Why India has returned to the NAM fold

The participation of Prime Minister Narendra Modi in the virtual summit of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) on May 4 came as a pleasant surprise. This was the first time after coming to power in 2014 that the PM attended a NAM event, having skipped two previous summit meetings — Venezuela (2016) and Azerbaijan (2019). A leading national daily from Delhi had reported at that time, quoting sources, that the decision was a ‘part of the government’s efforts to bring about change in India’s foreign policy.’

Against such an intriguing backdrop, what explains India’s return to the NAM as the prodigal son? No doubt, it is a commendable course-correction. It is impossible today to harmonise India’s foreign policies as they evolved through the post-cold war era with the NAM’s ideals and principles that India pioneered as its founding father. India has changed and NAM, too, is no longer a platform of like-minded nations, blood brothers in the mighty anti-imperialist struggles and national liberation movements.

The world order, too, has transformed; bipolarity has vanished and bloc mentality has become archaic in the radically transformed international milieu characterised by multi-polarity, where countries adopt self-limiting mindsets to pursue their interests and prioritise national development.

India’s transition as a nuclear weapon state embroiled it in strategic deterrence; its disinterest in South-South cooperation and its disengagement from the struggle against inequalities and injustice in international economic relations reflected its retreat from the centre stage to the shade to focus on self-interests by aligning with the West, especially the US; its newfound ardour for Mammon drained out the intellectual content of foreign policy. All these manifestations through the millennial decades inexorably led to the estimation that NAM summit meetings were a waste of time.

Fundamentally, ‘strategic autonomy’ as the underlying concept of foreign policy became unfashionable by the mid-nineties and ingenious arguments by interest groups began surging to generate raison d’être for alignment with the US. The Indian elite’s ‘unipolar predicament’ was succinctly put across in an essay by late K Subrahmanyam, an influential voice of those times, in the following startling postulates: “If the US remains the world’s predominant power, and China is second, India will be the swing power. It will therefore have three options: partnering with the US and other pluralistic, secular and democratic countries; joining hands with China at the risk of betraying the values of its Constitution and freedom struggle; and remaining both politically and ideologically non-aligned, even if against its own ideals.”

In retrospect, it is possible to understand how facile narratives and false notions navigated India’s adjustment to the ‘post-Soviet’ geopolitics. The point is that even US strategic thinkers are willing to candidly admit today that world politics is set to enter a ‘post-American century’. The containment of China’s rise is no longer a viable proposition. And, in any case, Trump’s America-First doctrine ascribes no role for ‘swing powers’. He prefers tariffs to ‘swing states’ to leverage American interests vis-a-vis China. The transactional character of the US-Indian relationship makes rhetoric over ‘values’ meaningless. Subrahmanyam didn’t even expect Russia’s resurgence or anticipate the ensuing multi-polarity in world politics — although the great Russian thinker and visionary, Yevgeniy Primakov, had alerted us to the hidden charms of non-alignment in the emergent world order.

Contradictions are galore. The Indian state espouses nationalism as its credo while claiming to be a votary of multilateralism. Indian rhetoric lauds Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam while its body politic is acutely polarised. Suffice to say, India’s motivations vis-a-vis the NAM are a matter of expediency. Compulsions arise in three directions. One, India’s image abroad suffered as a result of aberrations that crept into our secular polity of late and a need arises to actively network and break out of isolation. We are trying hard. Even hydroxychloroquine has its uses for India’s diplomacy.

Two, India’s partnership with America faces an uncertain future in the post-pandemic period ahead. The EU is hunkering down to address existential challenges. Indeed, India is overtly keen to upgrade a quadrilateral alliance with the US, Japan and Australia — but there too, alas, we’re all dressed up and nowhere to go.

Three, India senses the growing proximity between the NAM member countries and China. Of course, it will be the mother of all ironies if the movement that Nehru founded to maximise India’s strategic space to manoeuvre were to turn into a platform for China-led globalisation processes of development.

Quintessentially, India is paying the price for its retreat from ‘Nehruvian’ internationalism into the shell of national security state. In an interdependent world, India is indifferent toward the welfare of other countries. The self-centred mindset was carried to an extreme when India failed to identify with world opinion to demand the roll back of the US’ cruel sanctions against Iran, an active NAM member, when the pandemic rampaged through that country — lest we annoyed the Trump administration.

As the nineties wore on and millennium decades dawned, the US and its lobbyists in our country incrementally nudged India’s national security establishment, transfixed by ‘unipolar predicament’, to accept the quaint notion of ‘interoperability’ with American military as the leitmotif of modernisation of our armed forces. We had no more use of NAM or strategic autonomy as we also got co-opted into the Washington Consensus.

Clearly, much water has flown down the Ganga, and today, what is it that India can bring to the table to wean the NAM away from the seductive charms of China-led globalisation? As it is, one-half of NAM comprises members of the Organisation of Islamic Conference, which remains highly critical of the plight of Indian Muslims.