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Obama at Rajpath: Not just another selfie moment

Merely running your eye over the list of Republic Day chief guests over the decades gives you an unambiguous overview of Indian foreign policy’s total anti-Western toxification.

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While the focus this week has been on Kathmandu and on the Modi-Sharif non-meeting, a landmark foreign policy event has passed us by somewhat quietly. Possibly without visual drama, mere subtleties, nuances are for policy nerds and strategic studies granduncles. Funnier still, it was called everything, from a diplomatic masterstroke to another example of Modi’s all-conquering global charm, a brilliant image-building opportunity and so on. But not the most important thing it is: a fourth strategic shift by India in 22 years, and in the same direction.

Obama gracing the Republic Day parade will be the first time an American has been accorded that honour. Through our history, America had been a distant power we reached out to at junctures of desperate need. During the 1962 debacle, plenty of US arms and training were sought and provided. It was in Nehru’s last years that Americans even set up a military mission in New Delhi, led by a full two-star general. But it was kept below the radar. We were not calling each other strategic allies. The relationship declined after the 1965 war, but we were back on friendly terms with PL-480 (food aid) once a series of droughts hit. If the first half of the 1960s brought us American armaments and training, in 1965 its ships arrived at our ports laden with wheat. Then followed another freeze in 1971.

It was impossible in this period for a government to survive inviting the US president as Republic Day chief guest. It was too risky in decades when anti-Americanism was the bedrock of Non-Alignment, and, thereby, our foreign policy. That honour, accordingly, was reserved for “non-aligned” heads of state, many Third World dictators, and generally the anti-American, Cold War gang.

In the four decades between 1950 and 1990, only three US presidents visited India. This included Richard Nixon’s one-day visit in 1969, which was more like a transit halt. After Bill Clinton came in 2000, both his successors have showcased their India visits, and Obama will travel to New Delhi for the second time during his presidency.

Besides the fact that over the years no American was ever given this honour, the Soviets and other Eastern Bloc/Non-Aligned strongmen were a regular presence, some like Marshal Tito of former Yugoslavia enjoying multiple appearances (1968, 1974). There were the leaders of the then favoured “Afro-Asian” nations, Julius Nyerere of Tanzania, Mobutu of Zaire, a Chinese (Marshal Ye Jianying) in 1958, even two Pakistanis, Malik Ghulam Muhammad in 1955 and, surprise of surprises, Rana Abdul Hamid in 1965. We fought a bitter 22-day war of attrition later that year. We were willing to welcome leaders of China and Pakistan as we fought with them over territory, but not those of the US and most other western powers with whom we argued over ideology. If you scan history, the only Western leader, at least in a manner of speaking, invited was Queen Elizabeth II in 1961 when Nehru’s Raj nostalgia was still on. A British prime minister had to wait till 1993 (John Major).

It is fascinating how merely running your eye over the list of chief guests over these decades gives you an unambiguous overview of Indian foreign policy’s total anti-Western toxification. We were happy to host dictators and despots who probably laughed at the idea of a liberal, constitutional republic. You’d be surprised that Fidel Castro and Nasser somehow missed out. The only Westerners to occasionally make it were marginal, Spain and Greece, for example. You will also notice the French bucking the trend. They have made that hallowed podium four times, more than any other nation besides Bhutan actually. I am not able to fully decode a Westophobic establishment’s Francophilia over the years, and maybe someone wiser can enlighten us. I can only guess that while being a NATO ally, France was seen to be a critic of America, and definitely superior culturally. Or probably it was our only major Western supplier of armaments starting in the fifties. And I suppose it did no harm that Indira Gandhi had learnt French. But the French also made their first appearance only in 1976. A delicious reminder: it was the peak of the Emergency and Mrs Gandhi would have seen value in a “Western” republic’s endorsement. Others featured multiple times: Bhutan, Mauritius, Sri Lanka. And, of course, there were Kenneth Kaunda of Zambia and leaders of other “liberal democracies” like Poland and Bulgaria.


Also read: Obama’s Bold Indo-Us Equation


Nehru had set the tone by making Indonesia’s Sukarno chief guest at the very first Republic Day in 1950 and nobody dared change his script for nearly three decades. We also had Norodom Sihanouk of Cambodia (1963), Nguyen Van Linh of Vietnam (1989). Our choice of foreign friends to honour over the years makes an incredibly accurate index of how our worldview evolved-or rather, remained frozen. It is only with the beginning of reform, and the end of Cold War, that the list becomes more diverse, though reluctantly. The French, as we noted earlier, make all their four appearances after 1976. Britain, South Korea, Japan, even Nursultan Nazarbayev of Kazakhstan make the cut. But America? Now that is change.

So significant that we can call it the fourth biggest shift in our policy framework since reform began in 1991. The first big shift was P.V. Narasimha Rao establishing full diplomatic relations with Israel in January 1992. It was a very, very brave and risky decision for a Congress prime minister, particularly a non-Gandhi leading a minority government. But the old fox had covered himself as only he could. He announced his decision when Yasser Arafat was in New Delhi and talked him into endorsing the decision at his press conference (see my National Interest ‘Conscience and cowardice’, http://goo.gl/LAJfKr), leaving the redoubtable Mani Shankar Aiyar as the lone voice of protest. In effect, this shift was not so much about Israel as Palestine, which, along with anti-apartheid, anti-imperialism and multilateralism, had been a pillar of our distinctly anti-Western Non-Alignment. That’s why I call it the first strategic shift.

The second came under the next full-term prime minister, Atal Bihari Vajpayee. He became the first Indian leader to hail America not merely as a strategic but also as a “natural” ally. This is what unleashed a flurry of new engagement and quick US presidential visits. A significant aside: not even under Rajiv Gandhi’s relatively modern dispensation did an American president come visiting. In fact, by the latter part of his tenure, he was giving “naani yaad dila denge” type of speeches.

Vajpayee himself had a generational gap, and maybe even one in personal chemistry, with the much younger Clinton and Bush, but he was well-served by Jaswant Singh, Brajesh Mishra and Yashwant Sinha, who not only believed in this continuing shift but were also its architects. It helped the subcontinent prevent war twice, in 1999 (Kargil) and 2002 (after the Parliament attack). The re-education of the Indian mind on how old Cold War foes could now be allies had well and truly begun.

The third shift came again under a Congress prime minister leading an unapologetically left-centrist coalition. When Manmohan Singh risked his government on the nuclear deal, he was only taking one more decisive step in the direction set by his political mentor Rao and then Vajpayee, despite grave doubts in his party, from Sonia to Arjun Singh to Salman Khurshid. He chose losing the Left allies and saw the deal to its conclusion. I have always maintained that the nuclear deal was not really about energy. That was a nicer wrapping. Essentially, it was a strategic shift in the way India saw the world and related to it. This was duly acknowledged by the deal’s most vociferous Congress critic, Mani Shankar Aiyar, who told me, “Much as I disagree with your line, hate it, you are the only one at least with the intellectual honesty to say that this deal is not about energy but about a basic foreign policy shift.” As back-handed compliments go, I’d take it happily. The import of India signing its first ever treaty of any significance with the US can’t be overstated.

Modi’s invitation to Obama marks a fourth shift. Getting Obama at a Republic Day, therefore, isn’t just another selfie moment. It completes a script that Rao began writing in January 1992. It has now had bipartisan approval across the tenures of two prime ministers each from the Congress and the BJP.

BY THE WAY: In a week when India observed its Navy Day, a tale of how Lutyens’ Delhi works. The Navy, being the smallest and most silent force, has so far been denied a headquarters building of its own. Successive chiefs have petitioned the government to rectify this, but unsuccessfully. Typical of A.K. Antony, then Raksha Mantri, when faced with the same demand, he passed the buck on to urban development minister Kamal Nath, for whom, as we know well, life begins and ends with impoverished Chhindwara, his pocketborough in Madhya Pradesh. The Navy brass came to him with two demands, a plot for a Nausena Bhawan and a permanent house for the Vice-Chief. “I will do this, of course,” said Nath, “who can say no to the Navy.” And then he paused as the admirals smiled in joy. “But tell me first, Admiral, what will you do for Chhindwara?”

For once, even the very wise admiral was speechless. Chhindwara (Google it) is probably the most land-locked district in India. What does the Navy do for it? Two chiefs have, however, told me blushingly, “we did something”. My own Lutyens’ grapevine tells me it was something harmless like a recruitment parade. A plot behind the new DRDO Bhawan, in the very heart of Lutyens’ Delhi, has accordingly been granted for a Nausena Bhawan.


Also read: Art of big picture leadership


 

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