India's Diplomacy Now Is Very Much in Line With the RSS Mindset

US-based academic Farah Jan recently wrote a great piece on why Pakistan – due to both its strengths and weaknesses – is an essential broker in Asia for the US. This piece should be required reading for the Indian diplomatic community that, exasperated with Pakistan, has been trying to either ignore or isolate it for nearly two decades despite the outreach by both Atal Behari Vajpayee and Manmohan Singh. That said, the piece also compares Pakistan’s success as a broker to Indian diplomacy. In doing so, she is so far off the mark that it is difficult to overstate how wrong she is.

To be fair her criticism of the current Indian position is correct. She is spot on when she writes that, “A state that refuses to impose costs on Russia over Ukraine, maintains arms exports to Israel while abstaining on Gaza, and declines to take a position on any contested question of regional order is not exercising strategic autonomy. It is performing it”. But she is catastrophically wrong when she claims that, “India has had governments of radically different ideological orientations – socialist, market-liberal, Hindu nationalist – and all of them have produced roughly the same foreign policy footprint relative to the country’s capabilities.” 

In December 1952 the UN General Assembly accepted the Indian Armistice Agreement, leading to the drawdown and eventual end of the Korean War. India was appointed as one of the two committees (on the repatriation of nearly two million prisoners of war) that helped the armed hostilities to end. At that time India was much poorer, and the conflict was far from Indian shores – although it would signal the beginning of a Cold War that would deeply impact the globe – and India punched far above its weight diplomatically. It was the very fact that India punched far above its weight diplomatically and globally that Austria reached out to Nehru to help achieve sovereignty for the country in 1955. India’s role in supporting decolonisation efforts in Africa, or opposing Apartheid, are well documented. These were important decisions with major implications for the global balance of power, and are just some highlights to what India could achieve when it used its diplomatic leverage properly.

India could do this because it was respected and trusted. It was a power on the global stage because it stood up for its principles against even the superpowers of its times. This reputation has held it in good stead, even after the end of Nehruvian era, and India’s lack of appetite for more global commitments. It certainly had a role in the Kargil conflict, in which “Pakistan withdrew under American diplomatic pressure after its conventional position collapsed and international opinion turned decisively against Islamabad.” This is hardly evidence of Pakistan outmanoeuvring India diplomatically. During Manmohan Singh’s tenure India pushed back against major powers, including China (the allowance of Tibetan protests during the Olympic torch relay), the EU (Italy specifically for its marines shooting Indian fishermen), and the US (the Devyani Khobragade episode where, frankly, India was in the wrong). 

In none of these times could we have imagined a senior leader affiliated to the party in power grovelling for approval from another country as Ram Madhav of the RSS did a few days ago at the Hudson Institute in the US. By flattening the narrative, Jan attributes to Indian diplomacy primarily the weaknesses that have been shown up by the Modi regime. They are unique to this era, to this India, and specifically to the RSS mindset.

It is important to remember that Modi represents the first Indian prime minister totally in the RSS mould. Vajpayee may have been the first BJP prime minister and member of the RSS to hold the office, but he was shaped in the Nehruvian mould. His first speech in Parliament was on foreign policy, to which Nehru responded with grace, appreciating the young man. Vajpayee consciously emulated Nehru in style and speech, and when installed as foreign minister in the Janata Party years, Vajpayee specifically requested for Nehru’s portrait, which had been removed, to be reinstalled in his office. There is no such continuity in Modi’s India, and it shows.

The RSS has long been an organisation that has worshipped the stick that beats it. The multiple mercy petitions of Savarkar to the British authorities and his willingness to oppose the Indian freedom movement on behalf of the Empire are witness to that. Golwalkar, the second leader of the RSS, would isolate the organisation from the independence movement, going so far as to criticise anti-British nationalism among Indians. Both he, and the RSS, were deeply appreciated by the British empire. The very reason that the RSS describes itself as a social organisation is that Patel took a stick to them after the assassination of Gandhi, and the public attacked their offices. The RSS worldview is of the worship of the powerful, and it is no coincidence that Modi has thrown India at the mercy of Trump or Xi, or anybody who is willing to wield a stick. 

Jan is correct in detailing the many reasons that make Pakistan a relevant actor in the region and beyond. She is, though, wrong that India wishes to play a similar role. Indian diplomacy has aimed for higher goals than merely being a broker between powers, it has aspired to be a power in itself. But to do this requires courage, it requires vision, and the willingness to take on the powerful. These are not qualities that are found in the RSS, and they have no place in Modi’s foreign policy.

Omair Ahmad has worked as a political analyst and journalist in India, the US and the UK.

The Wire is now on WhatsApp. Follow our channel for sharp analysis and opinions on the latest developments.