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The return of Modi

LIKE the mythical Odysseus (Ulysses for Romans), whose journey home after the Trojan War was captured by Homer in his timeless epic Odyssey, PM Modi has been on a global journey since losing the Bihar battle on November 8.

The return of Modi

Once bitten twice shy? The PM’s speech in Singapore was free of any stinging references.



KC Singh

LIKE the mythical Odysseus (Ulysses for Romans), whose journey home after the Trojan War was captured by Homer in his timeless epic Odyssey, PM Modi has been on a global journey since losing the Bihar battle on November 8. A trip to Punjab on Diwali, to be with soldiers, and to commemorate 50 years since the 1965 India-Pakistan War, was done without addressing the people of that state undergoing their own Aamir Khan moment — when fear and self-doubt start resurfacing. 

While the G20 summit in Antalya, Turkey, was overshadowed by the Paris terror attack, PM Modi used it to present his own “10 Point” counter-terrorism proposal. Essentially, he sought global unity and consensus that all terror is bad; adapting to new methods employed by terrorists, including building cyber defence; addressing minds and hearts. The last point is interesting as it is absent from BJP’s lexicon in India. That is precisely the issue lurking in public space during Modi’s odyssey, addressed obliquely by Shahrukh Khan on his birthday and now by Aamir Khan at the Indian Express awards, in the presence of the chief guest, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley. 

The second leg of Modi’s foreign tour began in Malaysia with summit-level contact with ASEAN leaders, followed by the East Asia Summit, which encompasses the 10 ASEAN countries plus observers China, South Korea, Japan, India, Australia, New Zealand, Russia and the US. The focus of the latter was perforce on the jostling between China and the US on whether the South China Sea should be demilitarised or not. The US and its allies think the best guarantee against China first enlarging some crucial islands it occupies and then militarising them to exercise full control over the “Nine-Dash Line” is to seek commitment on demilitarisation. 

He followed up in Kuala Lumpur with a bilateral visit along predictable lines — some agreements, effusive words, diaspora event, etc. Prime Minister Najib Razak has been under relentless pressure from the opposition over a $700-million scandal, even being investigated in the US. He has managed to stay in power as the opposition is divided, with its leader Anwar Ibrahim jailed on sodomy charges that appear contrived, and the insistence of the Pan-Malaysian Islamic Party (PAS), one of the constituents of united opposition, that Islamic law must be implemented. Elections are due in 2018. The Indian diaspora has traditionally been divided between the ruling combine, supported by the largest and oldest Indian party, the Malaysian Indian Congress (MIC) and the opposition. Indians number over 2.4 million and are 8 per cent of the population, being the third largest group after the Malays and the Chinese. 

In this surcharged atmosphere, the wisdom of openly aligning with PM Razak, particularly at the diaspora function, is debatable. On the positive side, it is laudable that Modi avoided his usual barbs aimed at opponents back home while on foreign soil. Hopefully, Bihar has taught him the futility of using fawning, albeit selective, audiences of Indian diaspora as a political platform for domestic voters. He shrewdly used the Tamil connection to that region, including the influence of the Chola dynasty, and the link to Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose, naming the cultural centre in Kuala Lumpur after him. Was Modi keeping half an eye on elections in Tamil Nadu and West Bengal next? 

Singapore has always had fascination for PM Modi. He visited it as Chief Minister in 2006. Urban planning, sustainable development and high technology value addition and being at the crossroads of the Indian and Pacific Oceans make it a natural partner for India. Unfortunately, the Cold War period, with non-alignment as the litmus test of acceptability as a partner, kept the ASEAN out of India’s arc of engagement. This was finally altered by PM Narasimha Rao with his Look East dictum in 1990s. PM Vajpayee gave it a cultural veneer by calling it the Ganga-Mekong initiative. Modi is now adding a third dimension to it when ASEAN unity is threatened by Laos and Cambodia supporting China on the South China Sea, and Brunei, Malaysia, Singapore and Vietnam joining the putative Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) led by the US. Unless India moves fast, it may be locked out of these trading arrangements. In particular, TPP will play a major role in facilitating trade in services, which are anyway an Indian forte. 

PM Modi commenced his journey on the eve of Diwali and ends it on Guru Nanak’s birth anniversary. However, he returns to India with communal passions unleashed during the Bihar election still swirling. Ignoring a wound does not always heal it. The BJP spokesman responding to Aamir Khan’s lament about insecurity in India attacked it as treachery, if not sedition. As many, including the writer, pointed out on Twitter that Aamir was voicing what most right thinking Indians feel that an environment of intolerance was being created that PM Modi was not openly confronting. 

Intolerance, however, today is a global pandemic. Paris attack has aroused atavistic fears of Islam in the West. Almost half the Governors of US states, all except one being Republicans, are refusing to take a single one of the 10,000 Syrian refugees that the US is admitting. President Barack Obama berated Republicans for their rhetoric that Christians deserve help more than Muslims, pointing out that this mindset creates a “potent recruitment tool” for the likes of the ISIS/Al-Qaeda. The Paris attack raises questions if France, the home of libertarian thought, may not have in its enraged reaction got the balance between security and freedom wrong.

Vienna conference to seek a Syria solution meets on January 1, 2016. India is not amongst the 17 nations meeting there. The Paris Global Climate Summit convenes on November 30. India has already filed its Intended Nationally Determined Contribution (INDC) i.e. steps the government will take towards keeping global warming below 2 degree Celsius above pre-industrial levels, but may be pushed to do more. Nepal imbroglio simmers. PM Modi has the winter session of Parliament to face as the BJP loses a critical parliamentary byelection in Madhya Pradesh. Finally, Aamir’s lament begs action. The external and internal realities converge on Modi in all their complexity. Evasion and escape are no longer an option.

 — The writer is a former Secretary, MEA

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