Weaponising Indian foreign policy for votes
Modi and Shah have created an awful legacy, one that might be replicated as the country heads into an election year
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the only man he trusts, Amit Shah, his party president, have crossed a sacrosanct line — they have weaponised foreign policy and made it hostage to their electoral exigencies. Consider this: India is surrounded by hostile neighbours and had one friend left — Bangladesh. Shah has on numerous occasions, in his hate-filled rants, compared Bangladeshi migrants in Assam to “termites”. He said he will throw the ghuspetia (interlopers) out. The deployment of the controversial Assam Citizens Register (ARC) set off a screeching dog whistle against minorities and has a disturbing, scary parallel to the Hutus calling the Tutsis “cockroaches” just before the Rwandan genocide. After Shah deployed the “termites” phraseology for the sixth time in speeches in states headed for the polls, even Bangladesh protested publicly.
Take for instance Modi’s sweet nothings exchanged with the new Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan on social media. First Imran’s letter to Modi asking for talks was leaked, leaving Imran in an uncomfortable position. Then came the ludicrous spectacle of observing a celebration for what the government calls “surgical strike day” against Pakistan on September 29. India’s Defence Minister Nirmala Sitharaman publicly boasted of “cutting off Pakistani heads” in an interview. Her statement raised questions about India’s commitment to the Geneva Convention. This is the first time that an Indian official has publicly said Indian Army soldiers have “cut off” heads of Pakistani soldiers during operations at the Line of Control.
India then invoked the killing of a border security personnel to justify the retreat from foreign minister-level talks with Pakistan in New York. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs made a nasty personal attack on Imran when calling off the talks. Imran then retaliated by tweeting about the “small men” he had encountered.
India’s foreign office has a long institutional memory and it is unlikely that an official would have drafted the personal attack on Imran. Unfortunately, under the Modi government, diplomacy is carried out by several people, excluding the foreign minister and the foreign office. They include Ajit Doval, national security adviser, a former spook with no domain experience in foreign affairs and a penchant for publicity. Then there is Ram Madhav, a Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh pracharak (propagandist), drafted by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) as the general secretary, who fancies himself as Modi’s Henry Kissinger.
Modi has also now taken to saying in public that Pakistan supports Congress President Rahul Gandhi. This is an astonishing line to cross and has never happened before in India’s foreign policy where you start playing domestic politics by citing another country. This is the second instance. The first was during the Gujarat elections which the BJP won with a thin margin. Modi said in a public meeting that former prime minister Manmohan Singh, former vice-president Hamid Ansari and a former army chief were “conspiring with Pakistan against him”. This incredible claim of treason was then disowned by Modi’s own Prime Minister’s Office, saying publicly they did not know what Modi had based his claim on. Imran is only beginning his term in office and will have a long memory. Shah’s “termite” comments had Bangladesh indignantly saying “Shah is not qualified to talk about DelhiDhaka ties”. Shah’s pejorative comments have also made the situation difficult for a friendly Prime Minister Shaikh Hasina, alienating a rare friend in the neighbouring region.
By using foreign policy as a domestic weapon, Modi and Shah have created an awful legacy. This is also testimony to the spectacular failure of Modi’s foreign policy in the neighbourhood. As elections approach, expect more intemperate language, weird conspiracy theories and the wreckage of Indian foreign policy at the altar of the vote bank.