There is a new trend in India. Whenever Prime Minister Narendra Modi meets another head of state at home or abroad, his supporters start building castles in the air. But their hopes are invariably dashed — soaring expectations come crashing down in no time — fanning despondency.
Last month, Modi’s fan club was basking in US President Barack Obama’s glory until he decided to tell India over Modi’s head not to mess around with religious minorities like Muslims or Christians. The rebuke shattered the daydream. But the public reprimand pales into insignificance if we consider the overall impact of US-India tango on New Delhi’s fragile relations with China and Pakistan — nuclear-armed neighbors India has fought full-fledged wars with.
India may have reasons to court a superpower like America. But bilateral relations are best nurtured behind closed doors. By reducing diplomacy to a public spectacle like the televised chai per charcha, or chat over tea with Obama, Modi may have succeeded in raising his own profile temporarily. But preening before the cameras belittled India and certainly wasn’t in the country’s best interests.
Optics apart, New Delhi must carefully calculate the costs of becoming the cat’s-paw as America and China jostle for global supremacy. Is it really in India’s interests to draw America’s chestnuts from the fire? Can India cope with an assertive Beijing-Islamabad axis fired up by the new convergence of India-US interests?
It seems Obama promised Modi that if New Delhi does enough to counter China, India would be rewarded with United Nations Security Council membership. He was evidently exploiting Modi’s eagerness to sit at the high table. But “the irony,” writes ex- Foreign Secretary Krishnan Srinivasan, “is that India aspires to be a world player but cannot establish itself as a regional one”.
For India to achieve its full potential, it’s imperative that it resolves its dilemmas vis-à-vis China and Pakistan — its two adversaries bound by close political and military ties. Pakistan usually takes its cue from China. Islamabad and Beijing are known to trust each other blindly. And China couldn’t have taken too kindly to Modi wholeheartedly pledging India as the linchpin of America’s pivot to Asia. Nuanced neutrality might have served India’s national interests better than Modi falling all over Obama provoking China and upsetting Pakistan.
No nation is more difficult to decode than China. India’s Foreign Minister Sushma Swaraj was accorded every courtesy during her China visit after Obama flew out. She even had the privilege of calling on President Xi Jinping as the hosts waived standard diplomatic protocol. And while in Beijing, Swaraj proclaimed that Modi himself would undertake an “outcome-oriented” visit to China by May to announce a breakthrough in border negotiations.
But let’s keep our fingers crossed and see how things pan out until May. China is known to spring surprises at will. People’s Liberation Army has a penchant for marching into India triggering protests, which Beijing ignores for as long as it likes. Last September, PLA invaded Chumar during Xi’s state visit to India hugely embarrassing Modi who was playing the gracious host. And in April 2013 Chinese troops entered Depsang ahead of Premier Li Keqiang’s visit to India. New Delhi is still in the dark about the objective of those invasions. And China hasn’t offered any explanation for humiliating India even as they hold peace talks to resolve their boundary dispute.
Such is Beijing’s military might that India doesn’t dare to retaliate and silently swallows insults. All that India does is lodge protests — it never hits back in kind. If India is so weak, how can it possibly uphold “freedom of navigation and over flight throughout the region, especially in the South China Sea,” as laid down in the new India-US joint vision statement? A country that can’t safeguard its own border is surely incapable of meaningfully participating in any strategic partnership.
There was a big sigh of relief in India when Beijing didn’t pick Swaraj’s brains about what exactly transpired during Obama’s visit. A pro-establishment commentator even remarked that India and China dealt with each other like “big boys.” The truth is that China needn’t quiz Swaraj as there are too many ways of finding out “what India was up to with America.”
China should ideally take upgraded India-US ties in its stride. But if it concludes that India is not interested in mending fences under US influence, then dark suspicions will cloud the horizon and prevent nuclear neighbors from achieving their potential and playing roles they are capable of on the world stage.
