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| Narendra Modi (Image: Flickr user narendramodiofficial) |
By Harsh V. Pant
For India’s friends, a new outreach is in the offing. For India’s adversaries, new red lines are being drawn.
Non-alignment – now that’s a word few have heard coming out from India over the last few months. India’s Congress Party, which was decimated in the May 2014 elections, is celebrating the 125th anniversary of Nehru’s birth with a major conference on November 17 and 18 highlighting Nehru’s worldview. And India’s new prime minister, Narendra Modi is not invited, for Congress claims that he is hell-bent on dismantling Indian foreign policy’s Nehruvian legacy.
One of the legacies that Modi has indeed gradually dismantled since coming to office is India’s default foreign policy posturing of non-alignment. Moving beyond ideological rhetoric, Modi is busy engaging confidently with all major global powers without inhibitions. The foreign policies of nations do not alter radically with changes in governments, but with the backing of the Indian electorate’s decisive mandate, Modi today has an opportunity to bring about a realignment of Indian foreign policy priorities and goals.
In his first few months, Modi has defied many expectations and confounded his detractors and supporters alike. On the economic front, the government is only now coming into its own, as its recent spate of decisions underlines. But on the foreign policy front, remarkably for a politician who was considered provincial before elections, Modi hit the ground running from the very first day. On the security front, there is a new purposeful response against China with a focus on more efficient border management and defense acquisitions. Modi has reached out to the U.S., despite his personal grievances over a visa denial by Washington when he was the chief minister of Gujarat, and there is a refreshing focus on immediate neighbors. The manner in which evacuations from Iraq were handled earlier this year as the threat from the Islamic State gathered pace showed a government that is operationally well-prepared. The Modi government has been more hard-nosed about Pakistan and is not backing down in face of Pakistan’s escalatory tactics. So the larger picture that is emerging in the first few months is of a government that is not as risk averse as previous governments and will be willing to take risks should the need arise.
Read the full story at The Diplomat