Modi’s lecture on international relations

The Indian Prime Minister, Narendra Modi, recently gave a lecture to the world on international relations. In fact, what sounded as a lecture on international relations was Prime Minister Modi’s address to the inaugural session of The Economic Times Global Business Summit on March 6, 2020, in New Delhi. Considering that our relation, engagement and competition with India remains a very important foreign policy issue, nothing that PM Modi says on the subject should escape our attention.

Ridiculing his own opposition parties, PM Modi said, “Such people feel that inaction is the most convenient action but for us nation building, country’s development and governance is not an issue of inconvenience but conviction. Conviction to do the right thing, the conviction to break the status quo.” Crediting himself for breaking the status quo, which he has done through his ongoing political repression at home, Modi has harmed India more than he has benefitted it.

He and his team of BJP hardliners increasingly remind me of the rule of the Thirty Tyrants (404-403 BC) who led by Critias ruled Athens as thirty commissioners appointed to the oligarchy. These Thirty were the puppets of Sparta and were backed by the Spartan troops. Much like BJP, they had an extremist conservative core and formed an oppressive regime which fostered a bloody purge resulting in the confiscation of citizens’ property and the killing of 5% of the Athenian population. Many Athenians who were opposed to this type of government were forced to leave Athens.

What happened in Athens (the birth place of democracy) almost 2,400 years ago is being repeated today in the largest and most populous democracy in the world, India. While Jesus needed the cross to fulfil his mission and Socrates needed the hemlock for his, the BJP is all set to utilise the division through saffron to accomplish its mission. The “cold murderous saffron madness” in India is setting it ablaze. PM Modi is not prepared to understand and perceive this and while he boasts about his actions it is actually the inaction of his law enforcement agencies during the killing and murder of innocent Muslims in India that is raising the bar of India ever becoming a responsible democracy. Like Athens, India today is being ruled by the ‘Thirty Tyrants’. To the great relief of the followers of history, these men even after 2,400 years are not remembered for their foul democratic actions but their brutality and tyranny.

PM Modi also spoke about his new India which “from being equidistant from all nations was now friends with everyone”. He also spoke about the world which is very “interconnected, interrelated and interdependent” today. But despite this connectedness, he said, “The world is not able to come on one stage for global agenda of removing poverty, fighting terrorism or addressing climate change.” The question one may ask the Indian PM is: Why talk big when small talk is so much easier to understand and so close to reality? The whole region suffers because of the unfriendly position his government has taken against Pakistan. The interconnectedness and interdependence in the region suffer only because India acts as a hegemon, expecting countries like Pakistan to alter their behaviour and adjust as per Indian wishes and dictates.

India has done enough to force us to adjust. It is time India adjusted itself and made space for us. If India wants to run a marathon it should know we will not budge and run at an equal pace with it. Economically, strategically as well as militarily, Indian policy towards Pakistan has been a total failure. For Pakistan its competition with India remains the single most important foreign policy issue and it will continue to compete with it in all sectors while simultaneously maintaining and ensuring the balance of power between the two nations.

The Modi-initiated Indo-Pak Cold War guarantees two things — grave costs and uncertain outcomes. As long as the Indo-Pak Cold War continues there is little chance that suitable conditions would ever emerge to promote friendship, overcoming the challenges of climate change, reduction in acts of terrorism or reduction in the ever-increasing state of poverty in the two countries.

As far as Pakistan is concerned our external behaviour is benefiting the world (Pakistan’s role in the US–Taliban peace deal) and our internal challenges no more remain as draconian as they were during the uninterrupted use of Afghan soil by India to export trouble in Pakistan. While violence engulfs India, we are recreating an environment of national calm and politeness (in fact PSL now makes the internal environment very fun-filled and entertaining). For itself, Modi-led India sought international domination while scheming to internationally and regionally isolate us. Aggrieved, we became more resentful and committed to come out of the hole that Modi’s India tried to dig for us. Today the world can clearly see that while hardliners in India are pushing and driving policy, they are being restrained, controlled and kept under check in Pakistan.

Unfortunately, India under PM Modi has not been able to act as the “responsible stake- holder” that this region needed. Under PM Modi, India’s consistent support to Afghanistan and encouraging its government to rise up against Pakistan has been a “hedging approach” that has ultimately failed. Today Pakistan is a responsible stakeholder, reaching out and exerting its influence in the region together with other states as well as non-state actors. The steps that it is undertaking against terrorism and money laundering are being universally admired and appreciated. Those that tried to push us into the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) grey list and from there to the black list have had their tails firmly tucked between their legs with shame.

Pakistan today enjoys a strategic relationship with a rising China and a reconsidered, improving and good relationship with a hurtful and resurgent Russia that seeks to regain its lost superpower status in the world. In fact, it is Pakistan, more than India, that enjoys friendly relations with both the powers in the region. India’s friendly relations with Russia remain but its rediscovered strategic partnership and tilt towards the US is not to the liking of the Russians.

But most importantly, despite limited Indian aggression against us over the last few years, we have proved to them that we can fend off any attacks. Our resilient and professional military has proved so.

Despite his speech on international relations, PM Modi must know that the “collateral damage” of India’s aggressive approach of conducting a proxy war, coercive and hybrid operations against Pakistan has boomeranged and has come back to hit India hard within its own borders. If anything, the spillover of illiberalism all over India is a true reflection of this.

Published in The Express Tribune, March 15^th, 2020.

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