India is not the only commonality in the case of Nepal, the Maldives and Sri lanka. China too is. That explains our eagerness to be seen on the right side of these nations, and puts extra responsibility on the Modi regime to project New Delhi as being accommodating and not intimidating, into perspective, writes RAJESH SINGH
As the Narendra Modi Government nears the completion of one year in office, its foreign policy has been the most lauded amongst its many initiatives. Besides infusing vitality and warmth into India’s relations with the United States, Australia, Japan and even China, the Prime Minister, in collaboration with the Ministry of External Affairs led by Sushma Swaraj, has reached out to nearer neighbours such as Mauritius, Sri lanka, Nepal, Bhutan and Bangladesh.
Modi’s visits to Germany, Canada and France are an indication of the Government’s efforts to consolidate India’s ties with Europe. There have been glitches over troublesome Pakistan, for instance. Many observers have begun saying that the Modi Government does not have a coherent policy on an issue over which it was expected to be most clear and consistent than its predecessors. The less strident critics maintain that Modi is trying out various combinations through a trial-and-error method before he arrives at a stable position. Whatever, the Pakistan issue will continue to test the Centre’s resolve.
Meanwhile, there are challenges of a different kind with friendly neighbours. It’s that of mending and strengthening relationships through ‘intervention’, and not ‘interference’. The thin line that divides the two is irrelevant for New Delhi in the case of the US or Europe or Africa, but forms a key component in its engagement with the troika of Nepal, Maldives and Sri lanka. Geo-politically, strategically and historically, India has had a big stake in the way these countries respond internally and externally. But the deeper the engagements have gone over the decades with the three nations, the more there has been the slight that ‘big brother’ New Delhi was throwing its weight on economic issues and also trying to define the political narrative of these independent countries. In other words, India was interfering in the internal affairs of sovereign nations.
This belief (there and here), although not so overwhelmingly prevalent as to become an insurmountable obstacle, has allowed rabble-rousing nationalists across the waters and the mountains and the lands to whip up sentiment and encash domestically from such politics. There are instances of leaders from these nations building their political futures on real and perceived Indian activism. But New Delhi too has, by a misguided sense of propriety in the not too distant years, done its bit to fuel apprehensions.
To take a charitable position, India perhaps never had the intent to impose itself on its neighbours and that its actions were sadly misinterpreted and misunderstood. To be less generous and perhaps more realistic, it did try at times to brazenly determine the course of action that ought to have been best left to the wisdom of the people and their representatives of those foreign countries to decide.
Congress’s Salman Khurshid, easily not among the most distinguished External Affairs Ministers the country has had, was right, though, in observing: “In international relations, in foreign policy, a great deal has to do with historical circumstances, a great deal has to do with the sense and perception of people.” Perceptions ruined him and his UPA Government, though one must add that in this case, perception and reality were not too far from each other. The Modi Government, like its predecessors, has to deal with the perception that, while India helps, it also dabbles in the internal affairs of friendly neighbours.
The more we talk in this vein, the more we assume that the solution is simplicity itself: ‘Keep off!’ Ironically, it is the leaders of the very same countries that want New Delhi to maintain a safe distance who are the most vocal in seeking India’s intervention when it suits them. Sometimes, that call for help is in the larger interest of their respective countries; on other occasions it is to bolster their individual positions internally against rivals. The constant appeal for ‘assistance’ not ‘intervention’, or ‘intervention’ not ‘interference’, has been driving New Delhi round the bend for years. The dilemma: To remain mute is not an option; to be proactive is to annoy present or would-be friends and allies. In such circumstances, it is difficult to always take the moral high ground. As that veteran of foreign policy, Henry Kissinger, once remarked: “A country that demands moral perfection in its foreign policy will achieve neither perfection nor security.”
So, look at the contradictions India has to deal with. Sometime in May 2012, when Mohamed Waheed was the Maldives’ President, his Foreign Affairs Minister Dunya Maumoon said, “I believe that India would respect our sovereignty and really does not play a role in the internal politics of the country…” She was referring to the developments leading to Mohamed Nasheed’s ouster as President. On the other hand, another former Minister Ahmed Naseem remarked, “(Without Indian mediation) we cannot find a way forward.” More recently, after it became clear that Modi would skip his scheduled visit to the Maldives because of Nasheed’s arrest and conviction, the Maldivian Government said it understood “India’s concerns” but that the conviction was “as per law and purely a domestic issue”. In other words, the conviction was none of India’s concern.
The dilemma has surfaced in other ways too. When Nasheed was ousted in a ‘coup’ in February 2012 and Waheed took charge, New Delhi quickly recognised the new regime and extended a hand of friendship to it. Nasheed then said he felt terribly let down by a “friend”. He had expected an intervention on his behalf by the Manmohan Singh Government and was disappointed that it did not happen. All that India did was to ask “Maldivians themselves to resolve the complex issue peacefully”. This was poles apart from New Delhi’s response in 1988 when it directly intervened (or interfered) to quell a serious coup by a combination of Maldivian leaders and Sri lanka-based militant outfit, the People’s liberation of Tamil Eelam, against then President Maumoon Abdul Gayoom. Interestingly, it was not a diplomatic but a military intervention by India that saved Gayoom, who had desperately sought Indian help.
The ‘intervene, don’t interfere’ game is being played out in both Nepal and Sri lanka. On a recent visit to India, former Nepalese Prime Minister and senior Maoist leader Baburam Bhattarai sought New Delhi’s help to goad the ruling Nepali Congress-Communist Party of Nepal (Unified Marxist-leninist) coalition in Kathmandu into addressing the concerns of his Unified Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) and its Madhesi allies over the Constitution that is sought to be adopted in the Constituent Assembly where Bhattarai and group is in a minority. Then, he added, not to anybody’s surprise, “We want India to help as a friend and neighbour, but we don’t want it to interfere in our affairs.” The problem is that Nepalese Prime Minister Sushil Koirala may find New Delhi’s assistance, ‘interference’ in his country’s internal matters.
This apprehension has to do with the subtle and not so subtle manner in which India had sought to construct Nepal’s politics in the decades before, during (with Pushpa Kamal Dahal ‘Prachanda’ as Prime Minister in mid-2008) and after the Maoists’ rule. For long the Maoists (among others) — then not in power or even part of the democratic process — had held that India was seeking to squeeze Nepal through projects such as the 6,480 megawatt hydropower plant on the Mahakali River, itself part of a treaty originally signed between the two countries back in 1996.
As Prime Minister, Prachanda lost no opportunity to castigate New Delhi for interfering in his country’s politics, when it became clear that he was on his way out as a result of many governance missteps and, admittedly, some open manoeuvring from India to see his back. But he seemed to have forgotten that he had sought and received New Delhi’s help in the conclusion of the agreements between various mainstream parties and the Maoists that ended the decade-long People’s War and the monarchy, and brought him to power. During those months of negotiations, it was the King — earlier backed by New Delhi — who had reasons to complain about India’s ‘interference’.
Given that Nepal and India share an open border — a sign of the trust that exists between the two countries despite the constant hiccups — and that Kathmandu’s conduct especially on foreign policy and security matters directly affects New Delhi’s interests, it would be naïve for anyone to expect India to keep a distance. For Modi, the challenge is to maintain the leverage through social, political and economic means and yet not get too deeply involved. He has been making the right noises, assuring Nepal of going the extra mile to rid its people of the impression of an ‘interfering India’. Nepalese goodwill, gained in enormous measure with the Indian Prime Minister’s two visits to that country, is on his side, for now.
Sri lanka presents an even more complicated situation. First, India invested in the liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam in the belief that the outfit was fighting for the just rights of the marginalised lankan Tamils. Then, it turned its guns on the terror organisation and earned its ire. One day New Delhi backed Sri lanka on international platforms, on another it voted against Colombo over the Tamil issue. Over the years, as a result of its muddled approach, it lost the trust of nearly everyone — the Sri lankan Tamils, the Sinhalese and subsequent Governments in Colombo. A point was reached when all of them, at different points of time, asked India to stop ‘meddling’ in their affairs. Even during the otherwise friendly Mahinda Rajapaksa’s regime there, New Delhi was told to mind its business and not protest too much over the growing Chinese footprint in Sri lanka. Rajapaksa benefitted greatly from India’s support during the critical last stages of the war against the lTTE. Now, after his defeat, he has blamed New Delhi for having ‘interfered’ in ensuring his defeat.
In a fresh twist, an article in China’s Global Times took the trouble of questioning Modi’s visit to the Northern Province during his recent Sri lanka visit. It wrote, “Modi included in his Sri lanka trip the city of Jaffna in the Tamil-majority Northern Province, which in fact shows India’s interference in the country’s internal affairs.” The article fervently hoped that “historical disputes between India and Sri lanka over Tamil people and fishery resources will make it difficult for the two sides to build a rapport any time soon”.
Given that the publication is state-run, the views can be safely assumed to be that of high-ranking Chinese Government officials too. Not to be left behind, Vijitha Rohana Wijemuni — the lankan naval soldier who had attacked Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi when the latter was inspecting a military parade during his lanka visit in the mid-eighties — told an Indian daily on the eve of Modi’s visit, “I like Modi…I am happy he is visiting the country. But he should not interfere in our internal affairs. He should respect our territorial integrity. If he interferes, the Tamil problem will resurface. After the war (with the lTTE) got over, there is peace. You should tell Modi to support the Tamils, not interfere…”
Thus, true to the ‘two-sided script’ that we have encountered earlier, voices have continued to emanate for a ‘constructive role’ that Colombo desires India to play along with gentle warnings against interference. Sri lanka needs New Delhi’s moral support at the very least in its efforts to reach out to its Tamil community through the implementation the 13th Amendment and more; it requires India’s expertise in building infrastructure; it seeks New Delhi’s support at global forums where misguided human rights activists are ever-ready to flay Colombo for ‘human rights violations’ during its war against the lTTE. It wants India to appreciate that a tiny island-nation it may be, but it is arguably the only country in the world which has succeeded in rooting out a dreaded terrorist outfit from its soil.
India is not the only commonality in the case of the three countries — Nepal, the Maldives and Sri lanka. China too is. That explains New Delhi’s eagerness to be seen on the right side of these nations, and puts the extra onus on the Modi regime’s part to project New Delhi as being accommodating and not intimidating, into perspective. It’s a jostling between two Asian powers for dominance in the Indian Ocean and along the Himalayas. Ironically, thus, while Beijing and New Delhi are working towards coming closer through many bilateral engagements, bound by mutual economic interests more than anything else, they are confronting each other on foreign soil for a larger slice of multi-faceted influence.
It’s a battle of nerves and the one who holds out longer in an eyeball to eyeball contact, will eventually triumph. Of course, the alternative thinking is that these countries provide a win-win situation for both India and China and that there really is no cause for friction. But that’s a naïve belief. Traditionally, China has gained leverage in Nepal, the Maldives and Sri lanka in the period when New Delhi’s tactical blunders or simply its abandonment of its turf, allowed for Beijing to fill the vacuum. Everything that the Modi Government is doing through the Indian Ocean or the Himalayan diplomatic endeavours, is to ensure that at least the space lost is regained. A properly nuanced ‘intervention not interference’ policy is the key to Mr Modi’s success.