India’s MPs Tour the World, But Can They Defend Our Foreign Policy?

Merely having closed-door meetings with host nations won't serve the desired purpose, writes Sudheendra Kulkarni.

If Kashmir comes up during our MPs’ discussions in foreign capitals, Pakistan will have partially succeeded in internationalising the issue, writes Sudheendra Kulkarni.

(Photo: Aroop Mishra/The Quint)

India has a compelling case against Pakistan. Our neighbour has long made the export of anti-India terror an instrument of its state policy.

This case becomes even more irrefutable after the barbaric terrorist attack in Pahalgam, in which 26 innocent tourists were killed.

Pahalgam was only the latest in a series of such crimes committed both in Jammu and Kashmir, and in other parts of India, over the past many decades. The world needs to hear, and support, our case, because state sponsorship of terror is a blatant violation of international law and the basic norms of civilised conduct by nations.

In this context, Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s decision to send seven delegations of Members of Parliament to various countries is a welcome move. The decision to include MPs from opposition political parties in these delegations is also commendable. It conveys to the international community a credible message about a broad democratic consensus on India’s case against Pakistan.

Domestically, too, the initiative has been received well so far. It reinforces an important tradition: that India always stands together in the face of an external threat. Such unity, however, should not preclude a healthy and vigorous debate on Pahalgam and its aftermath, when the matter comes up in the next session of Parliament.

As things stand, it appears that the government will be shielded from a good deal of criticism because several articulate opposition MPs─Shashi Tharoor, Asaduddin Owaisi, Manish Tewari and others─are part of the delegations touring the world.

What also helps the government is the considerable dissonance within the Congress on this issue. The larger Congress-led INDIA alliance is anyway in deep disarray. Moreover, Rahul Gandhi has thrown some politically unwise barbs at the government, for which he does not seem to have received much public support. As a result, the Leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha will have a hard time in rallying his ranks whenever Parliament debates this matter.

Why the World Isn’t Backing Operation Sindoor

The government may not enjoy the same degree of comfort in its external narrative. When Indian MPs talk to the international community on terrorism, they will surely receive a patient, even sympathetic, hearing. Which sane person, anywhere in the world, would not condemn the Pahalgam terror attack, and the long string of similar attacks in the past?

But after Operation Sindoor, the global community’s main concern has shifted from terrorism to India-Pakistan military conflict.

This is obvious from the fact that while capitals around the globe condemned the terror strike in Pahalgam—without mentioning Pakistan—there was hardly any explicit support for Operation Sindoor, barring Israel. Almost all countries urged both, India and Pakistan, to exercise “restraint”. There was a global sigh of relief when a ceasefire was announced after just four days—which India has referred to as “cessation of hostilities”.

When two nuclear-armed nations fight, and when the fight quickly climbs the escalatory ladder with potentially disastrous consequences for the South Asian region and beyond, it is foolish to expect the rest of the world to sit quiet. If and when another 'operation' happens, quick external intervention is not just a possibility, it is a certainty.

Even in the case of the India-Pakistan conflict this time, many countries likely believe that it was stopped due to an intervention by Donald Trump. The US president’s own repeated assertions to this effect, and his exaggerated claim that he prevented the deaths of millions, have moulded the global opinion on this matter more than any official communication by India’s ministry of external affairs. 

Therefore, our MPs will surely hear some uncomfortable questions from the people they meet, such as:

• Is Operation Sindoor going to be the ‘New Normal’, as Prime Minister Modi has affirmed?

• If a new terror attack takes place anywhere in India, will the Indian government treat it as an act of war and launch similar air strikes on targets located inside Pakistani territory?

• And when Pakistan retaliates, which is certain, will India raise the threshold of its counter-attack higher than it did this time? Most importantly, how many times will this conflict repeat itself?

These questions will perhaps be followed by the following advice, to our MPs: “Why can’t you Indians and Pakistanis talk to each other and settle this matter amongst yourselves?”

Pakistan Is Pushing Kashmir Back onto the Global Stage

At this point, we should remember that Pakistan, too, is sending its own delegation, led by its former foreign minister Bilawal Bhutto, on a global campaign against India. In addition to whatever else he may tell his interlocutors, he will mention the spectre of nuclear conflict and also impress upon them that India must talk to Pakistan about what the latter sees as the root of the problem─the dispute over Kashmir.

The response of the Indian MPs to this will be predictable. They will repeat the government’s oft-stated stand that the only Kashmir-related issue to be discussed with Islamabad is that it should return Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (PoK), which it has illegally occupied since 1947, to India.

This argument and counter-argument on Kashmir is something countries around the world have heard on numerous occasions in the past. Very few have completely supported either India or Pakistan on this matter. Their stance on Kashmir is unlikely to change when Indian MPs, or Bhutto and his colleagues, meet them.

If Kashmir comes up during our MPs’ discussions in foreign capitals, Pakistan will have partially succeeded in internationalising the issue. Islamabad has already taken a big step in this direction by “suspending” the Shimla Agreement of 1972, which mandated the two sides to seek “a final settlement of Jammu and Kashmir” through bilateral negotiations.

It took this action on 24 April as a reaction to India “keeping in abeyance” the Indus Water Treaty of 1960. Pakistan has declared that any act by India to block or divert Indus waters “will be treated as an act of war”. 

The long and short of it is that, in the eyes of the international community, Operation Sindoor has re-hyphenated India and Pakistan, something which successive governments, including the Modi government, have tried assiduously to stop.

India’s Own Record Under the Scanner

Indian MPs should also be prepared to hear a different set of uncomfortable questions ─ especially in Muslim countries such as Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Kuwait, Indonesia, and Malaysia, but also in Europe and the US.

The fact that Islamic radicalism feeds terrorism in Pakistan is well known and widely acknowledged. But is there any guarantee that questions will not be raised about Hindu radicalism in India, and the government’s inaction in the face of hate crimes against innocent Indian Muslims? 

After all, before and after the terror attack in Pahalgam, and both during and after Operation Sindoor, the international media has highlighted incidents of bigotry that have not shown India in a positive light: mob lynching and vulgar mass rowdyism in front of mosques, politicians of the ruling party making anti-Muslim statements without any fear of reprimand either by courts or by their own party leadership, and several TV channels publicly maligning Islam, Indian Muslims, and even Muslim countries. One prominent supporter of the ruling party even bad-mouthed the foreign minister of Iran on live TV as a “pig”. 

Some may also ask our MPs questions about the arrest of Prof Ali Khan Mahmudabad of the prestigious Ashoka University over his social media post, in which there is nothing remotely seditious or anti-national. Just as this has become global news, many around the world have also received another news ─ how neither the government nor the ruling party has taken any action against Vijay Shah, a minister in the BJP-ruled state of Madhya Pradesh, who called Col Sophia Qureshi a “sister” of the terrorists involved in the Pahalgam attack.

Nothing could have been a viler comment on a Defence Ministry spokesperson who, along with Wing Commander Vyomika Singh, earned nationwide praise for their dignified media briefing during Operation Sindoor. 

Therefore, at least some in the global community might want to know the following: Is Owaisi’s inclusion in the MPs’ delegation, like the teaming-up of Sophia Qureshi-Vyomika Singh in the media briefing, a genuine affirmation of India as a secular nation, or is it mere optics to garner temporary global support against Pakistan?

We do not know whether our MPs will address press conferences. If they do not do so, how will the people in the countries they visit know about India’s narrative on Pakistan’s abetment of terrorism?

Merely having closed-door meetings with some official representatives of host nations will hardly serve the desired purpose. But if our MPs do hold press meets and give media interviews, they will be hard-pressed to answer questions that will embarrass India on foreign soil.

The Trump Factor: A Thorn in India’s Narrative

When our parliamentary delegations return to India, they, especially the US-bound team led by Tharoor, will have considerable difficulty answering the following question: Were you able to get the Trump administration to support India’s case against Pakistan?

The answer would clearly be in the negative, because Trump himself has been repeatedly equating India and Pakistan in all his public utterances. He has praised the Pakistani leadership in the same breath as he has praised Modi.

Indeed, Trump has done something more to cause discomfiture to our MPs. In a speech in Riyadh in Saudi Arabia on 13 May, as part of his three-nation tour of the Middle-East, Trump praised Pakistan as a US ally in the fight against ISIS terror.

Since 20 January, the US military has terminated 83 terrorist leaders operating across Iraq, Syria, and Somalia, including ISIS’s number two global leader. With the help of Pakistan, we apprehended the ISIS terrorists responsible for the attack on 13 American service members at Abbey Gate─that horrible, horrible disaster.

US President Donald Trump

Furthermore, none of the three fellow members of the Quad─the US, Japan, and Australia─has backed Operation Sindoor. After all, the Modi government has invested so much of its political and diplomatic capital in forming and sustaining the ‘Quadrilateral’ as a platform to contain China. Quad’s supporters in India even billed it as the “Asian NATO”.

Remember, the North Atlantic Treaty works on the principle that "an attack on one is an attack on all". Obviously, Washington, Tokyo, and Canberra do not agree with the Modi government’s new tenet that "Any terror act on India will be treated as an act of war."

Parliament will have to debate these important questions on our foreign policy. Therefore, if there is indeed an in-depth discussion in Parliament on Pahalgam and Operation Sindoor, four highly uncomfortable questions should be asked about India’s foreign policy:

1. Has India’s excessive dependence on America served our national interests? The answer is no.

2. If “neighbourhood-first” is the foundation of any nation’s foreign policy, did a single neighbour of ours, either in our immediate or extended neighbourhood, support Operation Sindoor? The answer is, again, no.

3. This will be as embarrassing to the Modi government as the first question ─ “Has India succeeded in isolating Pakistan globally?” No.

4. China is our immediate, largest and most consequential neighbour. Beijing surely has a lot to answer for its silence on, and hence its tacit support to, Pakistan’s self-hurting policy of feeding the snake of religious extremism and terrorism. But rising China is also a country that matters a lot in today’s world. Can India afford a two-front hostility with both Pakistan and China?

The answer, again, is no. Why then was an eighth delegation of MPs not sent to Beijing? After all, isn’t the overarching purpose of foreign policy and public diplomacy to convert adversaries into friends through dialogue?  

This being case, a fifth question arises: What is the primary objective of sending multi-party delegations to countries around the world? Is it meant to garner maximum global support for India in our case against Pakistan? Or is it designed to create a positive narrative for domestic consumption?

The Need for Direct Dialogue with Pakistan

Finally, what then is the way out? Here is my suggestion: Indians should conduct a cool-headed, non-jingoistic, all-sided and objective assessment of how best to deal with Pakistan. Such an assessment will surely bring us to two realisations:

1. There is no military solution to our problem with Pakistan. Wars in the past have not helped, nor will any number of Operations Sindoor in future.

2. The solution lies in having direct, continuous, candid, multi-layered, and trust-promoting dialogue between Indians and Pakistanis─not limited merely to government leaders and career diplomats─with a mutual resolve to live as good neighbours. 

While persisting in having direct, uninterrupted, and uninterruptible dialogue, both India and Pakistan should appeal to countries around the world─especially the US, China, Russia, Saudi Arabia, UAE, EU and others─to play an honest supportive role.

As someone who had the privilege of working as a close aide to our late Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee, who is respected as a wise statesman in India, Pakistan, and the rest of the world, I recall his evergreen dictum: “You can change your friends but not your neighbours”.

(The writer, who served as an aide to India’s former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee, has been active in promoting India-Pakistan and India-China Cooperation. He tweets @SudheenKulkarni and welcomes comments at [e-mail]. This is an opinion piece and the views expressed are the author’s own. The Quint neither endorses nor is responsible for them.)