(Mani Shankar Aiyar is a Congress MP in the Rajya Sabha)
The BJP had, of course, threatened us in their manifesto with "rebooting and reorienting" foreign policy, but one had rather hoped that was just one of the usual simplistic alliterative phrases in which Narendra Modi likes to couch what passes for his "thoughts". But the week that has passed seems to indicate that they mean it. Take two events, the BRICS summit in Brazil and the Palestine crisis.
Dropping bricks at BRICSThis was Modi's first outing as Prime Minister at an international forum and one would have expected Protocol to be tickety-boo. Apparently, while the rest of the world was glued to football, Protocol did not know that Germany was the favourite. And so dinner with Angela Merkel was scheduled in Berlin even as dear Angela was telling everyone within earshot that she intended to skip out of Berlin to be present when her team would prove to be
uber alles (above all others).
So even as Modi descended on Berlin, she hopped it to Brazil. This left Modi with only himself to feed, rendering the stop at Berlin wholly infructuous (except for the aircraft that was re-fuelled). True, on the return flight, he managed to refuel his aircraft at Frankfurt to give himself the opportunity of a telephone chat with Merkel. But he had nothing to say that, as a social media aficionado, he could not have twittered or asked Merkel, "What's Up?" by What's App. All he achieved was annoying Japan who had been promised Modi's first visit out of the sub-continent.
That, alas, was not the last protocol bloomer. Modi had arranged to meet Putin on arrival. But Putin had more important business talking to the Brazilian President in Brasilia, 1600 km from Forataleza. So, accidentally or with deliberate intent to show Modi that he disapproved of our less than vocal stance on the happenings in Ukraine, Putin fetched up in Fortaleza a good two hours after his scheduled meeting with Modi.
Another get-together was cobbled at the last moment but it was a hurried encounter instead of the leisurely conversation that was to be expected between India and her oldest and closest friend. The most charitable explanation that I can cook up is that perhaps Putin got held up because he knew Modi was going to suggest a gas pipeline from Russia to India and Putin was checking on how the line was to cross the Pamirs and the Hindukush to keep Modi khush!
The main outcome of the sixth BRICS summit was the agreement to establish a New Development Bank, the BRICS Bank. But that had been in the works since long before Modi became PM. The NDB was agreed at the Fourth BRICS summit (in 2010, at New Delhi, under Dr. Manmohan Singh's chairmanship, please note) and taken forward at the Fifth Summit into a "direction" to their Finance Ministers to complete the work before the next Summit. Our Foreign Service and Finance Ministry sherpas having toiled mightily to the summit, all that remained was for Modi to affix his signature and claim the credit. And, boy, did he claim the credit!
The magic of the man is that he positions himself at the right place at the right time to do none of the work and get all of the credit. We saw that in 2001 when he came to office as Chief Minister in the very year that the Sardar Sarovar Dam was commissioned, thereby garnering to himself all the bonus points for converting arid Gujarat into a green field when, in fact, had it not been for Rajiv Gandhi clearing the project and PV Narasimha Rao stepping in with the financing when the World Bank withdrew, there would have been no scope for Modi to point with pride to his rate of agricultural growth. Of course, he exaggerated, which is why his bogus claims of +10 per cent agricultural growth has now been shown to be not much more than 6 per cent.
So also, with the BRICS Bank. The idea was Dr. Manmohan Singh's; the hard work was that of the UPA government; and Modi arrives just in time to climb the victors' stand and claim the cup as all his own!
And much the same applies to China having invited us as an Observer to the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) meeting: that too was in the works aeons before Modi moved to Race Course Road, as was the decision now secured to have an Indian presence in the Shanghai Cooperation Council that battles regional terrorism. Nothing Modivian to this beyond affixing his seal on someone else's draft.
This is the way the world used to hail Dr. Manmohan Singh:
- President Obama at the G-20 Summit in 2010: "I can tell you here at G-20, when the Prime Minister speaks, people listen"
- At BRICS 2013, Chinese President Xi Jinping "was all praise for Dr. Singh for his statesmanship"
- President Putin at his farewell meeting with him in October 2013 attributed to Dr. Manmohan Singh, "Most of our mutual achievements have been achieved under your leadership"
And yet the BJP has the gall to say that it is they who will ensure that India's "voice is heard in the international fora". Ha! Ha! Worse, they go on to say, "India's relations with traditional allies have turned cold." And this in the face of the encomiums showered on the last PM. Please note: It was not Manmohan Singh whom Putin stood up at their first date - it was Modi!
Shilly-shallying over Palestine
The External Affairs Minister spent the entire week ducking out of a discussion in Parliament on Palestine. Here is a country of whom Gandhiji said in 1938, "Palestine belongs to the Palestinians as England to the English and France to the French". That has been the theme song of our relationship with Palestine through all the turbulence of the last seven decades - which Nehru alone, of all statesmen in the world, foresaw - when in November 1947 India became the only non-Arab, non-Muslim country to vote against the partition of Palestine, urging instead a one-State solution with an autonomous area for the Jews and an autonomous area for the Arabs functioning under a democratically elected Union Government of Palestine.
The Palestinians have never forgotten our solidarity with them - until now, when we have the distressing spectacle of the Palestine Embassy in Delhi and its charge d'affairs pleading that India not equate the air bombing of 200 innocent Palestinian civilians with Hamas rocket attacks that have killed no one in Israel.
I never dreamed it would come to this - that we would forsake our Arab brethren at the moment of their greatest need. Despite all Arab countries and Iran being Muslim, and despite Pakistan's nefarious attempts to swing the Arabs and Iranians to their side on grounds of religion, all Arab and Iranian regimes - monarchist or republican, revolutionary or Islamist - have always stood by us, played host to eight million of our expatriate workers, furnish more than 70 per cent of our crude oil requirements, and constitute a key destination for our exports.
All this is being jeopardized by a BJP that cannot look beyond its communally prejudiced eyes. We have got back our nurses thanks principally to the goodwill built up with all Arab countries and Iran over the last seven decades. We are at risk of wrecking that with the one-eyed focus that the BJP has on anti-Arab, anti-Muslim Israel. That is a tragedy all patriotic, secular Indians must resist.
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