Narendra Modi will be visiting the UK next week. This visit is hugely anticipated in the UK, with the British government going all out to make it a success. It comes after merely days of the UK visit of Chinese President Xi Jinping, seen as one of the most significant shifts in the British foreign policy in decades. Britain has positioned itself as a key partner of China in Europe. Modi’s visit is expected to set new benchmarks in Indo-UK ties, as it will be the first visit of an Indian Prime Minister to the UK in around a decade.
Disenchanted with its special relationship with the US and disillusioned with the overly bureaucratic EU, Britain is looking to Asia for new partnerships. The aim is to use Asia’s economic dynamism to help Britain’s status as a major global economy. The David Cameron government has decided to inject a “new commercialism” into the work of the Foreign Office. It has been explicit about the use of Foreign Office to drum up business, using the country’s extensive diplomatic network to lift its economy.
The Conservatives have been clear about India being a priority for the UK since Cameron’s visit to India in 2006 as the leader of the opposition. Cameron had written fondly of India before his visit: “India is the world’s largest democracy, a rapidly growing economy, a huge potential trading partner, a diverse society with a strong culture of pluralism and a key regional player—a force for stability in a troubled part of the world.” He had suggested that though Britain’s relationship with India “goes deep”, it “should go deeper”.
India and Britain had forged a ‘strategic partnership’ during former British PM Tony Blair’s visit to India in 2005, but it remained a partnership only in name. The Conservatives are keen on imparting it a momentum. The UK is the largest European investor in India, and India is the second largest investor in the UK. Indian students are the second largest group in Britain. There are significant historical, linguistic and cultural ties that remain untapped. But the Labour government’s legacy for India is very complex, and Cameron’s government needed great diplomatic finesse to manage the challenges. This was particularly true of the issue of Kashmir where the Labour government could not help but irritate New Delhi. As late as 2009, former Foreign Secretary David Miliband was hectoring India that the resolution of the Kashmir dispute is essential to solving the problem of extremism in South Asia. Miliband revealed not only his fundamental ignorance about regional issues, but also damaged the potential governmental ties of Britain with India.
Granted that Indians tend to overreact whenever there is even an indication of outside interest on Kashmir, Miliband’s ill-informed pronouncements and total lack of sensitivity to Indian concerns raised some fundamental questions in New Delhi about the trajectory of the British foreign policy. Miliband was merely trying to assuage the concerns of the Labour Party’s domestic constituents, in particular Pakistani Muslims who form the largest share of British Muslims. But such an approach has left an indelible mark on the Indian psyche of Britain being on the side of Pakistan on this most crucial of issues.
The Cameron government made a serious effort to jettison the traditional British approach towards the subcontinent insofar as it has decided to deal with India as a rising power, not merely as a South Asian entity seen through the prism of Pakistan. Cameron made all the right noises in India during his first trip in 2010. He warned Pakistan against promoting any “export of terror”, whether to India or elsewhere, and said it must not be allowed to “look both ways”. He has proposed a close security partnership with India and underlined that Britain, like India, is determined that groups like the Taliban, Haqqani network and Lashkar-e-Taiba shouldn’t be allowed to launch attacks on Indian and British citizens. Despite causing a diplomatic row with Pakistan and Miliband calling him a “loudmouth”, Cameron stuck to his comments. More significantly, the British PM also rejected any role for his nation in the India-Pakistan dispute.
Cameron has championed Indian interests like few British PMs have in recent years. Though India’s rise as an economic power is transforming British attitudes towards it, the Labour Party continues to see India through the lens of human rights, and the impact of its Pakistani immigrant support base remains strong. So, a robust partnership with Tory government is a good idea for India. In this new phase of India-UK ties, economics and trade are likely to dominate. Cameron has managed to change Indian perceptions about Britain to a considerable extent. It’s now Modi’s turn to return the favour.
harsh.pant@kcl.ac.uk
Pant is a professor in international relations, King’s College, London