Analysing India’s International Role Over The Decades | P. S. Jayaramu

9th September, 2024

The purpose of this write-up is to understand India’s international role over the decades by examining it from the pre-independence years in order to provide a broader canvass for analytical purposes.

During the freedom movement, the Indian National Congress (INC) had established a foreign policy division with Jawaharlal Nehru as its spokesperson. In 1927, Nehru addressed the Congress of Oppressed Nationalities at Brussels and expressed India’s total support to the cause of freedom from Colonialism and Imperialism. During World War ||, though the Indian soldiers faugh along with the Brigish forces, the INC opposed the Imperialist goals of the British and demanded the granting of independence at the earliest. The Provisional Government headed by Nehru hosted the first Asian Relations Conference to espouse the cause of Asian-African independence, which became one of the central objectives of its foreign policy post-1947, by supporting the Asian-African Nations’ Conference in Bandung in Indonesia. India went on to script the Policy of Nonalignment and persuaded many newly-born countries to adopt it. Though the Western nations, especially the US, described India’s Nonalignment as amoral, India was invited by the United Nations to play a role in bringing about the Korean Armistice after the Korean war. In due course, Nehru persuaded the Yugoslav President Marshall Tito to organise the first Nonaligned conference in 1961 at Belgrade. India also resolutely opposed the policy of Apartheid in South Africa.

India’s involvement and leadership of the NAM got solidified under Indira Gandhi who took up the cause of the developing South in the form of its support to the Indian Ocean as a Zone of Peace, opposition to the nuclear Non-Proliteration Treaty which she described as atomic colonialism and her plea for the establishment of a New International Economic Order ( NIEO) during the 1970s. India pressed for the North-South dialogue to translate the goals of NIEO resolution passed by the UNGA in 1974. Sensing that there were inequalities within the developing South also, Mrs. Gandhi proposed Souh-South dialogue too. The South Secretariat was set up in London under the leadership of the Tanzanian President Julius Nyerere with Dr. Manmohan Singh as the Secretary-General to prepare the groundwork for South-South dialogue as well as to coordinate the strategies of the NAM countries in their demand for an equitable international order.

Indira Gandhi convened the NAM summit in New Delhi in 1983 where along with the Cuban President Fidel Castro, she articulated another important objective of the movement, that of establishing a New International Information Order to oppose the Western information hegemony, a goal which is unfortunately not carried forward by the NAM.

With the end of the Cold War and the onset of the era of liberalisation, privatisation and globalisation,( LPG) there was a metamorphosis in the goals and priorities of the developing countries, in their eagerness to integrate themselves with the developed North. Accordingly, India’s foreign priorities too underwent some changes. With the decline of Russia economically, the post-1990s Indian leadership decided to seek a special relationship with the United States, economically and militarily. The signing of the Civil Nuclear Agreement, (the Nuclear Deal) with the US by the Dr Manmohan Singh regime in July 2005 not only demonstrated the end of India’s nuclear apartheid, but, its eagerness to deepen the engagement with America. Indo-US military-strategic relations have grown exponentially since then to counter-balance the rise of China as a super power. India’s joining of the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue where the US, Japan and Australia( QUAD) in 2007 can be cited here, though of course India prefers to tread cautiously on the military aspect of it, as it does not want to be seen as being a party to the Western ganging up against China.

India’s international role under Modi:

A discussion of India’s international role during the Narendra Modi is very much in order. Though Modi began his first term as Prime Minister with a push for good neighbourly relations by inviting SAARC leaders for his swearing-in ceremony, Indo-Pak relations did not register any upward trend due to Pakistan’s continued encouragement to terrorism in Kashmir as seen by the Pulwama terrorist strike and India’s counter to it in the form of a successful Balakote strike. Relations with other South Asian neighbours, Bangladesh of late, is on a downward spiral. PM Modi’s visits to Western nations, especially the US, during his first and second terms and his hosting of the G20 summit in New Delhi last year points to a certain activism in his foreign policy. India’s participation in initiatives like the Paris Agreement and its role on global issues like climate change and renewable energy underscores its commitment to addressing global challenges. It is, however, the Ukraine war and the prospects for India’s role in bringing about a peace settlement that will be the litmus test to her role in global affairs. Though Modi tried to maintain a balance of sorts by visiting both Russia and Ukraine recently, he has not come up with any specific peace proposal to end the war. He favours bilateral meetings between President Putin and President Zelenskyy to explore the terms for a peace settlement.

On the Isreal-Hamas war front, Modi’s India has refrained from playing a proactive role to end the conflict, though of course it has supported UN initiatives to terminate the war which has dragged on for more than a year, causing enormous death of the Palestinians, living in Gaza.

Finally, it may not be out of place to conclude that on comparison, the degree of internationalism displayed by India during the first four decades of its independence slowed down with the dawn of the era of globalisation leading to an aspirational international role following its steady growth as an economic and military power, calling for a debate as whether there has emerged a certain dissonance or disconnect between India’s rise and role in world affairs.

(Author: Dr P.S. Jayaramu is former Professor of Political Science, Bangalore University and former Senior Fellow, ICSSR, New Delhi)