Daily Times

Recently, Pakistan’s Foreign Ministry statement calls upon the international community to take cognisance of the threat to peace and stability in South Asia posed by India’s irresponsible rhetoric and belligerent posture. “The world must act to restrain India before the reckless policies of this ideologically-driven RSS-BJP dispensation cause grievous harm to regional peace and security.’’ It is no more an enigma to understand that India’s foreign policy dictated by Narendra Modi is glaringly reflective of the truth that for India, keeping peaceful relations with neighbours has been New Delhi’s biggest failure. Truly, the Modi Government’s crafted foreign policy –creating some gruelling disputes in South Asia– is crucially thwarting peace in the region. The ultimate fact remains that in his utmost attempt to make a new India, Modi has fatefully tattered the foundations of regional peace.

Paradoxically, during his current visit to the Eastern Ladakh, PM Narendra Modi said:  “Age of expansionism is over, this is the age of development. History is witness that expansionist forces have either lost or were forced to turn back”.  But Modi’s current policy jettisons his claim. During the second term election hustings, Modi tried to replicate Trump’s America first with India’s first narrative vis-à-vis foreign policy. But the means and methods being adopted to achieve those goals are nonetheless flimsy.  Though Premier Modi’s slogan of economically shining and rising India does not correspond with the declining economy, the BJP as a ruling political party has unjustifiably transformed the entire national discourse from rational debates– revolving socio-economic development and political issues towards identity politics of Hindu renaissance and revivalism—vindicated by the portrayal of Muslims as others and as a threat to the interests of Hindus—remains the driving ‘mantra’ in Narendra Modi’s second tenure.

The BJP trend of dragging India on the brink of a cultural war is heightened not by India’s strength, but by its weakness, which in turn arises from the country’s political and sectarian divides via demonizing political opponents

Conceptually, the Hindutva tag embodies for many a foreign policy approach (borrowed from the BJP’s Hothouse) is ‘muscular’ or even aggressive—poisoning its relations with India’s immediate neighbours. But the ambit of contemporary Hindutva’s idea of expansion–linking to the boundaries of Bhutan, Myanmar (Burma), Nepal, Sri Lanka, and China– is under attack. Though India’s contemporary analysts tend to focus on the Hindu nationalist predilection for applying material power (as manifested by India’s unbridled drive towards nuclear weapons), against Muslims, and for a general hard-liner stance towards adversaries. In this regard, another facet of the BJP’s foreign policy seems an ‘Islamophobic’, manifested by its ‘abrasive-cum-antagonist’ stance towards Pakistan.

In the post-pandemic phase, New Delhi’s negative trajectory of promoting border disputes with both China and Nepal on the one side while on the other its growing skirmishes along the LOC, have become a permanent feature. Today, India’s policy with its neighbours is facing serious challenges, in part because of the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) and the proposed National Register of Citizens (NRC). Together, they have had a particularly negative impact on India’s relations with Afghanistan and Bangladesh. With the CAA targeting, three Islamic neighbours – Afghanistan, Bangladesh, and Pakistan – India’s neighbourhood diplomacy suddenly faces a new dilemma.

The ongoing Indo-China border dispute notwithstanding, India has also orchestrated another border dispute with Nepal arose by India’s current inauguration of a new 80 km-long road (on May 8) in the Himalayas, connecting to the border with China, at the Lipulekh pass. In response, the Nepali government protested immediately, contending that the road crosses territory that it claims and accusing India of changing the status quo without diplomatic consultations. The unilaterally built motorway –linking India’s Uttarakhand State to Tibet’s Kailash Mansarovar– is a territory historically claimed by Nepal. The said route is considered one of the shortest and most practicable trade routes between India and China. Nepal has challenged India’s inauguration of the road, viewing the move as another example of bullying by its much larger neighbour. The government of Nepalese Prime Minister Khadga Prasad Sharma Oli recently issued a new political map of Nepal, showing the disputed territory — including the areas of Kalapani, Lipu Lekh and Limpiyadhura — within its borders. Nepal, which was never under colonial rule, has long claimed these areas in accordance with the 1816 Sugauli treaty with the British Raj following the Anglo-Nepalese (Gurkha) War.

Doctrinally, a successful Indian foreign policy argued by India’s sane foreign policy experts suggest is one that creates the external circumstances conducive to realizing India’s fundamental aims, namely, protecting its physical security and its decisional autonomy; enlarging its economic prosperity and its technological capabilities, and realizing its status claims on the global stage. To achieve these objectives, two conditions are essential: first, ensuring a no-war scenario in the SAARC neighbourhood, which would make India an attractive destination for foreign investment and, second, developing the peace narrative with its immediate neighbours. But conversely, Modi’s evil trend of ‘territorial expansionism-cum- cultural antagonism’—vindicated by the post-August 5 and the CAA phase is the endorsement of nothing but Modi’s self-imposed authoritarian rule.

Modi’s notion of claiming sovereignty over internationalism is of course, dangerous to the future of regional peace. India’s expansionist design has compelled China to include Bhutan’s “eastern sectors” in the boundary dispute between the two states. Bhutan’s eastern sectors are close to India’s Arunachal Pradesh, which China claims as part of its territory as “South Tibet”. As per the Chinese Foreign Ministry statement issued on Monday, India-China ties are in a complex situation. India has been intermittently engaged in promoting terrorism in Pakistan via malicious support of non-state actors in Afghanistan and Baluchistan.  In a recent statement, Pakistan Foreign Office said United Nations Analytical Support and Sanctions Monitoring Team (MT) had independently assessed that “foreign terrorist fighters from India are travelling to Afghanistan to join the ISIL-Khorasan (ISIL-K) [chapter]”.

Meanwhile, Nepal’s currently revised Citizenship bill has consequentially undermined the Route-Beti relations between Kathmandu and New Delhi. Obviously, the BJP trend of dragging India on the brink of a cultural war is heightened not by India’s strength, but by its weakness, which in turn arises from the country’s political and sectarian divides via demonizing political opponents. It glaringly reflects that Narendra Modi’s foreign policy around the South Asian region has been to translate its familiar dominance into a political hegemony that is only meant to dictate India’s neighbours. This clearly suggests that the next government replacing the BJP in India will be crucially confronted by these tests which simultaneously challenge the future of India and the waning scope of peace in the region.

Nonetheless, as for the promotion of regional peace, Modi’s indoctrinated ‘aggressive realist’ foreign policy faces three-dimensional challenges: first to amicably and justly settle its border dispute with both China and Nepal, second, it has to pay profound attention to the Kashmir issue-a nuclear flashpoint between India and Pakistan; and thirdly to promote peace with its small neighbours.

The writer is an independent ‘IR’ researcher and international law analyst based in Pakistan