Diplomacy amid populism

MK Bhadrakumar

former Ambassador

A foreign policy analyst once observed in a review that books on PM Modi’s foreign policy had one thing in common: they came too soon. This observation comes to mind when one sits down to pen a yearender on Modi’s foreign policy — and, that too, on a day with news appearing that External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar cancelled in a huff a meeting in Washington with a group of senior members of the US Congress because of the presence of Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal, an influential lawmaker and prominent figure in the Indian diaspora, who he thought lacked ‘a fair understanding of the situation in J&K or fair characterisation of what the Government of India is doing’ in the Valley. ‘I have no interest in meeting her,’ he remarked publicly.

Jaishankar probably equated Jayapal with a Rajya Sabha member. But Americans take their lawmakers seriously. They may not rap Jaishankar on the knuckle because he has been a trusted friend of yesteryear, but it still remains indecorous behaviour by a visiting dignitary. However, the startling news shouldn’t come as a surprise. The Modi government routinely shoots at messengers who relay unpleasant truth. Jaishankar’s brashness to banish Jayapal from his durbar coincides with the boorish behaviour meted out to Ramachandra Guha, biographer of Gandhi and internationally-acclaimed historian, in broad daylight in Bengaluru. Washington and Bengaluru are high-profile theatres — one, capital of the only superpower, and the other, India’s most globalised city. Such incidents are guaranteed to draw attention.

The question, therefore, must be asked: What about all those books that extolled Modi as a visionary who hoisted India’s prestige sky-high on the world stage, and under whom diaspora politics became a core component of India’s foreign policy? Fundamentally, what was Modi aiming at all this while? Modi is India’s first populist leader. From Manmohan Singh to Modi, we see a clear-cut transition from a non-populist to a populist leader. Now, there are more than one definition possible of what constitutes populism in foreign policy. The most apt definition in the Indian context comes from Prof Kurt Weyland at Texas University who studies the emergence of competitive authoritarianism under the cover of progressive rhetoric in Latin American politics, where populism has been deployed as a political strategy by personalistic leaders or demagogues to establish political hegemony, erode institutional checks and balances, marginalise the opposition through discriminatory legalism, and severely skew political competition.

The Latin American analogy is striking. Modi’s populism is closest in its features to that of Juan Domingo Perón, the Argentinian general who made it as President. Peronism has been described as a vague blend of nationalism, populism, fascism or right-wing socialism. The ruling elites in India are struggling to hypothesise the country’s shift under their rule from a non-populist to a populist leader. Jaishankar’s speech at the 4th Ramnath Goenka Lecture on November 14 speaks for itself. One doesn’t need to know rocket science to discern that hardly any changes on global governance issues can be observed between the Manmohan Singh government and the Modi government. Take the pulling out of the RCEP, which is touted as the shining face of Indian nationalism. In international trade negotiations, India has a consistent record of being a recalcitrant actor unwilling to compromise. Again, on climate governance, the Manmohan Singh government rejected binding emission targets, highlighting the historical responsibility of industrialised countries and India’s own need to prioritise industrial development. If anything, Modi has adopted a more cooperative approach.

What was Modi’s foreign policy about? Modi’s most notable foreign policy activity lies in his bilateral diplomacy. As of end-December last year (when I lost count), the tally stood at 92 nations that he had visited. The actual output from such leader-level summits remains debatable. Modi’s foreign policy resonates with his personalistic leadership style, which cultivated his public image as a technology-savvy leader aligned with the aspirations of a new Indian modernity. The most important hypothesis of the Modi-era foreign policy, perhaps, concerns the idea of extending the notion of ‘the people’ beyond their country’s borders. His vigorous pursuit of Indian communities abroad stands out. Having said that, the Sangh Parivar began reaching out to the diaspora in the ’80s and the Vajpayee government also pursued such a strategy. The diaspora has proved to be an asset for the BJP, both in terms of fundraising and ‘cyber support’.

Jaishankar is rediscovering the wheel with the intent to obfuscate the rising tide of anti-pluralism domestically and detract international attention from it. Anti-pluralism is an important component of Modi’s populism domestically, whereas Indian exceptionalism (Vasudhaiva kutumbakam) that he has projected externally is irreconcilable with it. The focus was on ‘style’ rather than substance. The high noon was reached at ‘Howdy, Modi!’ But decline has set in. Hindutva is a thin-centred ideology, which inevitably comes into conflict with populism. What we are witnessing is the surge of that inherent contradiction. The past five years were spent on a futile attempt at dissimulation to introduce Hindutva, an atavistic ideology of mofussil grade, onto the metropolitan global stage. But world opinion has caught on, finally. Predicaments such as Jaishankar’s in Washington will repeat.