“Not even the king has the right to subordinate the interests of the state to his personal sympathies and antipathies.”
- Otto von Bismarck.
Indian foreign policy is at the crossroads. At a time when global geopolitics is turning upside down, India needs a creative hand to reshape the entire structure of foreign policy and get out of its self-created web of delusions and propaganda.
There is no doubt that India is a rising power and the world is looking at us with a lot of hope and interest.
India, with 140 crore population, is a vast market for the global economy. It has also shown the spark of prosperity by climbing up the ladder as the fourth-largest and the fastest-growing economy in the world, but the mistake it made was that it started believing that, as a nation, it has arrived at the global stage.
It started to wrongly believe that it has really become a superpower, the Vishwaguru, for which the world has been civilisationally waiting for long. India made the mistake of confusing its potential as the reality and is now paying a heavy price.
India’s Strategic Loneliness
Operation Sindoor has exposed India’s vulnerability as a potential superpower. It finds itself lonely and bitter. No country, for all its tall claims in the past that the whole world listens when India speaks, came forward to openly support India.
Even its best friend for decades, Russia, maintained a strategic silence when India needed its support badly.
The Rise of China and Decline of American Certainty
China today is a global superpower that has successfully replaced the USSR of the Cold War era. China, the Middle Kingdom, which has ingrained in its thought process that it is the centre of the universe, is out to realise its dream of leading the world.
Not only in terms of economy but also technologically, it has emerged as a major power that is giving tough competition to the USA, especially in the field of AI and electric vehicles. It has already acquired the status of manufacturing hub of the world.
The USA, for the first time since the Second World War, is facing a crisis of being eclipsed as the number one global power. Donald Trump is a worried man, and the reason for his trade eccentricity could be traced back to this crisis. India, unfortunately, somewhere along the way failed to recalibrate its foreign policy in the changed global politics.
Misplaced Trust in America and Trump
Today, China is the biggest threat to India’s national interest. Its close alignment with Pakistan and Russia is bad news for the country. India also miscalculated its relationship with the USA. With Trump’s victory, we assumed that India had acquired a friend in the White House, forgetting that he is the President of America, who would further the national interest of his own country irrespective of his friendship with Prime Minister Modi.
The misconception about Trump being a good friend of India was so big that many people organised Havana for his victory when he was fighting to win his second term. Now, these people must be in deep shock.
The kind of statement Trump is making on a daily basis is an insult to a great civilisational country like India. India has not only endured the humiliation of seeing their own men being sent back to India in shackles like hardened criminals, but also now being equated with Pakistan.
Trump has no concerns for India’s sensibilities when he talks about tariff and reiterates on a daily basis how he brokered peace between India and Pakistan during Operation Sindoor. He hosted Pakistan’s army chief, responsible for the Pahalgam massacre, Asim Munir, for lunch in the White House and is signing a deal for the USA to help Pakistan in exploring its oil reserves and making bizarre statements like one day Pakistan can supply oil to India.
Pakistan’s Strategic Bargaining Game
This shows that Pakistan has cleverly placed itself between the two superpowers and is bargaining from both and creating a complex situation for India. At one end of the spectrum, the USA is trying to separate Pakistan from China to gain strategic heft in Asia vis-à-vis China and Russia both. It also gets a foothold near Afghanistan and Iran.
No doubt, in the last few years, India tried hard to get into the good books of the USA and China both. But somehow it was outsmarted by Pakistan. For India’s foreign policy, this is the biggest challenge.
At one end, it has found itself hyphenated with Pakistan, and at the other end, it finds itself encircled by China, which has deeply invested in India’s neighbours like Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Nepal, and also Bhutan. Pakistan is anyway out of bounds for India. India has never been so lonely in South Asia like it is today. This was robustly underlined when it sent its delegations across the globe but none to its neighbourhood.
The Erosion of Moral Leadership
India is also facing a serious moral crisis in its foreign policy approach. India was known for its moral posturing irrespective of its relationship with different countries. It has always aligned with victim countries and was known for upholding universal values. At a time when Israel is being severely criticised for its genocidal war in Gaza, India is keeping an ambitious silence. In fact, Sonia Gandhi, in an article, has criticised the government for its silence on Gaza.
It is true that Israel was the one country that supported India during Operation Sindoor, nonetheless, not speaking on an extremely serious issue like the daily massacre of innocent people in Gaza has robbed India of its moral fabric for which it was known for decades.
Diplomatic Frustration and Foreign Policy Setbacks
India’s foreign minister’s frustration was visible when he criticised the European Union (EU) after the Pahalgam episode. S Jaishankar said, “India does not need preachers but partners.” This was an admission of his own failure. He should state why the EU did not come out openly in favour of India when India needed its support.
Is it because, in his own make-believe world, his over-the-top statements have antagonised many powerful countries or has he failed as a foreign minister while observing diplomatic niceties? Either way, India is paying a heavy price.
Even when the world was defined by the Cold War calculus, India successfully created the Non-Aligned Movement with third world leaders. In South Asia, it was leader of SAARC countries. India’s successful experiment with democracy, despite global scepticism in the late 1940s and early 1950s, was seen as a ray of hope for newly liberated countries.
Modi’s Global Persona vs Foreign Policy Reality
India’s rich cultural heritage and democratic practice was a powerful soft power for western democracies. India was a poor country but it was respected the world over. Leaders like Nehru and Indira Gandhi were no pushovers.
In the last few years, international media has criticised India for its slide in democracy. Victimisation of minorities has garnered headlines in global press, particularly in the West.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi has tried to project himself as a global leader. He was seen establishing one-on-one relationships with top leaders of the world. He was given top civilian awards from more than thirty countries. His supporters wrote columns about the virtues of his personalised style of diplomacy. His hugs with world leaders became a matter of envy for many at world fora.
But today the vast gap between ‘perceived reality’ and ‘hard reality’ is staring at the country and poses tough questions – did we as a nation live in a delusional world in the last few years? Why, as a nation, are we lonely and sedate?
Kings are humans; they are allowed to make mistakes, but it is also human to accept and amend their mistakes. India today needs to look within and ask tough questions and course correct.
(Ashutosh is co-founder of SatyaHindi and a former member of AAP. This is an opinion piece. All views expressed are the author’s own. The Quint neither endorses nor is responsible for them.)