As India’s Narendra Modi government approaches the two-year mark, the most important imprint of his governance so far, Modi’s diehard supporters argue, is the complete overhauling of the country’s foreign policy to make India’s voice count globally.
Bolstering India’s strategic strength in South Asia and beyond, many believe, is the key contribution of Modi’s administration apart from jumpstarting New Delhi’s external outreach in a short span. A Modi-led India, these eulogists of Modi contend, has refused to be a pushover in the international arena as dynamic policymaking has propelled the South Asian giant into a self-reliant assertive power. And Modi’s courage of conviction, his uncompromising faith in aggressive nationalism and most importantly purity of purpose, according to the Indian premier’s unflinching loyalists, has helped India attain an elevated status that apparently no other leader in India’s political history can boast of.
Notwithstanding such lavish exaltation by fans and followers, the big question is what new has Modi brought to the table that has altered South Asian geopolitics overnight? The ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leadership feels Modi is swimming against the tide to not only make India’s presence felt more prominently in the global arena but also to send out signals of mutual accommodation to smaller powers in the immediate neighborhood.
Indeed, at the time of the inauguration of his government Modi walked that extra mile to convince an anxious neighborhood that his conservative right-wing socio-political ideology will not come in the way of a win-win partnership between neighbors in an extremely volatile region. However, a little more than one and half year down the line Modi’s motto of friendship with all neighbors on the basis of mutuality seems to be an elusive dream. Did Modi subtly exploit the neighboring leaderships’ trust for personal image building?
Does bilateral relationship with India, at all, look like a two-way mutually accommodative process any longer for nations like Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal, Bhutan, Sri Lanka, Maldives or even Myanmar, whose sovereign territory was violated blatantly by India’s armed forces not long ago to avenge the killing of Indian soldiers at the hands of Naga extremists?
Vinay Sahasrabuddhe, an influential member of Modi’s BJP candidly declares “New Delhi will not close its eyes to anti-India politics being played or policies being pursued by any of India’s immediate neighbors” and then he goes on to add “those promoting attacks from across the border have now realized that India can and will pay them back in their own coins.”
Influential government sources reveal Modi is determined to ensure that smaller neighbors are either cajoled or coerced into submission. Indeed, Indian hegemony is in full bloom presently. From blatantly interfering in Nepal’s constitution making by launching a discreet and indefinite economic blockade, forcing Sri Lanka to abandon its plan to buy JF-17 fighter aircraft manufactured in Pakistan by terming it as superfluous expenditure, nudging a pliant Bangladesh government to cancel a critical sea-port project financed by China in a strategically important corridor and to trying to stall Pakistan’s defense purchase from America — India’s Modi government is desperate to control South Asia by proxy. Modi’s vision of the Indian subcontinent, in fact, coincides with that of his ideological mentors in the ultra-Hindutva organization Rashtriya Syamsevak Sangha (RSS), which believes in reuniting India, Pakistan and Bangladesh, the twins separated at birth. No wonder why, Modi’s trouble-shooter and BJP General Secretary Ram Madhav acknowledges that the RSS has not given up hope yet on achieving “Akhand Bharat” — an undivided homeland of the Hindus. Madhav and his Hindutva fraternity is convinced that parts of India, which have for historical reasons separated decades ago, will through popular goodwill, come together once again. Very intriguingly, the physical spread of “Akhand Bharat” goes beyond Pakistan and Bangladesh and comprises the territories of Afghanistan, Myanmar, Sri Lanka, Tibet and even parts of Nepal and Bhutan. In fact, it is a known stand of the Hindutva fraternity, which includes Modi and his Hindutva idol M.S. Golwalkar, that “all that is south of the Himalayas and north of the Indian Ocean is Bharat or India and that the entire region’s ancient national roots are essentially Hindu, with common cultural affinity. That precisely is the reason why the invisible Indian hand is nowadays seen in action anywhere and everywhere in the subcontinent because this is how Modi’s government wants to keep South Asia under India’s strategic ambit.
Modi and his trusted adviser on security, Ajit Doval, are inherently blessed with a domineering and aggressive militarist orientation toward the regional neighbors while the Hindutva bandwagon see the neighborhood as a stumbling block to the fulfillment of establishing Hindu supremacism from Hindukush to the jungles of Myanmar. And Modi has found in Doval a loyal foot soldier, capable of making it difficult for neighbors to manage their internal affairs. A senior intelligence official, during a private communication with this writer, offered an interesting insight into Doval’s mindset not long ago.
“Given Doval’s intense allergy toward anything non-Hindu and his perverted notion of Hinduism, he can be used as fodder cannon to keep the neighborhood on a tight leash,” claimed the official. Doval’s doctrine (which he as openly advocated) of providing adequate funds to exploit the ethnic disgruntlement within the neighboring states is indeed detrimental to South Asian peace and stability. But then, there is none who can make Modi realize that only moral consistency in action, and not muscle-flexing, can ultimately secure India’s interests.
