellow who had got a swelled head because of his success as CM.
And since becoming prime minister, Modi has worked to maintain the connection. He visited Belur Math once again, in May 2015; he unveiled a statue of Vivekananda at the Ramakrishna Mission in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, in November 2015; and his speeches since coming to power are littered with references to the Bengali’s thought.
The BJP went from having zero legislators in West Bengal to over sixty. They are now the main opposition party to Mamta though this may change as they keep getting killed.
Modi is not, of course, alone in appealing to Vivekananda or using his ideas to ground arguments in support of certain domestic or foreign policies. Earlier Hindu nationalists, including Golwalkar, were inspired by his thought; but Vivekananda’s stock has risen significantly among the Hindu right in recent years.
Because he died young.
In 2009 the Vivekananda International Foundation (VIF) think-tank was founded in New Delhi by retired civil servants, military officers and intelligence chiefs aligned with Hindu nationalist groups. Like Modi, as we shall see, the VIF aims to promote Vivekananda as a ‘truly global citizen’ and ‘global guru’, with a vision of a ‘strong and vibrant India’, pursuing ‘modernization alongside spiritual development’, that could ‘once again be a global leader in the market place of ideas’
Vivekananda did attract foreign converts, one of whom, Sister Nivedita, was a great source of support for the young Revolutionaries of Bengal. However, there was also an Indian Christian- Brahmobandhav Udpadhyaya- who seems to have reconverted to Hinduism before his arrest and untimely death. Tagore hated him- probably because Tagore owned estates in the East which he would lose if the Brits ran away.
Vivekananda is best known for having travelled to the so-called Parliament of the World’s Religions in Chicago in 1893 to present the case for Hinduism. Born into a wealthy Bengali family,
sadly, his father's death impoverished the family. I suppose Vivekananda would have become a Professor of Philosophy in the normal course of things.
he completed a degree in (western) philosophy at the prestigious General Assembly’s Institution (now the Scottish Church College) in Kolkata. When he was 21, however, his father died and the family was left poor. He turned to a mystic, Swami Ramakrishna, for spiritual support, and eventually became a monk. In 1885, after Ramakrishna’s death, Vivekananda founded the mission that bears his name in honour of his mentor, but soon thereafter left Kolkata to walk through India as a wandering holy man. In 1893 he was persuaded by the Raja of Madurai, Ramnad Bhaskara Sethupathi, to go to Chicago, where he was acclaimed as the foremost advocate of Hinduism to western audiences of the age.
There were other Indians there but none could match Vivekananda's oratory
Vivekananda’s thought was unorthodox, or at least representative of only a segment of contemporary Hindus.
Bengal had a strong 'Navya Nyaya' as well as a 'Tantric' tradition which is why people from other parts of India were a little in awe of the Bengali buddhijivi. However, such people were more, not less, inclined to show great personal devotion to a Guru. Jadunath Sinha is an example. No one can doubt the spiritual fire in such people.
Like the Theosophists who inspired Gandhi and Nehru early in their lives, but without the desire to incorporate Hinduism into a bigger, syncretic religion, Vivekananda argued that its essence was to be found in the Vedas, in particular in the Upanishads, which set out Vedic philosophy, and in that part of the Mahabharata known as the Bhagavad Gita, which addresses dharma (loosely, ‘duty’) and ethics. He urged that India re-engage with both texts, setting aside or seeing in their proper context later ideas and customs that had come to dominate Hindu belief and practice, and concentrate on cultivating spirituality.
The caste politics of Bengal contrasted oddly with the undoubted nobility and conviviality of the people. Vivekananda, a Kayastha, was showing that there is a pure Hinduism which has zero to do with Caste. Furthermore, he was an early Socialist describing the industrial proletariat as the new 'Kshatriya'- warrior- caste.
That was how India could recover its place in the world, Vivekananda argued, for ‘political greatness or military power has never been the mission of our race. But there is another mission that has been given to us, which is to conserve, to preserve, to accumulate ... all the spiritual energy of the race’ and let it ‘pour forth ... on the world’.
Gujarat had produced the Arya Samaj which has a similar message of self-strengthening and passionate devotion to raise up the nation.
Vivekananda believed that ‘above all, what the world needs from India is the idea of the harmony and acceptance of all religions, so that fanaticism and religious wars may not mar the life of man and the progress of civilization’.
In particular, Hindus needed to stop attacking each other for sectarian reasons. Vivekananda is 'sanaatani' but more liberal than the 'Samaji' reformers. Get rid of Caste and Misogyny and Hinduism will enable everybody to rise up without cutting anybody's throat.
Hinduism, he asserted, promoted the ‘universal acceptance’ of other beliefs and ‘the grand idea of the spiritual oneness of the world’ that is ‘the eternal sanction of all morality’.= But Vivekananda argued that much work needed to be done to improve India and the lot of Indians, so that the country could become the vishwaguru it ought to be, and spread this message. It was not enough for Hindus to live the contemplative life. What was needed was a more active approach: ‘karma-yoga’ or the ‘yoga of action’—practical action in the world to right wrongs and alleviate social ills.
Vivekananda also wrote a lot of nonsense- most folk did back then- but is central message reflects the nobility of the Bengali people
as Modi has repeatedly observed, Vivekananda began to make his case in Chicago on 11 Sept. 1893, the same day as the terrorist attacks on the US in 2001.
Which could easily have been avoided. What Modi didn't say is that the War on Terror was a War of Revenge targeting duskier folk with weird names. But Hindus too are dusky and have weird names. Moreover, Rahul- who is only one quarter Hindu by ancestry- was telling the Americans that 'Hindu terrorism' could become a big threat. Join the dots.
Through karma-yoga, India’s social development could be achieved, and its mission to the world realised. Modi has made use of elements of Vivekananda’s legacy in multiple contexts over the past few years, first as Gujarat’s chief minister, and latterly as prime minister. To connect with younger voters, for example, Modi has used the Vivekananda Yuva Yath Ratra—a pilgrimage punctuated with rallies—to cast Vivekananda, who achieved what he did before an early death aged only 39, as a youth icon. Modi has also self-consciously represented himself as a karma-yogi—an active, viceless, single-minded, strong, constantly labouring, selfless worker for others and for the betterment of India, following the principles of Vivekananda’s model of social work as religious devotion.83 And, importantly, Modi has drawn on Vivekananda repeatedly in efforts to outline and justify elements of his approach to foreign policy, offering his vision of India as vishwaguru as an implicit alternative to the post-colonial Nehruvian vision of India as an internationalist normative power.
This is nonsense. Nehru said that Vivekananda was a great inspiration to him. He highlighted the internationalism and incipient Socialism in the utterances of the Bengali genius.
In his first Independence Day speech as prime minister, for example, delivered at the Red Fort in Delhi on 15 August 2014, Modi quoted Vivekananda’s vision of ‘Mother India seated as the World Guru’, arguing to Indians that ‘it is incumbent upon us to realize that dream’.
This also reassures minorities. In India you can have a Guru or Pir or 'Baba' of another religion. You don't have to convert. Also, Gurus don't beat you or make you do homework and sit exams.
How, then, is Modi seeking to realize that vision, and what will vishwaguru India teach?
What Modi has taught other world leaders is that you can have a very high approval rating even if the economy is in the toilet. Hard work, sincerity and doing what you can for weaker sections of socieity as and when you are able to do it, is the secret of retaining popular support.
Talking bollocks about Human Rights or shrilly denouncing other countries won't get you anywhere good.
Most commentators agree that the most remarkable aspect of his conduct of India’s foreign policy to date is simply the ‘personal energy’ he has devoted to it.
To what field has he not devoted 'personal energy'? The fact is Modi has an experienced man as his Foreign Minister who isn't afraid to call a spade a spade. Thus Modi can focus on winning elections- or, when the BJP loses, fixing what is broken in the local party. Still, Modi's party remains vulnerable because the opposition are learning important lessons about 'booth management' and 'last mile delivery'.
This is clearest in the sheer number of foreign visits Modi undertook in his first two years in office. So far, however, Modi has not made major modifications to the aims and methods of Indian foreign policy, and it has taken time for anything approaching a new normative agenda to appear—if indeed one is visible at all.
Modi is signaling that he won't tolerate interference by NGOs and Soros type foundations. This may not have been obvious in 2017 but is obvious now. But this is true of all world leaders. Tell BoJo or Macron that there has been democratic 'backsliding' in their country and they will either fall about laughing or tell you to get knotted.
In the remainder of his article, Ian speaks of Modi as essentially following the Western line. We now know that the thing was a rope of sand. The truth is now apparent. India was helping to manage Western decline. Trump's unpredictability and the ruthless efficiency with which he pulled the plug on Afghanistan delayed, while Biden accelerated, Western decline but Modi had already grasped what was happening. He and his top diplomats had seen large swathes of America turn to shit while Chinese rice paddy fields had turned into gleaming infrastructural marvels.
Modi's importance, in foreign policy, is to have put India on a pragmatic and 'regret minimizing' course in a world where China controls an Eurasian power-block which encompasses Pakistan, Iran and perhaps even the MENA- not to speak of Sub-Saharan Africa. Unlike Nehru, Modi has not reacted emotionally or hysterically to either blandishments or blatant aggression by China. Meanwhile the demographic advantage has moved to India. The 'Agnipath' scheme could easily be widened and by the end of the decade India could have an infantry capacity of hundreds of millions. Meanwhile an ageing China may find that its 'Belt and Road' draw in immigrants upon whom it will become increasingly dependent. Meanwhile India could displace China as the workshop of the world before Africa claims that title in second half of that Century. Once Africa rises to its proper place, the legacy of Imperialism will be well and truly effaced and Vivekananda's vision will become reality.
No comments:
Post a Comment