Foreign policy, at its core, is neither foreign nor policy. It is a reflection of a government’s domestic attitude and aptitude. India's global doctrine has traditionally been reconciliation over confrontation. One of Narendra Modi’s notable achievements, however, is as the father of new Indian diplomacy, which balances accord with aggression. After over seven decades, New Delhi finally has an intercontinental creed with defined nationalistic contours. This canon has made India a global player on his watch.
As the first day of the last month of the present year dawned, 100 Indian historical sites such as Humayun’s Tomb and Purana Qila in Delhi, Modhera Sun Temple in Gujarat, Konark Sun Temple in Odisha and Sher Shah Suri’s Tomb in Bihar were lit up for a month to signal India’s G20 leadership.
The year 2023 will be Modi's year as 200 meetings will be held in over 50 cities and in 32 different sectors attended by 19-member nations that include Australia, Canada, China, EU nations, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Britain and the US.
Modi is a master of locale and loquaciousness: he has decided to hold G20 events at exotic locations across India. The agenda is about coordinating global policies to achieve economic stability and sustainable growth to prevent future financial crises. By incorporating a foreign policy undertaking in India's cultural and historical mosaic, Modi is parenting a new global grammar. This year, all districts and blocks in India will find connectivity with G20 to send his message to people through Jan Bhagidari initiatives.
Until Modi, the matrix of India's foreign outreach has been influenced by the US, Russia, China and Pakistan. Making peace with rogue Pakistan was the priority of all Indian Prime Ministers who perhaps dreamed of a Nobel Peace Prize around the corner. The tables have turned. Modi sees India as a global player, and not just a subcontinental mover and shaker.
Vladimir Putin's Ukraine roguery has been met with strict disapproval; in September, Modi chided the Russian tyrant that this is "not a time for war". In an article for British newspaper, The Telegraph, he scolded Putin again: "Our era need not be one of war. Indeed, it must not be one."
Simultaneously, New Delhi has ignored Washington's threats against its economic relationship with Russia; Modi's Kissinger and India's External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar declared on a Moscow trip in November that "we have seen that the India-Russia relationship has worked to advantage. If it works to my advantage, I would like to keep that going". Russia has been a dominating factor in Indian geopolitics since the British age; the English feared that India was on Kremlin's chessboard in the Great Game of Empires.
Later, NAM, the non-alignment group fathered by Jawaharlal Nehru and steered by Indira Gandhi, turned India a Soviet satellite. After the 1962 Chinese debacle, Nehru had imagined NAM would be Russia’s proxy counter to American influence and act as a protector against China. With the USSR gone, so was NAM.
Until now India's foreign policy has been defensive. Now it is proactive. South Block was haunted by the ghost of Mahatma Gandhi who had preached that victory comes only through self-denial, even abasement. Moral superiority was his pitch. Gandhi's non-violence legacy infected India's global strategy in spite of three victorious wars. Modi has no inclination to channel Martin Luther King Jr, only to make India the king of global geopolitics. Anything else is foreign to him.
(Ravi Shankar can be reached at ravi@newindianexpress.com.)