OPINION: 'India First' Defines Modi’s Policies At Home & Abroad

Out of all the successes recorded by Narendra Modi during his nine-year tenure as Prime Minister, the one that has really shocked the 'Khan Market gang', is his amazing handling of India's foreign policy. For years, under pressure from the 'gang', the US had denied Modi a visa, though he was an elected Chief Minister of Gujarat. Don't miss the irony -- today Modi is being given a red-carpet treatment by the same country. The American establishment is pulling out all stops to underline the fact that how important India, and Modi are to it.

The State Dinner hosted for Modi yesterday (June 22) was a momentous event. In the two and half years of the Biden administration, this was only the third such occasion -- the earlier two were for the French and South Korean Presidents. The leaders of the two chambers of the US Congress have extended an invitation to Modi to address a joint meeting of Congress for a second time -- an honour that has been accorded earlier only to a few leaders like Winston Churchill, Nelson Mandela and Israel's Prime Ministers Binyamin Netanyahu and Yitzhak Rabin.

What defines Modi's foreign policy? How has he elevated India's status to an unprecedented level in the global arena? How does Modi manage to keep Russians in good humour and do business with ease with the Americans at the same time when the two most powerful nations are locked in a bitter slugfest in Ukraine? The secret: He has freed India's foreign policy from ideological shibboleth -- an albatross cross around India's neck for decades. His guiding principle, both at home and abroad, is simple: India First, and nothing else counts for him.

A little flashback is necessary to get a proper perspective of the ties between the two nations. Pandit Nehru, and several of his comrades in the pre-independence Congress, had a clear bias in favour of communist Soviet Union and against the West, including the US. The reason for this pronounced tilt was not national interest, but ideological. That's one of the reasons that the departing British joined hands with the communists and Muslim League, and created Pakistan -- a geo-strategic outpost to contain the Soviet Union and guard the West's interests in this part of the world.

The British shenanigans leading to the vivisection of India, and birth of an Islamic Pakistan have been unravelled by a noted diplomat and civil servant, Narendra Singh Sarila, in his seminal work, "The Shadow of the Great Game, the Untold Story of India's Partition". Subsequent post-Independence events confirmed Western apprehensions about Nehru weren't misplaced.

Independent India, distanced itself from the US and Western nations, and deeply intertwined with the communist block on strategic matters. It pushed communist China's case for United Nations Security Council membership at its own cost and refrained from establishing ties with Israel ignoring its tactical interests. While the West and the US nurtured their child Pakistan unabashedly, India experimented with a half-baked socialist system at home with disastrous consequences, and courted the communist nations outside. The US in turn refused to engage India in any meaningful relationship and denied access to even elementary technology. Mutual distrust and suspicion marked the Indo-US relationship during Nehru-Indira era.

For the US, pristine values like democracy, human rights and secularism have a substantive meaning only within its own borders. Outside, while paying lip service to these lofty principles, its conduct and policies are solely guided by its national interests. In its dealings with India, nothing probably illustrates this harsh reality, better than the American conduct during the 1971 Bangladesh war. Pakistan was a military dictatorship, which had unleashed repression against a section of its own people because of their ethnicity.

Millions had fled to India as refugees from East Pakistan to escape an orgy of rapes and mass murders. While India was intervening in favour of hapless Pakistani citizens, the then US President Richard Nixon ordered the US Seventh Fleet's Task Force 74, led by the nuclear-powered aircraft carrier Enterprise towards the Bay of Bengal, to intimidate India and ease pressure on its satellite, Pakistan.

However, India and the US have come a long way since. With the collapse of Soviet Union in 1991, Communism lost its sheen. In India, Congress was freed from the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty stranglehold for a while when Narasimha Rao became the Prime Minister (1991-96). Subsequent years witnessed a steady improvement in Indo-US ties. President Clinton's visit to India in 2000 infused new elements in bilateral ties. President Bush inked the civil nuclear cooperation agreement with India in 2008, ending India's nuclear "apartheid".

President Obama invited Prime Minister Manmohan Singh as the first State visitor of his administration in 2009. During his own visit to India in 2010, he extended support for India's permanent membership of UN Security Council, and later worked successfully for India's membership of the Missile Technology Control Regime (MTCR). During his and the Trump administration, there were other breakthroughs on higher-level technology releases.

President Biden elevated the Quad with India, Japan and Australia to summit-level meetings. A new group I2U2 (India, Israel, UAE, USA) met at the summit level. National Security Advisers (NSAs) of the US, India, the UAE and Saudi Arabia had their first-ever meeting in this format on May 7. On January 31, the NSAs of India and US launched a major new initiative for a partnership on critical and emerging technologies, which seems to have now become the organising framework for the new phase in the bilateral relationship.

There are multiple reasons for the increasing, mutually beneficial, Indo-US engagement. One, India is now led by a Prime Minister who's not bogged down by ideological cobwebs and is clear on what's the best in Indian interests. Since there's no ambiguity, those dealing with India know where it stands. Moreover, in the last four decades, India has changed beyond recognition.

Once living precariously on ship-to-mouth PL 480 wheat imports, India is now a net exporter of food grains and several other agricultural commodities. India today has emerged as the fifth largest economy, from the tenth position it held not long back. It took India 60 years (1947-2007) to become a one-trillion dollar economy, and only seven years (2007-14) to add another trillion. One of the fastest growing economies of the world, India is in the touching distance of being a four-trillion dollar economy.

At the current rates of growth, India's economic size should overtake Germany by 2027-28 and Japan by the end of the decade. Modi's meetings in the US, which include CEOs, are a testament to the global interest in both accessing India's growing market and also its supply capabilities. The India-US initiative on critical and emerging technologies (iCET) would have been inconceivable a few decades ago.

The US too has changed a lot, and so has the world, it has to deal with. The job losses in the US from shifting manufacturing to China are pinching it hard, and the Covid has made it worse. China is a Russia ally, and making threatening noises emboldened by its new found prowesses in technology, defence capabilities and geopolitical footprint. Beijing has taken on the new role of peacemaker in the Middle East -- a region the US regarded as its sphere of influence. European engagement with the US is shrinking.

Pakistan, once a US side-kick, is now a China's satellite. It's an epicentre of global terror and the entire non-Islamic world, including America, is in its crosshairs. Economic sanctions, once an effective tool to punish those who didn't toe the US line, no longer works. The American move, sanctioning Russia and those countries that bought energy and food grains from it, hasn't been effective.

While the US' exalted global status is under threat, the scene at home isn't comforting either. The ideological divide is deep, and for the first time in history, an American President is facing criminal charges. A large number of Americans feel unhinged from the civilisational ethos of their country, and random gun violence is the new normal.

China has risen to peer status with the US, even as Russia. North Korea, Iran and transitional terrorism remain threats to American interests in various parts of the world. The US simply cannot handle all these challenges alone, or by using its old model centred on formal allies in Europe, despite what some in Washington may believe.

India-US relationship over the last 18 years has taken place in the shadow of China's rise and its subsequent growing belligerence. It's obvious that there is a considerable overlap in the comprehensive national interest of India and that of the US at this point of history. The interests of the two countries get served by a deepening partnership, now described as a Comprehensive Global Strategic Partnership (CGSP).

The US is India's largest trading partner at $191 billion, with the surplus in India's favour. Companies from the two countries have invested more than $40 billion in each other, with presence of Indian investments across all 50 US States. At 4.9 million individuals, Indians are the second largest immigrant group in the US. As many as 2 lakh Indian students in US universities constitute a potential for building business and other networks for the future.

However, those working for close cooperation between the two countries would have to watch out for prophets of doom in the US. They feel that India is a 'bad bet' for Washington to make; that Delhi will not side with Washington to the hilt. They must realise that transactional approach can't deliver any tangible results in Indo-US cooperation and collaboration convergence between the two countries can't come at the cost of India's strategic autonomy.

(Mr. Balbir Punj is a Former Member of Parliament and a Columnist. He can be reached at: [email protected])

Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in this article are the personal opinions of the author. The facts and opinions appearing in the article do not reflect the views of OneIndia and OneIndia does not assume any responsibility or liability for the same.