Bharat Rising: Democracy And Diplomacy — II
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(This is the second in a two-part series on Utpal Kumar’s book ‘Bharat Rising: Dharma, Democracy, Diplomacy’. The first part is available here.)
“Bharat is not just an old name—it is a civilizational consciousness. Our foreign policy must reflect who we are, not how others want us to be” — S Jaishankar, Union Minister for External Affairs
The second section, titled ‘Democracy and Diplomacy’ in Utpal Kumar’s ‘Bharat Rising,’ elaborates on how, under Prime Minister Modi, India’s foreign policy has become more self-assured and reflects a deepening connection with its dharmic traditions.
Democracy and Diplomacy
Kumar is appreciative of how Indian diplomacy, especially since the onset of the Ukraine War in 2022, has acquired a more assertive tone, albeit without being offensive. He notes that Independent India has on occasion demonstrated such assertiveness. The lead-up to the 1971 India-Pakistan War, the period following the 1998 Pokhran nuclear tests, and the intense negotiations preceding the 2005 nuclear deal stand out as shining examples. For the most part, though, especially in the Nehru years, India practised what strategic expert M D Nalapat calls ‘cosmic’ diplomacy.
It was far adrift from practical, achievable goals that would have served the national interest. Nehru’s foreign policy was a mix of offense and pliability. His Fabian socialist worldview made him see the Americans as predatory capitalists who were culturally deficient. Dean Acheson, US Secretary of State between 1949 and 1953, wrote in his memoirs that he found Nehru one of the most difficult men he had to deal with. Even John F Kennedy, who was favorably disposed to India, reminisced that Nehru’s US visit in 1961 was the worst state visit of his presidency.
In contrast, Nehru’s approach to the Soviet Union was near reverential. When Stalin repeatedly refused to grant an audience to his sister Vijayalakshmi Pandit, then India’s ambassador to the USSR, Nehru asked her to maintain her composure. In China, Nehru’s approach was similar. In a letter to Vijayalakshmi Pandit, he insisted that China deserved to be a permanent member of the Security Council earlier than India. China repaid India’s generosity with the invasion of India in 1962.
As the world today enters Cold War 2.0, with an emerging US-China rivalry that has a strong ideological dimension too, India, under Prime Minister Modi, is no longer content to sit on the sidelines. As an aspiring hard power, India has started to confidently make choices that reflect both its values and interests. Indian Army did not shy in locking horns with the PLA (People’s Liberation Army) troops when they tried to change the status quo at the LAC (Line of Actual Control) in eastern Ladakh in May 2020. Uri (2016) and Balakot (2019) rewrote the rules of engagement with Pakistan. More recently, after Operation Sindoor, PM Modi declared that henceforth an act of terrorism on Indian soil would be treated as an act of war. Near-simultaneous hosting of G2O, Quad, and SCO summits in 2023 showcased an India unapologetic about simultaneously working with several partners, who might be at odds with each other. During the Ukraine War, India subtly pointed to the larger failure of US diplomacy. Persistent eastward expansion of NATO was the impetus for the Russia-Ukraine conflict, which also pushed Russia further into the embrace of China.
On the United States
In the United States, Kumar quotes from journalist Seema Sirohi’s book that the US in the 1990s looked at India not just with distrust but as an enemy country that had to be neutralized in case of a war with Pakistan. Fast-forwarding to 2023, PM Modi’s state visit to the US, Modi being only the third leader to be accorded this honor by the Biden administration, is a testimony to how far the US and India have come in the last three decades. Former diplomat Rajiv Dogra’s cautionary note that the US can be notoriously fickle and swing from being indulgent to complete indifference per its assessment of what suits its interests in the moment, should always be mind-borne though. The recent tariffs imposed by President Trump bear testimony to this (again). On the other hand, the Indian tendency to be argumentative and excessively deliberative did not help Indo-US ties historically either.
An important marker of US (and Western) views about India is the discourse in the media, academia, and bureaucracy. USCIRF (United States Commission on International Religious Freedom) regularly clubs democratic India with communist China, Islamist Pakistan, and autocratic North Korea. The OSF (Open Society Foundation) of billionaire George Soros has facilitated regime changes in several countries, in the name of democracy and liberalism. A few months after the toppling of the Georgian President Eduard Shevardnadze, Soros proudly proclaimed to the Los Angeles Times that he took great pride in contributing to what happened in Georgia. He has gone on record about his discomfiture with PM Modi. OSF has been accused of funding the anti-CAA and anti-farm laws agitations in India in 2020-21. Soros is seen as the link connecting subversive actors in the West with disruptive elements within India. There is a geo-strategic dimension to this. While the US-led West sees India as a bulwark against China’s hegemonic designs, it is also wary of India becoming strong enough to move out of the US orbit. Hence, the blow-hot blow-cold attitude towards India.
On China
Historian R C Majumdar traced the current imperialist streak in China to a historical characteristic. Once a region acknowledged China’s nominal suzerainty even for a short period, she would regard it as part of her empire forever and revive her claim even after a thousand years whenever there was a realistic chance of enforcing it. Sidelining of scholars like Majumdar and mushrooming of an intellectual class with communist leanings in the Nehruvian ecosystem meant that India failed to produce real experts on China. The so-called China experts were often in awe of the Chinese system or compromised or both.
China saw Indian diplomacy as piecemeal, pretentious, and idealistic. India unilaterally recognized the Chinese communist government in 1949, when even the US-led West had strong reservations about it, without resolving the boundary dispute. Nehru ignored Sardar Patel and C. Rajagopalachari’s warnings to go slow on the matter as he was desperate to be on the ‘right side of history’. In the early 1950s, India accepted Chinese suzerainty over Tibet, again without resolving the boundary dispute. Nehru even permitted the supply of Indian rice to the invading PLA troops in Tibet. Kumar expresses satisfaction that India has now started to call the Chinese bluff at the LAC (Line of Actual Control). He suggests that China’s putting Kashmir and Arunachal Pradesh on the disputed territory list should be met by India’s putting Tibet and Xinjiang on a similar list. Kumar warns that China is uncomfortable with a fast-rising India. With the recent slowdown of the Chinese economy (though the opaqueness in numbers makes it difficult to say anything for sure), the risk of a short Sino-Indian conflict being instigated to stoke nationalist sentiment must always be factored in by Indian policymakers.
On Pakistan
Pakistan’s dichotomous behaviour has been a riddle since its inception. It was both a part of the Western bloc and a self-proclaimed ‘citadel of Islam’. Post 2001, it participated in the US-led war against terror while simultaneously providing safehouses to the Taliban. Pakistan leaves the average Indian confused, too. He is unsure whether a stable and prosperous Pakistan is in India’s best interests or not. One reason is that the Hindu worldview, based on the pluralistic notion of Vasudhaiva Kutumbkam (the world is one family), struggles to comprehend the Islamist theology of a world divided between ummah and kafir. This Islamist mindset distorts Pakistan distort its history. It recognizes Mohammad Bin Qasim, the Arab invader who annexed Sindh in 712 CE and killed and enslaved the ancestors of the people who live in that region, as the ‘first citizen of Pakistan’. The civilizational idea of India is anathema to Islamist Pakistan and makes it India’s perennial enemy. American author C. Christine Fair writes that for Pakistan’s generals, accepting the status quo would be tantamount to accepting defeat. They would prefer to act and be defeated rather than do nothing at all. This explains risky gambits like the one by General Pervez Musharraf in Kargil.
There is another contrasting aspect in the Pakistani psyche. They can be generous hosts while still treating India as an enemy country. Former diplomat Rajiv Dogra recalls an interesting anecdote about a Pakistani minister, a friend of Dogra’s and not a fundamentalist by any means. When asked about his greatest wish, he said with glee that he would want to drop nuclear bombs on Bombay and Delhi. Kumar concludes that hostility to India is hard-wired into the idea of Pakistan. There is no real distinction between the civilian and the military or between the extremist and the liberal. Initiatives like Aman Ki Asha are doomed to fail. He notes with satisfaction that after the Uri attacks in 2016, India no longer considers talks with Pakistan as an end in itself. PM Modi reinforced this in his address to the nation this May. India has drawn the red line clearly and firmly. Terror and talks will not go together.
On Japan
With Japan unveiling plans in 2023 to double its defence expenditure within five years, Kumar is optimistic that this shift from post-World War II pacifism also heralds a new beginning in Indo-Japan ties. The two countries have a deep cultural connection. While Buddhism has been practised in Japan for a long time, what is not as well-known is that some Rig Vedic deities like Vayu and Varuna are also worshipped in Japan. One of the most revered deities in Japan is Saraswati. Japan was one of the first nations to recognize Indian sovereignty in 1947. When Japan’s top wartime leaders were tried at the post-World War II International Military Tribunal for the Far East (Tokyo Trials), an Indian judge, Radhabinod Pal, was the only one of eleven Allied justices who handed a not-guilty verdict. Awarded one of Japan’s highest civilian honours in 1966, he is remembered fondly in Japan to this day.
Till Nehru’s death in 1964, nearly 60% of Japan’s Yen credit went to India.
Thereafter, the Cold War and diplomatic inertia started to create a distance between the two nations. India began to view Japan as a client state of the US, and the Japanese saw India as just another third-world country that could not get its act together. Ties started to get revitalised during the Shinzo Abe years. His ‘Confluence of the Two Seas’ speech at the Indian Parliament in 2007 was a turning point of sorts, building on the role of his two predecessors, Prime Ministers Yoshiro Mori & Junichiro Koizumi. The number of high-level bilateral visits from Japan increased from five in the 1980s to forty-two in the 2010s. The Free and Open Indo-Pacific (FOIP) unveiled by then Prime Minister Kishida during his 2023 Delhi Visit could be another landmark in the relationship. Committed to democracy and pluralism, and sharing geo-strategic concerns about a hegemonic China, the future augurs well for the Indo-Japanese partnership.
On Western Media
The journalist in Kumar must, of course, dedicate a chapter to media biases. He mentions a 2021 posting by The New York Times for the job of a South Asia correspondent based in New Delhi, which required the applicant to be critical of PM Modi’s ‘muscular nationalism’. He asks whether declaring a commitment to democracy is a prerequisite for applicants in Hong Kong. Different standards seem to apply to India and China, or Pakistan, for that matter. Before the 2019 General Elections, Time magazine had called PM Modi ‘India’s Divider-in-Chief’. The Economist has castigated PM Modi for stoking ‘divisions in the world’s biggest democracy’. Kumar points out that the West’s record on race and religion has been mediocre, to say the least. Former diplomat M K Rasgotra recalled in his memoir that in 1953, a black driver refused to take him to his hotel because the cab was only meant for black passengers.
France banned the wearing of headscarves in schools when only a small percentage of Muslim girls wore them. Its secular credentials were not called to question. When a private educational institute in India implements a dress code, as in the hijab case in Karnataka in 2022, obituaries were written about the demise of Indian democracy. The double standards stare one in the face. Kumar refers to a study conducted by Alastair Pinkerton at the University of London, analysing the BBC’s coverage of India from 1947 to 2008. Pinkerton concluded that the BBC’s reporting revealed a persistent anti-India bias, largely due to the broadcaster’s alleged imperialist and neo-colonialist stance.
Kumar opines that the Western media has struggled to gracefully accept India’s democratic success story. The extensive Chinese influence in Western media does not help either. He signs off hoping that Western media will play a more constructive role in enabling New Delhi and the West to work at least as friends, if not allies.
Conclusion
An India reawakening to dharma moves steadily closer to becoming Bharat, not merely in name but in spirit. This civilizational journey resonates with Prime Minister Modi’s Panch Pran (Five Resolutions) announced on Independence Day in 2022, particularly the call for freedom from a colonial mindset. As we reflect on the tryst with destiny that began at the stroke of midnight on the 15th of August 1947, the question arises: will 2047 mark the fulfilment of that promise, when Bharat fully reclaims India on its own terms? Only time will tell.
