The Unsaturated Reader

Tag: india

  • A New India in the eyes of the world

    (Originally published on December 16th 2024)

    Last Sunday afternoon, I had the good fortune to attend the launch of a magazine that broaches India’s outlook on world affairs, appropriately titled, “India’s World.” Listening to the always insightful and upbeat Honourable Minister of External Affairs S. Jaishankar speak was a pleasant experience. The pearls of wisdom he shared on the nuances of (new) India’s foreign policy was illuminating. I will not deny the sense of pride and thrill I felt to be a part of the 1.4 billion people driving the new narrative about India.  

    Prof. Happymon Jacob, one of the founders of the magazine, remarked in his welcome note, “arguments and narratives matter in world politics.” Perhaps Britain’s Keir Starmer needs reminding of this fact whose government has been accused of lacking idealism and crucially a plan. The prim man is averse to media-swashbuckling but a little touch with reality (and politics) wouldn’t hurt. Often more than the work on the ground, it is how you shape the narrative around it that influences public perception and determines the measure of your success. Going back to Prof. Jacob’s remark, the simple adage struck me for its forthrightness. It’s a truth that is sometimes overlooked, and sometimes for its own sake misinterpreted and taken too literally, to the satisfaction of any shrewd world leader who perhaps intended to provoke such a reaction — take Trump’s statement on Ukraine for instance. He proclaimed he will end the war in a day; geopolitics analysts have proven too naive in reading too much into it and basing their (which will soon turn out to be baseless) theories of probable outcomes for Ukraine. 

    That said, returning to the plot line, and the bottomline, of Jaishankar’s speech, which was that India’s current undeniably proactive foreign policy is rooted in pragmatism and historical context. Times have changed, actors in the international arena have ebbed and flowed, the tools for conducting geopolitics have upgraded making space for new unlikely but welcome entrants in the field.  Keeping pace with this rapidly changing kshana-kshana world, the way India leads its foreign policy must also change. The present model is neither a break from the past nor an attack on it. It underlines how foreign policies are shaped by contexts, and why a strict adherence to age-old principles that may be outdated for the present, is misguided. It is perhaps time, a section of thinkers, commentators, academicians changed their mindsets. 

    India boasts of a 4-trillion dollar economy and its growth looks unstoppable. To take a tiny statistic, there are around 13 million Indians working abroad and several more, if we add the Indian-origin workers to it — a sign of India’s growing global cultural footprint. She’s a strong, assertive power with significant clout— even a sought-after player in conflict mediation— and the much vaunted (and equally challenged) ‘strategic autonomy’, the shining light. But this is no new-found success. It is buttressed by decades of careful policy-making, calibrating and timely decisions, that set it up for the success it is known for today. 

    Ideally, this burgeoning economy that burst into the global scene in 1991 needs an equally ambitious foreign policy, along the lines of a Viksit Bharat we envision for 2047. That demands proactivity in a world slowly manifesting multi-polarity. We are far from the days of a revamped version of an old-school bipolar world —the place of the diminished Soviet Union being occupied by People’s Republic of China — and may never see it materialise either, at least in our lifetimes. 

    The push into the whirlwind of geopolitics known for its brute realism, is not without its risks and anxieties. As Jaishankar aptly put it, it requires a multifaceted approach which involves striking the right balance between elements of hedging, prudence, collaboration, accelerating multipolarity, juggling between the West and the non-Western world and so on. India is now at a place where it can lead a dialogue on the Global South, find a seat in a G7 meeting, while maintaining its principled-distance and play the role of a peacemaker in the wars and conflicts that ravage the world. 

    On the other end of the spectrum, there are thorny issues or “hangovers” from the past that still ruffle us once in a while, notably the issue of border security. It is imprudent to expect of a country to peacefully pursue its developmental goals insularly while forming well-meaning alliances across the world like your standard homogenous European country, when 38,000 square kilometres of its area has been encroached upon by, if I may drive up the emotional overtone here, an over-bearing neighbour that is on a mission make its mark in every sphere, for good and bad, across the world. 

    Alas, as with any pragmatic relationship, much of the quandary is also about money. China is our biggest trading partner and with whom we run a widening trade deficit. It is definitely a cause for concern but it’s also a fact that cannot be overwritten by ‘hawkish’ narratives, as much as narratives matter. This is why economic diplomacy is just as important. Supply chain remodulation, digital era, enhancing mobility and connectivity for an intermingling world et al are some of the new kids on the block, governments need to be alert and cater to. 

    In the beginning of the lecture Jaishankar noted how Track 1 diplomacy had outpaced Track 2 in the last decade and that too for the good. Think tanks are after all an outlet for ideas of several people that closely tune in to this field. As with any individual therefore, their aggregates too suffer from biases and vestiges of conservatism.

    We should think for the long term and plan for the generations ahead because much is at stake. Importantly, far removed from the elite foreign policy discussion circles and (sometimes) aloof spaces of think tanks and academia, it wouldn’t go amiss to lend a ear to the voice on the Indian street, what the plain old common sense of ordinary folk reveals about India’s role in the world. 

    These are neither trivial nor easy objectives. The truth often lies in the plain and simple, and requires an approach that is direct and discerns the truth and enlivens it. It has only been less than a century since this little nation home to more than a billion, became independent. To have soared so high and outlived the colonial baggage is an indelible achievement. As befits her legacy, a regional hegemon status will add to her laurels. 

  • To engage or not? The Afghan discomfiture

    Amid the tiresome process of clearing the mess that had accumulated on my desktop, a note sizing not more than 1 kilobit caught my attention. The date next to the filename read ‘2nd August’. Curious to uncover the crap I had written in it – given that I customarily tend to scribble redundant thoughts that cross my mind like how a bulbul wings its way into a Sapien’s home, by chance, however — I clicked on it. A sentence hardly fitting a line did I find; it said, ‘A negotiated power-sharing agreement is the best-case scenario for #Afghanistan.’ Reading this precisely a month later, I felt unusually flustered than amused — which I would have otherwise been — at my vain prognostication. 

    For all we know, Afghanistan may have met its Waterloo on the morning of the 15th of August. Mayhaps, we are right; or going by the most implausible prophecy, we could well be wrong. ‘Amnesty’ to be extended to former government officials, a recognition of female education – feigned or not — have been the pallid assurances meted out by the Taliban in the wake of the huge outflux of frightened citizens, — the swarming of the airports proving itself a testament to the same. Reports float around of the deaths, injuries that took place on the premises of the visibly overwhelmed Kabul airport. Posters of women being scrapped from salons, tailor shops, and Islamist videos being aired in the place of soap operas, are the other indicative concomitants of the onset of the Taliban regime, which is at the helm after a physically daunting two decades of operations. That of Taliban fighters skitting about driving toy cars, no less. 

    To think their character has metamorphosed into something of a liberal overlord seems difficult to swallow, for these were the very claims – stability and security —the Taliban had made in the 1990s. The aftermath of the bloody civil war and their surge to power needn’t be repeated. The Gordian knot that awaits the Afghans is only too gruesome to say it out loud. 

    As the Taliban scramble to finalise their new regime – which they assure, to be more accommodating than it was during their first stint in power – the ageless question of ‘what next?’ seems to me a superfluous query, how much ever my reader is led to form a conflicting conclusion by dint of the enormous accounts on the said title pouring incessantly on the web. The apposite question or rather worry, at this point in time, would be as to how the world community prepares to go about it. 

    With the disorientation that comes with the thought of the Taliban forming a government next week, one that is equally disconcerting is of having to recognise a Taliban that holds a terrible human rights record. To accord a morally decrepit bunch legitimacy and recognition in the international arena is indeed unthinkably harrowing, if ethical standards in the conduct of geopolitics are anything to go by. 

    So much so for ethical standards that have universal validation and that which weeds out the ‘bad’ ‘rogue’ states and their ‘wrong’ ‘aggressive’ deportments – but who devises these? Indubitably, the United States, on the strength of being the sole superpower, has assertively, and at the same time discreetly, imposed a global moral standard that no other lesser nation has found supercilious enough to challenge for it has assumed the role of a boarding-school matron, keeping us to our toes, with the galling awareness of anything that can go wrong —albeit by dint of cultural differentials— lest it should draw the ire of the matron-lord of the world. 

    Nations, more often than not, employ, or devise to their passions, moral arguments for pivoting their national interests or in justifying otherwise unremarkable ventures; ten points if it reminds one of Obama’s vindication for the war in Afghanistan, terming it “the good war,” – to what extent ‘good’ it had been we are indeed a witness of, after the US left unexcitable on August 31st. The writer is not making a case for doubting the credibility of these arguments, but it’s rather their nature and the roughage that feeds these judgments in the first place. Historical experience tells us that moral judgments are often modified, amplified, and concocted at uncertain times, by great powers and coalitions, and are an effective pawn in their hands, no less potent than, to take an overblown example, a puppet state. And it is these states who dictate obliquely the moral order, which it expects culturally and thus morally divergent states to follow. Moral universalism then, we may say, is to be taken with a pinch of salt. A subscription to a particular moral system, which our conscience deems right, may nevertheless bring no harm to you or the larger society in which you thrive; however, by virtue of being rational agents, we are committed to unearthing the reason that underlies these norms. On these grounds, the pertinent issue herein becomes of how we’ve arrived at a stage where we call them morally undesirable, and of whether it’s justified in weening them the sole object of our judgment. The Taliban is undoubtedly an immoral, incorrigible, clique of Jihadists, who represent the worst of conservative emotions of the rural elements that fringe the Afghan society, and who have been vehemently opposing every reform brought in by waves of Afghan rulers. In parrying these reforms, the conservative sections found an ally, first in the British after the final Anglo-Afghan war in which King Amanullah effectually warded off the Anglicans, and later in the United States of America, that nurtured the Mujahideens lined along the Pakistan-Afghan border, from whom would arise the Taliban in the 90s, and of course, the Northern Alliance, though lionised for putting up a brave resistance against the Taliban, as a matter of fact, measures no less than the Taliban in its religious and female rights convictions. 

    Moral consternations aside, there are legal challenges too in recognising the Taliban; in the context of international relations, as a legitimate international actor. Recognition of a government that has acquired power through legal means – setting aside questions of undemocratic procedures — isn’t one that surfaces in standard debates for the problems contained therein are too narrow to be plodded through. But a transfer of power achieved through extra-legal methods is one that stokes many a heated vindications and rejoinders. The Taliban’s seizure of power through sheer force, by ousting the sitting government through unconstitutional means, is a plain manifestation of such a case. That the Taliban now effectively controls the state territory and would do so hereafter with a reasonable degree of permanence, with some sections of the population acquiescing in the rule, is doubtless, and as per this conventional doctrine of international law, the Taliban may be recognised as the Afghans’ rightful representatives. But complementary to this doctrine is of whether the de facto government is the legitimate representative of the people whom it claims to govern; in other words, of whether it acquired power through democratic means. And as may be presumed from this criterion, the Taliban squarely falls outside the realm of international recognition. Still and all, it might be well said that there are sets of principles and doctrines enunciated in theory but materialises reluctantly in practice. With two Security Council permanent members – Russia and China – having expressed their explicit willingness to work with the new Afghan regime provided the latter does not lend its soil for the harvest of terroristic exploits, at the end of the day, it is up to the governments to follow their nose. The Trump administration legitimised them back in February 2020, so in a way, if the global hegemon had implicitly recognised them a year and a half back, it is only a matter of time before governments around the world, especially those residing in the adjacent regions, proceed forth to initiate negotiations. The grave implications of faltering at this stage would return to haunt these countries, especially India, if one is even modestly cognisant of the grave implications a potential epidemic of terrorist activities — the last epidemic we need — would hold for these countries. 

    To be sure, the other options left with us are of militarily fighting the Taliban and of isolating and sanctioning them; Washington has frozen $9.5 billion of Afghan funds in US banks, and the International Monetary Fund too has withheld its funds. The latter is a disastrous recourse in itself if one can take stock of what had transpired from 1996 to 2001. Thus to the looming portentous question of whether to engage or not, the answer is and should be in affirmative. State socialisation isn’t impossible to pull off; the fact that such a possibility exists itself is a vindication of how entities, individuals and states, can transform their dispositions. This writer excuses herself from making a justification for the Taliban having changed their mentality; the potential entrants of the new government defy every such claim. it is incumbent upon us to dissuade the mind from descending into quixotic expectations of moral sensibilities from the entities we interact with, for the stakes are too high. India simply cannot afford to be the moralistic messiah at this point, how much ever dashed hopes this might beget. Moreover, if we resist engaging with the ‘rogue elements’, how are conflicts to be resolved? Ghani seems to have overlooked this fact when he said that he would not yield to a power-sharing agreement. The Taliban are not pariahs from some distant land; they are ethnic-Pashtun Islamist nationalists whose sentiments resonate with that of many conservative afghans. 

    The Taliban of 2021 appear a dozen times more powerful than in the 90s. Wielding more strength than ever with the capture of the laudably recalcitrant Panjshir valley, time seems to have cleared the way for the Taliban to rule unhindered, without the fear of external forces like the United States. It won’t be an easy ride however. The ethnic, religious, and political antilogies that afflict the ‘graveyard of empires’ weaving an unfathomable mesh of oppugnant identities are too tight and disharmonious to be ignored. The possibility of a revival of the rebel fighters that reside on the mountains loom large, and is as threatening as a foreign invasion; a menace of another Taliban-like grouping, in terms of disruptive powers, for the new regime. The holes in their veil of inclusivity are widening and it won’t be long before the pall itself gets torn apart. Twenty years of a global war on terror had caused enough harm for a lifetime for the afghans. A pragmatic Taliban could do well in amending the fractured state. But ‘pragmatic’ is the word here.