Pax Indica: India and the World of the Twenty-first Century

by Shashi Tharoor

  One example of such high-level engagement occurred when the then secretary-general of the League of Arab States and my good friend, H.E. Mr Amre Moussa, in 2012 a contender for the Egyptian presidency, visited India in November–December 2008 and signed a memorandum of cooperation between India and the League of Arab States on the establishment of an Arab-India Cooperation Forum. This is a very comprehensive document that looks at deepening Indo-Arab relations in many sectors including energy, education, human resource development and trade and investment. In 2009, the Indian Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) worked with the Indian Council for Cultural Relations (ICCR) and the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FICCI) to organize the first Indo-Arab cultural festival in New Delhi with the support of various Arab missions and governments. The Government of the UAE has recently selected Indian books for translation into Arabic to enhance understanding of our country’s history and literature. The study of Arabic in India has also made significant strides, with many Indian scholars of Arabic available to provide continuing momentum to the process.

  India desires to strengthen cooperation to explore opportunities across the entire spectrum of potentialities that exist in its relationship with the Arab world. We wish to work together today with an eye on tomorrow: to consolidate our ties in emerging sectors of the economy so that we can develop a framework for future generations. Our economies are complementary. In many areas, countries in the Arab world have the capital, while India offers the opportunities, especially for the development of infrastructure. The more the long-term linkages that India and the Arab world develop, the greater will be our mutual stakes and interests in each other’s success and prosperity. When in government I used to assure India’s Arab friends that it is not only financial investments that we were thinking of: we are invested, I would say, in the future of our relationship.

  And yet it should be said that our strategic aspirations have not yet been fulfilled in the region. Few consultations have taken place at a high political level on matters of mutual geopolitical interest—though intelligence sharing and meetings by India’s national security adviser with his Arab counterparts have indeed occurred. There has been no serious effort to develop a habit of strategic dialogue with the countries of the region, even though there are obvious implications for India in issues of Gulf security, and developments in the subcontinent can hardly leave the Arab world indifferent. Despite being one of the very few countries with an ambassador in Tel Aviv and a political officer in Ramallah, India has not attempted to play a significant role in the Middle East peace process. It named a special envoy for West Asia in 2007, but allowed his role to lapse in 2009 without replacement. As a result, a country which once was an indispensable player in international discussions and conferences on the region—and which still retains credibility with both sides of the Israel–Palestinian divide—has essentially been ignored by the UN-led quartet and has not bestirred itself to exercise its geopolitical influence in favour of a Middle East peace settlement.

  Because India’s dependence on Gulf oil will increase in the coming decade, the Gulf states will continue to be central in India’s foreign policy. This raises the question of what, if anything, India can do to ensure the security of its energy supplies from the region, especially at a time of diminishing Western interest in expending resources for the security of the region (since high oil prices have made a number of alternative sources of oil and gas affordable for the West). India’s ability to control and protect the flows of energy that these states supply to India is limited, since it would require a strong ‘blue water’ navy with effective submarines and long-range aviation to help keep ‘choke points’ like the Straits of Hormuz open. These are capabilities the Indian Navy must acquire, and is in the process of doing so.

  The geopolitical environment of 2012, as these words are written, is fraught with possibilities. The traumatic changes of the Arab awakening (known to the West as the ‘Arab Spring’) have created new political realities within each of the affected states. New regimes are still in the early stages of consolidating themselves in Tunisia, Egypt and Libya; all have witnessed the rise of Islamist parties, though all also profess to be interested in pursuing their religious agenda within a democratic political space. How the societies around them—and their military and intelligence services, all formed and deployed in more secular times—will react to the new-found prominence of the Islamists is still unknown. The Western countries that led the intervention in Libya (and are clamouring for a similar outcome in Syria) are themselves in the process of becoming less and less dependent on Arab oil and gas, which could reduce the intensity of their fervour for intervention and at the same time give them less to lose in adopting a bold course of action. In all this, the role of non-Arab Iran, whose geopolitical influence across West Asia has increased dramatically after the Iraq war, remains a complicating factor. Its apparent quest for nuclear weapons has raised alarms not only in Israel and the United States but also across the Sunni Arab world. India, which enjoys reasonably good relations with Iran as well as with its Arab neighbours, will have to tread lightly, but it cannot afford to be indifferent to the evolving situation. It does not wish to see another nuclear power in the region, but it rightly fears the regional and global consequences of any military intervention against Iran. Nor can it be insensitive to the concerns of Saudi Arabia, a country it can ill afford to antagonize.

  So far India has handled the transformations reasonably well; it managed to avoid antagonizing both sides (the recognized government and the emerging democratic forces) in the convulsions that changed three regimes, and it is proceeding gingerly in advocating accommodation in Syria. The government did a highly commendable job in managing the evacuation of some 18,000 Indians from Libya under ‘Operation Safe Homecoming’. India’s key interests in the region will undoubtedly continue to be defined along the familiar verities: the promotion, to the extent possible, of security and stability in the region with a view to ensuring a stable supply of hydrocarbon supplies; extensive cooperation and engagement with the countries of the region in order to enhance trade relationships and boost trade and investment levels; and safeguarding the interests, as well as promoting the welfare, of the 6 million Indians living in the region.

  To summarize: there are many dimensions to Indo-Arab relations, some very old and some very new. India and the Arab world share a close and historical relationship marked by similar values. The Arab world has left an indelible imprint on India’s history, on our culture and on our civilization. As a student of history I can argue with confidence that the past has built us an excellent platform for the future. There is a genuine partnership and synergy existing between India and the Arab world, which we are collectively endeavouring to strengthen further. The paradigm realignment that has accompanied changes in the global economic order, particularly after the financial meltdown, has compelled both sides of the relationship to move towards a major rethink on how we should cooperate to face the challenges in front of us. Happily for both of us, the framework for cooperation is readily available. The nature and level of our cooperation is constantly deepening and widening. Progress is undeniable. While its pace could be faster, a critical mass has already developed to take us into a qualitatively upgraded relationship.

  In today’s era of globalization we have to take into account the changing world economic scenario and equip ourselves appropriately. Our endeavour should be to leverage our comparative advantage to build alliances, develop partnerships, create new avenues of growth and development and strengthen the existing ones. We need to enhance our mutual investments, joint ventures and project participation in the region and in India. Our engagement must be multifaceted. Our geopolitical aspirations are entirely compatible with those of the countries of the region. There is no reason why our efforts should not dovetail into each other’s.

  One important aspect of India–Arab relations has been a similarity of views on a number of politic
al questions of global import, notably New Delhi’s consistent position on the issue of Palestine. India’s solidarity with the Palestinian people and its attitude to the Palestinian question reflects, perhaps more than any other issue, the enduring nature of Indo-Arab ties. It was as early as in 1936 that the Congress Working Committee sent greetings to Palestine and on 27 September 1936 Palestine Day was first observed in India. The 1939 session of the Indian National Congress adopted a resolution on Palestine and looked forward to the emergence of an independent democratic state in Palestine in which Jewish rights would be protected. India was a member of the United Nations Special Committee on Palestine. In 1974, it became the first non-Arab country to recognize the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) as the sole and legitimate representative of the Palestinian people. In March 1980, the Government of India announced in Parliament India’s decision to accord full diplomatic recognition to the PLO office in New Delhi. It was after this that Yasser Arafat paid a three-day official visit to India, during which he described India as ‘an eternal friend’. In 1988, India recognized Palestine as a state. The Indian government has constructed the Palestine embassy building in New Delhi, as a gift of the people and Government of India to the Palestinian people.

  India has had an unwavering record of support for the Palestinian cause since the days of our own freedom struggle. In November 1938, Mahatma Gandhi had written on the subject of persecuted Jews seeking a homeland in Palestine:

  My sympathies are all with the Jews …. But my sympathy does not blind me to the requirements of justice. The cry for the national home for the Jews does not make much appeal to me. The sanction for it is sought in the Bible and the tenacity with which the Jews have hankered after return to Palestine. Why should they not, like 20 other peoples of the earth, make that country their home where they are born and where they earn their livelihood? Palestine belongs to the Arabs in the same sense that England belongs to the English or France to the French. It is wrong and inhuman to impose the Jews on the Arabs.

  This was a more or less consensual position in the Indian nationalist movement, though Jawaharlal Nehru, moved by the treatment of Jews in Germany, proposed in 1936 that they be allowed refuge in India. The belief was that the Jews deserved humanitarian relief for their suffering, but the issue of their mistreatment in Europe could not be solved at the expense of Arabs, by relocating them to Palestine. It was for this reason that India voted against the creation of Israel in the United Nations General Assembly in 1948. Though India subsequently recognized the new state of Israel in 1950, relations were maintained at a low-key consular level for four decades thereafter.

  Contemporary India’s view of the Israeli–Palestinian question therefore has old roots. Our current policy is in line with United Nations Security Council resolutions 242 of 1967 and 338 of 1973, the Quartet Roadmap and the Arab Peace Initiative of Saudi King Abdullah. India supports a united, independent, viable, sovereign state of Palestine with East Jerusalem as its capital, living within secure and recognized borders side by side at peace with Israel. Despite India’s increasing closeness to Israel since 1991—underscored by the two countries’ security cooperation in the face of grave terrorist threats to each—India has not hesitated to express concern about the continuing expansion of Israeli settlements in occupied Palestinian territories. India also supports Palestine in a variety of tangible ways, including the contribution of millions of dollars as budget support for the Palestine National Authority and assistance to Palestine in developing its human resources through India’s technical cooperation programme.

  Such an attitude has nothing to do with prejudice, since Jews have lived in India, according to legend, since the destruction of their First Temple by the Babylonians in 586 BCE prompted several to cross the established trade routes across the Arabian Sea to the south-western coast of India. They were welcomed by the local ruler of Kodungallur in what is today Kerala without conditions, ‘as long as the world and moon exist’, in one recounting. A delightful anecdote that is part of Kerala’s oral history traditions recounts how, when St Thomas the Apostle landed on the coast of Kerala around 52 CE, he was welcomed on shore by a flute-playing Jewish girl. Other waves of Jewish migration created the Bene Israel of Maharashtra in the hinterland of Mumbai, who were accepted as yet another ‘Hindu’ sub-caste for centuries until a wandering rabbi identified their practices and beliefs as Jewish; and the so-called Baghdadi Jews, largely urban and educated elites from various Ottoman cities who migrated to India in the nineteenth century during the British Raj. None of India’s Jews experienced the slightest episode of anti-Semitism at Indian hands; indeed, the only time this diaspora suffered was when the Portuguese arrived in Kerala in the sixteenth century, found a thriving Jewish community and began to persecute it, leading the Jews to flee south to Kochi (Cochin), where they were given refuge and land, and where in the mid-sixteenth century they built one of the finest synagogues in the world. Today, the community known as the ‘White Jews of Cochin’ has dwindled to the point where it cannot assemble a quorum for a minyan, and their old neighbourhood, tactlessly known as ‘Jew Town’, has become a quaint curiosity shop for tourists. But their history, and that of the other two waves of Jewish migration, is one of India’s willing embrace of the Jewish people and their cultural (but not racial) assimilation into their surroundings—a process that has characterized India’s absorption of the many ethnicities that have infused themselves into the national gene pool.

  Nonetheless, friendship and hospitality is one thing, political perspective another. Though the peace process in the region after 1977 made it possible for India to sustain its position on Palestine while upgrading and strengthening relations with Israel, the constraints on New Delhi in this area have been largely internal. An important element guiding India’s political stance towards Israel has undoubtedly been the strong feelings within the country of India’s own Muslim population, which has, perhaps inevitably, looked with suspicion if not hostility at Tel Aviv. The assumption on the part of most Indian political parties that overt friendship with Israel would cost its advocates dearly at the Indian ballot box remains a strong factor, especially when elections loom in states with a significant number of Muslim voters. It did not help that pro-Israeli stances were, in the early years, advocated only by the communally minded Hindu chauvinist party the Bharatiya Jana Sangh, which used support for Israel mainly as an additional stick to beat the Muslims with.

  However, a significant change occurred at the end of the Cold War when India re-examined its entire geopolitical posture in the light of the disappearance of the Soviet Union and the subsequent expansion of India’s options. As part of a general reorientation of Indian foreign policy, which included changes in India’s relations with the United States and with Southeast Asia, the government of Prime Minister Narasimha Rao decided in 1992 to upgrade diplomatic relations with Israel to full ambassadorial level. The change was managed reasonably well, with the Arab world being assured that it would not affect India’s traditional position on Arab–Israel issues or the considerably greater priority accorded to India’s engagement with the Arab world. Nonetheless, the last two decades have witnessed a steady strengthening of the India–Israel partnership, particularly in the defence and security areas where the two countries’ shared concerns about Islamic extremism have offered common ground for cooperation. The period 1998 –2004, when the Bharatiya Janata Party, the successor to the Jana Sangh, headed coalition governments in New Delhi, was particularly productive from the Israeli point of view, and included the only visit of an Israeli prime minister (Ariel Sharon) to India in 2003.

  India is now Israel’s largest market for defence products and services (it is estimated that fully half of the country’s military equipment sales abroad go to India). Despite the huge advantage built up by Russia during the Cold War years as a military supplier to India, the much smaller Israel has, at some $10 billion, become India’s second largest defence supplier (and in some rec
konings its largest). Israel is apparently willing to offer India equipment and technology unavailable from any other country, and to provide indigenously developed defence technologies that are therefore less vulnerable to third-party pressures. Israel is reportedly also helping with the modernization of some of India’s ageing Russian-made weapons systems. Surface-to-air missiles, unmanned surveillance aircraft, training simulators and other sophisticated Israeli defence products are now an indispensable part of India’s arsenal. Israel has provided India with vital ground-based missile defence components, but even more important, it has sold India the Phalcon airborne warning and control system (AWACS), which greatly enhances India’s early warning, command and coordination capabilities and could seriously alter the military balance with Pakistan in its favour.

  In turn, the ISRO has launched at least one Israeli military satellite, and the two countries have intensified intelligence sharing, especially on Islamist threats to both nations. Cooperation in such areas as counterterrorism, border management and the joint training of security forces has grown. India’s armed forces have embarked on an intensive series of high-level exchanges, especially involving the two naval and air forces, which have deepened strategic understanding between the countries.