India’s next steps in South Asia

Mar

roygit

Comments Off

Narendra Modi’s foreign policy adventures began when he was sworn-in as prime minister with leaders of India’s neighbouring countries in attendance. His first visit abroad, to Bhutan, was jeered as being insignificant, but its importance was not lost on India observers. Then, within a month, friction with Pakistan, verbal and on the battlefield, began in earnest. Islamabad understood that needling India does not pay and piped down. In December, Mahinda Rajapaksa exited the stage after years of balancing India against China. This created room for India to re-engage with Colombo on a positive note.

Starting this week, Modi will visit Seychelles, Mauritius and Sri Lanka. It is notable that he is not visiting the Maldives where former president Mohamed Nasheed is being given a rough treatment by the present government. This will be the first time in 28 years that an Indian prime minister will be visiting Sri Lanka. Mauritius, with which India has friendly ties and strong ethnic links, has seldom received the importance due to it. Seychelles is another country that has remained below the radar.

All these countries are island states in the Indian Ocean. For a very long time, India has enjoyed an easy security situation on its southern borders. This is in marked contrast to our northern borders where our armed forces have to maintain constant vigil and even undertake occasional engagements with our friends to the west and east. However, the situation in the south is changing rapidly. China’s massive investments in these countries, especially Sri Lanka, coupled with the Chinese Navy’s forays in the Indian Ocean, have rapidly eroded India’s security surplus in the region. The visit by China’s submarines to Sri Lanka last year was only the culmination of long neglect of this region.

Of particular importance to India is Sri Lanka, because of its proximity, the significance of the Tamil question and the extent of Chinese influence in the country. Modi’s visit to Sri Lanka was preceded by that of external affairs minister Sushma Swaraj and foreign secretary S. Jaishankar last week. Sri Lankan President Maithripala Sirisena visited India in February on his first foreign trip after taking office. Sirisena’s election, after the decade-long rule of Rajapaksa, bodes well for India-Sri Lanka relations. This is the right time to maintain the momentum of engagement between the countries and cement a lasting friendship. For too long, India’s relationship with Sri Lanka has been subject to the whims and fancies of political parties in Tamil Nadu. Hopefully, Modi’s visit will signal an end to that. It is noteworthy that ever since the announcement of his visit, no Tamil party has protested against it.

A clear, strong, signal is all that it takes to make these domestic busybodies back off. This is in stark contrast to what happened under the previous dispensation where even a whimper of protest was sufficient to cancel a visit of the prime minister. This paper has argued in the past that India’s foreign policy has suffered from drift rather than design. Under Modi’s leadership, this trend seems to be changing. For straightforward economic and more complex strategic reasons, having a good working relationship with neighbours is crucial for any country. For India, located between hostile Pakistan and China, this is of much more consequence. Soon after foreign secretary Jaishankar took charge, he embarked on a journey to the capitals of South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (Saarc) countries and visited Bhutan, Bangladesh, Pakistan and Afghanistan. This was the first leg of his visit to Saarc nations. He is expected to visit other member countries in the coming months.

Within a year of taking charge, external affairs minister Swaraj has already visited all Saarc countries except Pakistan. The last government’s lax approach towards engaging with Saarc countries gave space to China to expand its sphere of influence in the region and encircle India. Swaraj and Jaishankar’s bilateral meetings in these countries will help in making up lost ground in the region. India’s entanglements in the region are complex and have often been caught in a web of hostility and mistrust. It will take more than a visit to sort this out, but at least a start has been made.