Exploring India's Foreign Policy: Manmohan Singh's Legacy & the Modern Day
Manmohan Singh wasn't afraid of taking radical foreign policy decisions, even at the cost of his political survival.
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"No power on Earth can stop an idea whose time has come."
These words – spoken by Manmohan Singh during his first Budget speech in Parliament as India's Finance Minister in 1991 – heralded a complete turnaround of what modern India would look like in the decades to come.
"Dr Manmohan Singh had a holistic and progressive perspective on foreign policy that was not caged by the shibboleths of the past or partisan oneupmanship," geopolitics expert Lt Gen (Retd) Bhopinder Singh said while speaking to The Quint.
In this article, we explore the key foreign policy decisions taken by the late PM Manmohan Singh as well as the differences and similarities between India's ties with different countries in the Singh and post-Singh era.
1991
What would happen to an imports-dependent country, which is already in the throes of a major Balance of Payment (BoP) crisis with foreign reserves left to pay for barely three weeks' worth of imports, if its largest trading partner and a global superpower suddenly collapses like a pack of cards? That too in the backdrop of a major Gulf War in its neighbourhood threatening supply lines?
That country would either face economic decimation or it would have to employ a gifted crisis management expert to steer it through rough waters. Luckily, that's exactly what PV Narasimha Rao did when he asked Manmohan Singh to become his Finance Minister in 1991 amid the fall of the Soviet Union.
While the overhauling of India's economy was an economic decision on the face of it, it was also a foreign policy decision as it influenced how countries across the world would engage with India in the coming years.
"If we talk about how India has become a key global player now, we need to look at the 1991 decision to open India's economy to the world. By doing so, Dr Singh was really opening the whole of India to the world," Michael Kugelman, Director of the South Asia Institute at the Wilson Center, told The Quint.
In retrospect, the thinking behind the bulk of the strenuous foreign policy decisions that Singh took as prime minister from 2004 to 2014 can be traced to the crucial 1991 reforms. If not anything, that decision displayed that Singh was not afraid of taking radical, polarising decisions that he put his faith behind – even if it meant opposition from his own party and alliance partners or staking his political survival. Which takes us to 2008.
The 'Watershed' India-US Nuclear Deal
One could argue that 2008 was the most challenging year of Dr Singh's first term in office. This was the year when his government faced the risk of collapse due to stiff opposition from alliance partners, namely the Left, over a key nuclear agreement with the US. It was also the year when Mumbai was rocked by dastardly terror attacks, backed by Pakistan, which left over 170 people dead.
But first, the nuclear deal.
The 2008 India-US civil nuclear agreement has often been called a "watershed moment" in ties between New Delhi and Washington.
Not only was the deal significant given that it became a bedrock for renewed ties between the two countries after a period of prolonged acrimony following India's 1998 nuclear tests, but also in the backdrop in which it was signed.
The Left Front, whose 59 MPs had pledged support to the Singh-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government at the time of its formation, were vehemently opposed to the deepening of cooperative ties with the US – especially on sensitive matters like nuclear trade.
When the Left withdrew support to the UPA due to Singh's insistence on the deal going through, the UPA was left with 228 MPs in the Lok Sabha – 44 short of a simple majority. However, the government survived a no-confidence motion, shocking political pundits who had unequivocally ruled out its continuation.
"The India-US nuclear deal was significant for two main reasons," Kugelman said. "First, because of how risky it was – for both President Bush and PM Singh as both men took significant political risks with that agreement. The second is that this deal really brought India into global nuclear trade without it being an NPT signatory."
Further, the deal redefined India's relations with the US – which has now gone on to become one of the most important strategic partnerships for both New Delhi and Washington. Hence, experts argue that the importance of the deal can be interpreted not necessarily by its pragmatic success, but how (borrowing from Marxist ideology) it created a base on top of which a superstructure could be built.
Mumbai Terror Attacks & Ties With Pakistan
The second grave challenge that Singh faced during his tenure as PM was the 2008 Mumbai terror attacks. The attacks came at a time when Singh was fervently engaged in setting the ground for talks with Pakistan.
As per a WikiLeaks cable revealed in 2011, Singh and the then Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf were in talks to develop a "peace formula" over the Kashmir dispute and had made great progress towards this end till 2007. Musharraf's visit to India in 2005 (on the pretext of a cricket match) and a bilateral meeting held in Cuba in 2006 on the sidelines of the Non-Aligned Summit in 2006 are also believed to have stimulated the process.
However, the attacks came as a jolt to him as they not only halted the peace process, but ended up taking it several steps back.
Also, when the attacks took place, Singh was lambasted by the media and the Opposition for not taking a tougher stance on Pakistan as he refused to retaliate militarily and instead took a call to end what is often referred to as "cricket diplomacy" between the two countries.
Given that controversial decision, experts suggest that it is in the realm of India's relations with Pakistan where the starkest change has been witnessed in the Singh era and the post-Singh era.
For instance, Singh's decision not to retaliate stands in stark contrast with the precedents the Narendra Modi government has set after coming to power in 2014. For instance, the Pulwama suicide attack by a Jaish-e-Mohammed militant that killed 40 Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) jawans in February 2019 was answered by airstrikes conducted by India in Pakistan's Balakot 12 days later.
"At the present moment, the relationship is at an all-time low with Pakistan. The muscular rhetoric within India aside, the vulnerability and disconnect with the neighbourhood has never been worse in decades," Lt Gen (Retd) Bhopinder Singh told The Quint.
India & China
Yet another equation that has seen a negative transformation since Singh's prime ministership is India's relationship with China.
Singh had inherited more-or-less stable ties with Beijing from his predecessor Atal Bihari Vajyapee, and had made efforts to build on it. For instance, when the then Chinese premier Wen Jiabao visited New Delhi in 2005, in a first, an agreement was inked between him and Singh that delineated the focal points upon which the boundary dispute between the two countries would be settled.
While the negotiations came to a standstill after China started interpreting the provisions of the agreement differently, there was no major diplomatic or militaristic row that erupted between the two Asian powers during the majority of Singh's tenure.
Tensions actually started simmering in 2013, a year before Singh demitted office, when an assertive China under Xi Jinping started pushing harder for what it believed was its own territory – which led to the three-week-long Depsang standoff in 2013 after Chinese troops crossed the Line of Actual Control (LAC).
That incident sowed seeds of distrust between the two sides, which only deepened with time as more complex incidents followed, such as skirmishes in 2020 that left 20 Indian soldiers dead, and again in December 2022.