BackHas the domestic climate changed on the US?
Prime Minister Narendra Modi's overtures to the US have, so far, gone almost uncontested in the internal politics of India
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If the news reports are to be believed, the Narendra Modi-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government is seriously considering signing three “foundational agreements" with the US that the latter has been pushing for many years now. The three agreements—the Logistics Support Agreement (LSA), Communications Interoperability and Security Memorandum of Agreement (CISMOA), and Basic Exchange and Cooperation Agreement (BECA)—will push India-US partnership as close to a genuine military alliance as possible.
What has been surprising this time is the lack of a vigorous domestic political debate around these reports. While the debate may pick up when something more concrete emerges, the situation still stands in absolute contrast with previous episodes when the Indian government had attempted to shift closer to the US. Two of the notable episodes from recent years that invited feisty domestic debates have been India considering intervention in Iraq in 2003 and the India-US nuclear deal.
Is it no longer fashionable for Indian political parties—particularly those on the left—to decry the US? Has the popular acceptability of the US reached beyond a point where ideological denouncements would carry any weight? Or has the doubling down on the relationship with the US by the Modi government tilted the domestic scales in one particular direction? Perhaps all of these have played a part. This article will dwell on the domestic political issues that have bedevilled the attempts by successive governments since the economic liberalization to draw closer to the US, the sole standing superpower at the end of the Cold War.
While the Cold War period was characterized by the polemics around non-alignment, the post-Cold War differences between the two countries have centred on Pakistan, China (recall G-2?) and the nuclear status of India. While these three factors have had recurring episodic salience and different shelf-lives, a couple of domestic political factors—a fear of losing strategic autonomy and the perception of Indian Muslims towards the US—have continued to exercise the Indian political class. Both the recent debates, on intervention in Iraq and signing of the nuclear deal, throw these domestic factors into sharp relief.
While the previous NDA government led by Atal Bihari Vajpayee was very clear in its public posture against intervention in Iraq without an explicit UN mandate, it was earnestly trying to find a middle path to articulate its views without condemning the decisions of the American administration. In his book Forged in Crisis: India and the United States Since 1947, Rudra Chaudhuri writes: “That the ... President George W. Bush [was] high on the minds of Indian elites could not be denied." It led to Mani Shankar Aiyar—a left-leaning leader of the Indian National Congress—calling India “a lap-dog" of the US. That the apprehension of Indian troops operating under American command—a clear loss of strategic autonomy—was a greater decider than the principles of intervention itself was made clear by this statement, made a few months later by Vajpayee himself: “India will never become a lackey of even the most powerful country in the world."
For some reason, a persistent domestic opinion in India holds that a pro-American policy will be opposed by Indian Muslims. The penchant for American intervention in a number of Muslim countries to engineer regime change in order to suit Washington’s interests is largely responsible for this view. America’s position on the Israel-Palestine conflict doesn’t help either. Fear of Muslim opposition was also played up while the Indian government was considering intervention in Iraq. For instance, in a column for Hindustan Times on 13 February 2003, former foreign secretary J.N. Dixit wrote: “There would be criticism from Indian Muslims against the US military campaign."
The perception of Indian Muslims opposing pro-American policy is not just restricted to cases of intervention in a Muslim country. When the public debate over the India-US nuclear deal was reaching a crescendo, M.K. Pandhe, a former politburo member of the Communist Party of India (Marxist), warned the Samajwadi Party (SP) against supporting the nuclear deal as, he believed, it would alienate the SP’s Muslim base. Such a perception continues to inform public debates without any empirical evidence. A survey conducted in 2005-06 by the Centre for Advanced Study of India did not find any support for the perceived anti-US sentiments among Indian Muslims.
Modi’s warm approach to the US since assuming power has been analysed by scholars and commentators in great detail. On the plus side, the burgeoning defence partnership with the US holds great promise. India’s Look/Act East policy along with the US’s pivot/rebalance to Asia will be crucial to security provision in the Indian Ocean and the western Pacific. On the other hand, India continues to remain puzzled over the rationale of the Pakistan policy of the US, the sale of eight F-16s to Rawalpindi being the latest irritant for New Delhi. Modi’s US leanings have not been enough to secure a seat for India at the high table in Afghanistan. Moreover, India’s increasingly robust defence partnership with the US has pushed Russia into selling arms to Pakistan.
These analyses, accurate as they may be, have missed the domestic angle outlined above. Modi might end up achieving something far more significant for the US by pushing the domestic favourability of the latter up a couple of notches. The response of Modi’s political opposition to the signing of the “foundational agreements", if it happens, will be one to watch.
Kunal Singh is staff writer (views) at Mint.
Comments are welcome at theirview@livemint.com
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