[The Border Security Force at the Petrapole-Benapole joint retreat ceremony at India's border with Bangladesh. Photo by Partho72, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons]
“Relationships with neighbours are complicated. They're all democratic polities, so governments will change. There will be political debates in their country. Often, we will be the centre of those debates. It's natural.” - S Jaishankar, minister of external affairs, at the Economic Times World Leaders Forum.
As a lifelong practitioner of diplomacy, the foreign minister was stating a workaday fact. In June, when Prime Minister Narendra Modi took office for a third time and handed the external affairs portfolio to Jaishankar, who is now the longest serving foreign minister after Jawaharlal Nehru, he signalled business as usual.
It’s a well-known fact that India’s relations in what is arguably the toughest neighbourhood in the world have always been complicated. What Jaishankar left unstated was why these complications are in the spotlight yet again, despite its much referred to ‘Neighbourhood First’ policy, enunciated a decade ago when Modi first took oath as Prime Minister. It’s primarily because India has made inadequate investments in political relationships and economic integration with neighbours in the past decade.
Former foreign secretary Shyam Saran commented, “the neighbourhood has suffered relative neglect with the pursuit of a high global profile. I would hope there is a re-focus on the neighbourhood which remains the most critical factor for Indian interests.”
It doesn’t help that all South Asian countries are dealing with border issues or internal conflicts and underpinning everyone’s security and economic choices in the region is the big power rivalry between the US and China, India’s northern neighbour with a border beef. On its western border, India has to deal with Pakistan, a failing and conflict-ridden state whose strategic energies are singularly focussed on destabilising India. It continues to support insurgents in Jammu and Kashmir even though it is grappling with Balochistan’s violent separatism, which has jeopardised the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, a $62 billion showpiece in China’s global Belt and Road Initiative.
The relatively calm East slipped into turmoil when popular protests erupted in Bangladesh. Myanmar, the other eastern neighbour, is still reeling from the after effects of a 2021 military coup and widespread rebellion in far flung provinces. While Himalayan neighbours Nepal and Bhutan are relatively stable, Sri Lanka in the south is still grappling with an economic crisis and recovering from political upheaval.
To complicate matters, the US, with which India has thrown its lot, frowns upon Modi’s friendship with Russian President Vladimir Putin. Faced with a boycott in the western world, Russia is trying to make fresh inroads into Asia—hobnobbing with Pakistan and now with Malaysia. That means the Modi government has to thread the neighbourhood policy needle while maintaining the balance between the big powers.
Tumult in the ’hood
The violent socio-political unrest in Bangladesh is the stiffest foreign policy test that Modi 3.0 has faced. Even to the casual observer of newspaper headlines the animosity towards India on show in Bangladesh during public protests in July was apparent. What started off as a student protest on July 1 opposing a court order retaining job quotas for families of freedom fighters of 1971, became a violent confrontation with the Sheikh Hasina Wazed-led Awami League (AL) government. Hasina’s ruthless attempts to suppress the protests resulted in large-scale loss of life and a buildup of popular anger that eventually led to her fleeing the country to the safe haven of friendly India.
India has been unreservedly supporting Hasina, who has been in power since 2009. Its backing was so unequivocal that it looked away as she brutally cracked down on the opposition, Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) led by arch rival Khaleda Zia, and Jamaat-e-Islami. She won the last election easily because the opposition boycotted it.
The India-Bangladesh relationship, especially strategic and economic, deepened in Hasina’s tenure but their political engagement narrowed almost exclusively to the AL. BNP leaders made overtures to India in 2018 and found officials cautiously receptive. However, it went downhill thereafter as India became increasingly wary of inviting Hasina’s displeasure. BNP, which has been licking its wounds all this while, has now hardened its position as India continues to shelter Hasina. Bangladesh wants her back to stand trial.
“She has to be brought back, or the people of Bangladesh won't be at peace. The kind of atrocities she has committed must be addressed through a trial here,” Chief Advisor (CA) Muhammad Yunus said in a recent interview. In the same interview he also said that Hasina should not make statements from her Indian hideout, a blunt signal to India to make her shut up.
India’s diplomatic chops are about to be tested as it rebuilds its relationship with Bangladesh. Security being India’s central concern, the national security establishment in New Delhi usually has the upper hand in decision-making. Those mavens have stayed close only to Hasina.
New Delhi must move “beyond the narrative that portrays every other political party except Awami League as Islamist and that the country will turn into Afghanistan without Sheikh Hasina,” Yunus said.
Friend in need
India’s approach to not only Bangladesh but also the entire neighbourhood is now primarily underpinned by national security considerations and aspiration to become a leading power some day. According to minister Jaishankar, “when we talk about Neighbourhood First, the entire exercise is to make sure that there are so many connections in so many domains which are so indispensable, which are so deep, which are so central to everybody's calculation, that the factors of volatility get relatively diminished”.
The spirit of that statement was on full display in 2022 when Sri Lanka plunged into an economic and political crisis very similar to what’s happening in Bangladesh now. India rushed to help, shipping medicines, fuel and food. It extended hard cash and also helped intervene with the International Monetary Fund to secure a rescue package for the island nation. The gesture and actions generated tremendous goodwill in Lanka, which is gradually limping back to stability and is ready for elections. Last week, India’s National Security Advisor, Ajit Doval, flew to Colombo to hold talks with presidential aspirants and leaders from various Lankan political outfits, including Tamil parties.
India has also learnt to deal with setbacks patiently. A year ago, Mohamed Muizzu, known to have no love lost for India, became Maldives President. He lost no time in ordering Indian troops stationed in the archipelago to go home. Male has been at the centre of India-China contestation in the Indian Ocean with India having the upper hand until Muizzu’s victory. Despite the setback, India intensely engaged with Muizzu.
Last month, minister Jaishankar spent three days in Maldives, holding wide-ranging talks with Muizzu, foreign minister Moosa Zameer, and defence minister Ghassan Maumoon. He and Zameer launched water and sewage projects in 28 islands of the archipelago set up with financial assistance from India. Statements by Maldivian leaders indicated that sustained diplomacy helped dial down the anti-India sentiment. Indian tourists were major contributors to Maldives economy but they deserted the Indian Ocean neighbour after Muizzu took an anti-India stance upon assuming office. As Indian tourists trickle back, tensions are likely to ease even more.
Alienating friends
One of the casualties of New Delhi’s pragmatic and self-interest-driven foreign policy, however, has been people-to-people contact. After the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan in August 2021, India practically cut off all relations with that country. It partially reopened its embassy in Kabul a year later and now has regular contact with the Taliban administration although it does not recognise the government. It has expressed concern over the Taliban banning girls from schools and universities. But it is yet to allow Afghans to come to India for medical treatment and education.
New Delhi had invested nearly $3 billion in that country, including on building schools, power projects, a Parliament complex, and scholarships for students to study in India, even though it is not a border-sharing neighbour. Just like in Sri Lanka, the initiatives generated goodwill among people. However, a lot of it was lost when while hastily exiting the country, it abandoned many Afghan friends to face the Taliban. It alienated them further after it stopped issuing visas, depriving hundreds of Afghans of high quality medical care and education in India. The visa denial was said to be at the sole insistence of the home ministry, which was worried about Islamic State operatives infiltrating into the country.
A similar disaffection for India rose in Nepal after the informal economic blockade of 2015 and the demonetisation of 2016. Some foreign policy analysts believe that irrespective of what India does, all the neighbours have to ultimately work with New Delhi. One pointed out that every political leader in Nepal aspires for India’s support. Yet, Nepal in the recent past raked up territorial issues with tacit backing from China, whose influence in the Himalayan country is on the rise. Incidentally, KP Sharma Oli, the Communist Party of Nepal leader, made a comeback as Prime Minister in July. During his last stint as PM four years ago, Oli tilted towards China and accused India of encroaching on Nepal territory and demanded it back.
Former foreign secretary Vijay Gokhale has noted that the mindspace that India lost among the Nepal public in 2015-16 helped China’s aim to build a Sino-centric regional order in the Himalayas. Those Chinese attempts extend to the other Himalayan country, Bhutan, one of India’s closest friends and to which New Delhi guarantees military support. Bhutan does not have diplomatic relations with China but it has been holding border talks with it ever since a military standoff with India at the Doklam tri-junction in 2017. A border agreement between Beijing and Thimphu will certainly have ramifications for India’s security.
Although India and Bhutan have deep economic relations, younger Bhutanese are increasingly looking at India as a stifling presence. China is taking advantage of this alienation with educational and professional opportunities in its cities for Bhutanese youngsters.
Lines of power
Energy forms the centre-piece of India’s neighbourhood diplomacy although the connections are as fraught as the contracts. India buys power from Nepal and Bhutan while it sells electricity to Bangladesh. It has plans to build transmission links to Myanmar to enable power trading with Southeast Asia. A $1.2 billion plan hopes to lay an undersea cable to Sri Lanka to supply renewable energy from that country to the Indian grid.
The projects themselves have often caused heartburn with partners feeling shortchanged by India. Bhutan, for instance, has complained that commercial power deals are heavily skewed in India’s favour. While India buys hydropower from it at rates cheaper than even domestic sources, its loans for the projects are too expensive and raise the country’s debt burden.
Bangladesh, which started buying about 1,500 MW electricity from Adani Group’s super critical thermal power station in Godda in Jharkhand last year, is unhappy about its high cost. There was significant opposition and criticism of the economics of the project even before power supply began in 2023. Now Indian energy companies are in a quandary as Bangladesh owes them nearly $1 billion, over $800 million to Adani alone, in unpaid bills. India acted quickly, changing rules allowing power exporters to sell in the domestic market as well to reduce risk due to the unrest next door.
Bangladesh, which is already short of power, will be in more trouble if Indian producers stop supply. While the Adani Group has said that it will not snap transmission, how long it will continue if uncertainty remains is anybody’s guess. And if it does stop supply, it will likely be seen as Modi’s friend Adani cutting off power to a crisis-ridden neighbour. It will be another setback to the relationship as India is already drawing flak for not allowing Bangladeshis to travel to India. While it has restarted issuing a limited number of visas, there is pressure to increase the numbers.
The anti-India sentiment sweeping across the country also led to attacks on Hindus in Bangladesh. The assaults reduced after Chief Advisor to the interim government Muhammad Yunus intervened but animosity is lurking beneath the surface. Hindus are a little over 7% of the population. Widespread attacks could trigger a refugee inflow into India, which will be morally obliged to give Hindus, Christians, Buddhists and other minorities citizenship post the Citizenship Amendment Act, 2019.
Ideological actors
One of the key characteristics of India’s global engagement under Modi is the role of the diaspora and activists who act independently of the government in promoting the Hindutva ideology and forming a loose global Hindu federation. The ruling Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) foreign affairs wing regularly engages with international groups and Hindu organisations. While the Indian diaspora is influential in many countries, particularly in the US and the UK, activism in the neighbourhood is directed from India. For instance, the Sangh Parivar and its ideology has considerable influence in Nepal and the 2015 blockade is seen by many as India expressing its anger for not declaring the Himalayan country a Hindu Rashtra.
Organisations linked to BJP’s ideological mentor, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, have acted as pressure groups in evolving the neighbourhood policy, including the citizenship law. A group of activists are working on consolidating the various Tamil nationalist movements in Sri Lanka and broadening them under a larger Hindu movement.
In their public statements, government officials and political leaders often give the impression that foreign policy is conducted with one eye on voters. It doesn’t help that India is often seen as a regional hegemon, unmindful of others’ slate of choices and compulsions. That perception is greatly enhanced by media—both traditional and social—narratives. The jingoistic nationalism promoted by them often shows neighbours in poor light and their leaders shorn of dignity. After Jaishankar’s recent visit, for instance, the Indian media played up a former Maldivian opposition politician’s purported comment that India brought Muizzu to his knees. Reports also suggested that India bought 28 islands from Maldives, a bogus claim that the ministry had to refute.
When Hindus came under attack during the unrest in Bangladesh, Indian social media went on an overdrive about their safety, even suggesting that similar incidents could happen in India too. CA Yunus visited the Dhakeshwari temple amid the violence to ensure the safety of the community. The gesture helped curb the attacks. Yet the narrative in India continues to blow up the incidents even though the situation has stabilised and cross border trade and movement of people restarted.
“The issue of trying to portray the conditions of minorities in such a big way is just an excuse,” Yunus remarked in the earlier mentioned interview.
Such independent forays complicate the government’s foreign policy. In his book The India Way: Strategies for an Uncertain World, minister Jaishankar writes: “Nationalism being a product of politics and identity, India has had to grapple with both when it comes to its immediate periphery. Its civilisational influence has obviously been much broader than contemporary political boundaries. But new nationalisms may not be readily amenable to building on old connections…The challenge, therefore, is to rebuild a fractured region while re-establishing linkages beyond.”
The foreign policy practitioner in Jaishankar has got the analysis spot on. The proof will be in the practice as minister.
Dig Deeper
- S Jaishankar delivered the 4th Ramnath Goenka Memorial Lecture 2019: On India's pragmatic and self-interest-driven foreign policy (YouTube video)
- India’s Fog of Misunderstanding Surrounding Nepal–China Relations, by former foreign secretary Vijay Gokhale (Read)
- Russia’s Asian ambitions (Read)
- A decade of CPEC (Read)
