India’s Prime Minister, Narendra Modi, was in Europe last week. Rarely
do key European capitals extend the level of courtesy and attention we saw
lavished on him. But Modi is no ordinary visitor, for in today’s global
dynamics, India presents the West with a difficult calculus.
اضافة اعلان
India is the most important US ally that has
remained equidistant from the two sides in the Ukraine crisis. And when some
tried to nudge it to side with the West, India maintained its firm position.
India matters. Militarily, it is by far the most
powerful Western ally in Asia. It has a long border with China, and a conflict
with the rising superpower that is likely unresolvable in the medium term.
These two factors give India a strategic importance in any American (and
Western) calculus. And so it was not surprising that America saw India’s
joining the US-led Quad (along with Japan and Australia), which is effectively
a budding alliance to encircle China, as a valuable success.
India is also a colossal demographic power in Asia.
This translates into a major market all global companies eye with strong
interest. But demography is much more than consumption. It is social depth and
solidity – something of serious importance when new technologies (sponsored by
extremely wealthy interests) are diluting national identities.
India has a highly successful diaspora that includes
communities of serious influence in different regions of the world, in addition
to the CEOs of around 20 of the most important global companies. Not
surprisingly, the West wants to draw India to it. The question is at what cost.
India needs highly sophisticated Western arms to
diversify from its decades-long dependency on Russian weapons, particularly as
India seeks to bolster its traditional (non-nuclear) capabilities, not really
vis-à-vis Pakistan, but primarily relative to China. But this makes supplying
India with advanced weapons a difficult decision for the West. India is not a
lagging country that could be pleased with massive shipments of arms it lacks
the capabilities of using to their true potential. With its serious
technological base, India can optimize the acquisition of any advanced weapons.
As such, decisions to supply India with advanced weapons will be noted in
China.
India also wants much better terms of trade with
most large Western economies, which is another dilemma for the West. Several
major Western companies operating in different sectors have learnt from long
experiences in India that the market there has its own peculiarities, and that
attempting to impose external rules is futile. And so, based on these
experiences and impelled by India’s size and weight, many Western countries are
tempted to give India special terms of trade. But preferential treatment could
well prompt other important countries to demand the same treatment, which, if
not received, would create unnecessary complications for many Western
countries, including the EU.
Crucially, India wants respect and reciprocity. Like
China, India feels that its experience in the past two centuries were far from
what it deserves (or as some would say, what it is entitled to). Whether the
British Raj and its aftermaths, the struggle for independence, the political
divisions that took place in the Indian Subcontinent in the mid-20th century
and the subsequent military confrontations that ensued, or the economic
difficulties that many in India believe were consequences of unfair Western
policies – all are viewed as episodes in a trajectory of historical decline. At
the core of the ideology of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party is the
determination that that decline must be reversed.
This means that the West must accept Indian values,
views, and terms as those of an equal, whether in politics or in trade. But the
West has not engaged with any civilization in the past 300 years as an equal.
India is not as assertive as China in demanding a particular treatment, but it
notes, and subtly reciprocates.
Yet, as it notes how others treat her, India
realizes that these encounters present it with difficult choices.
… the more India embraces this narrow scope of its history and identity, the more it will lose its attraction as a successful political entity anchored on true representation and respect for liberalism.
India is almost compelled by its acute disagreement
with China to be close to US-led efforts in Asia and the Pacific. But India
does not aim to be, in Lee Kwan Yew’s phrase, “an honorary member of the West”.
India sees herself as a center of gravity in its neighborhood, a radiating
civilization, its glow both illuminating and drawing those around it. This
subtle rivalry is one of the reasons behind its conflict with China. But it is
also a brake in its getting too close to the West.
There is also a values issue. For the past 60 years
since its independence, India’s politics – externally, but much more
importantly internally – were anchored in an expansive conception of what India
means. In this conception, India was an aggregation of the heritages of the
different cultures that have existed in the Indian Subcontinent in the past
several hundred years. This is the tradition espoused by Gandhi and sustained
by Jawaharlal Nehru. Arguably, it is the tradition that enabled India to have a
serious democratic system.
This tradition has lost ground in India in the past
two decades. The ruling political-Hinduism defines India narrowly, excluding
from its rhetoric about the national identity anything that it sees as diluting
Hinduism. And so, the more India embraces this narrow scope of its history and
identity, the more it will lose its attraction as a successful political entity
anchored on true representation and respect for liberalism. Inevitably this
will break that sense of belonging to the camp of political liberalism that has
connected India and the West in the past six decades.
And the more narrowly defined-nationalism prevails
in India, the more the country will lose its strongest political differentiation
from China: its positioning as a colossal Asian society sustaining a true
democracy. This will be a serious political loss for India. Also in this
scenario, India’s struggle with Pakistan would increasingly be portrayed as
between Hinduism and Islamism, something India has worked for decades to avoid.
A narrowly defined assertive nationalism would not
only dilute the soft power attached to India’s politics; it would also lessen
the sense of continuity in India’s rich history. Modern India would seem
disconnected from the marvels of its old highly advanced philosophy – arguably
the most powerful association the collective global consciousness has
concerning India.
The Ukraine crisis has brought India’s dilemmas and
dilemmas about India under the limelight. Whether they will be solved or
exacerbated will be of major importance to India and the world.
This
article was first published in Al-Ahram online.
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