Hugs, Hashtags, and Hard Passes: The Curated Spectacle of Modi's Diplomacy

In an era when global affairs are roiled by war, climate crisis, and shifting power equations, India has a historic opportunity to lead with moral clarity and strategic poise. Instead, we have chosen a baffling third way: the performative pivot. India’s foreign policy under Narendra Modi has been less about doctrine and more about drama – a confused GPS that keeps recalculating but never arrives.

Take our most recent abstention on the June 2025 UN General Assembly resolution calling for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza. With 149 countries voting in favour, India chose to step aside. Again. The justification? Procedural. But the impact? Moral and political. 

This abstention was a moral collapse because it signalled that India would rather sit on the fence than stand against a humanitarian crisis that, as per the Palestinian ministry of health, has killed 55,297 and wounded at least 128,426 Palestinians – with the majority of the victims being children and women. Since March 18 alone, Israel’s breach of the ceasefire agreement has killed 5,014 and wounded 16,385 people. Simultaneously, as per a BBC report quoting UN estimates from January 2025, has damaged more than 90% of the housing units in Gaza, with 160,000 destroyed and a further 276,000 severely or partially damaged.  

This abstention is politically corrosive because India has historically championed the cause of justice to Palestine.

In 1975, India invited the Palestine Liberation Organization or PLO to open an office in Delhi, giving it diplomatic status five years later. In 1988, when the PLO declared an independent state of Palestine with its capital in East Jerusalem, India granted recognition immediately. Yasser Arafat was received as head of state whenever he visited India. Even as India opened a diplomatic mission in Tel Aviv in 1992, it set up a Representative Office in Gaza, which later moved to Ramallah as the Palestinian movement split between the Hamas (which gained control of Gaza) and the PLO.

During the UPA’s 10 years in office, Mahmoud Abbas, head of the Palestinian authority that administers the West Bank, visited four times – in 2005, 2008, 2010 and 2012. India voted for Palestine to become a full member of UNESCO in 2011, and a year later, co-sponsored the UN General Assembly resolution that enabled Palestine to become a “non-member” observer state at the UN without voting rights.

India also supported the installation of the Palestinian flag on the UN premises in September 2015, a year after Modi was voted to power. These abstentions also contradict India’s position in December 2023 when we did vote in the favour of an immediate ceasefire in Gaza. 

In choosing to abstain, as such, the government not only eroded India’s historic support for Palestine. This flippant attitude of the government, towards a crisis that has only deepened and become more heartbreaking over time is a classic case of lack of states-manly clarity and moral fortitude. It is more clear than ever that the bipolar foreign policy of the government is not governed by principles but by convenience and proximity involving purchases like the Pegasus that was used by the Modi Government for targeted extra-judicial surveillance on ministers, opposition leaders, political strategist and tacticians, journalists, activists, minority leaders, Supreme Court judges, religious leaders, administrators like Election Commissioners and heads of Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI).

However, this approach is not isolated to Gaza alone but is a part of a larger pattern.

India has abstained on multiple UN resolutions calling for de-escalation and peace between Russia and Ukraine since 2022. Similarly, India abstained from UNGA votes each demanding a ceasefire in Gaza – for example, in October 2023 and more recently in June 2025 – when the world is overwhelmingly in support of ending the humanitarian crisis unfolding in Gaza.  In each case, the rationale for abstention was pedantic but the consequence was moral turpitude.

The problem with Modi’s bipolar policy, with respect to Gaza and beyond, has serious consequences for India’s global standing. On one hand, we aspire to be the voice of the Global South. On the other hand, we fall silent when our voice is needed most. What was once strategic autonomy has now curdled into strategic ambiguity, albeit dressed in a designer pinstripe suit with Narendra Modi written all over it. 

Foreign policy under Modi follows a predictable rhythm: hug first, hedge later. The prime minister’s foreign visits are characterised with signature bear hugs with world leaders.

This ‘hug diplomacy’ is a media spectacle that signals friendship to the domestic audience that is being misled into believing that India’s respect in the global arena is on the rise. However, in reality, these fleeting spectacles lack serious follow-through, there is little to no institutional ballast behind the embrace and there is also no concrete evidence of what India has gained from the PM’s countless foreign tours. 

From 'Howdy Modi' in Houston in 2019 where Modi endorsed Trump with "abki baar, Trump sarkar" to being publicly cut to size by the same POTUS during Operation Sindoor in April 2025 with the US using trade to arm-twist India into de-escalation, the pattern repeats: embrace, photo-op, retreat.

Where Jawaharlal Nehru built non-alignment as a moral and geopolitical stance, we now get non-assignment – a refusal to define where we stand on core issues. Modi’s diplomacy is curated like an Instagram feed. It may be stylish indeed but more than that, it is superficial, filter-heavy, and disconnected from reality. Consequently, when diplomacy is followed by hashtags, the world stops taking you seriously.

This disconnection was most visible after the deadly Galwan clash in June 2020 in which 20 Indian soldiers were killed. Yet, Modi stated, “No one has intruded into our territory” despite evidence from satellite imagery, multiple independent reports, and even leaked MEA documents indicating Chinese incursions. In the process, he misled the nation – crores of his own voters have entrusted him with the responsibility of upholding the interests and integrity of our nation. It was also a gift-wrapped signal to Beijing that India lacked the courage to call out its most formidable opponent in the region and would prioritise optics over operational clarity.

Similarly, when Maldivian ministers mocked Modi’s January 2024 Lakshadweep tourism push, India's response was influencer warfare and not diplomacy. The government coordinated tourism campaigns, deployed celebrities and social media teams to flood timelines with drone shots, beach reels, and #VisitLakshadweep trends. The foreign ministry response came late and was weak. 

However, the BJP’s most troubling fall from morality came in the wake of the war on Gaza. A part of the disinformation that flooded social media since Hamas’s October 7, 2023 attack on southern Israel was produced or spread by accounts based out of India. Hashtags like #IndiaWithIsrael, #IsraelUnderAttack, and #HamasTerrorists, driven by right-wing influencers, BJP-linked digital operatives and the troll machinery, trended across Indian platforms.

This export of Islamophobia from India across digital platforms did not go unnoticed. According to a report released by India Hate Lab (IHL), a US-based research group, in 2023, the hate speech events peaked between August and November, the period of political campaigning and polling in four major states – Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Rajasthan and Telangana. As per the same report, from October 7 to December 31, 2023, content linked to the Gaza conflict was used to stoke internal communal tensions ahead of elections as one in every five hate-speech events invoked Israel’s war, a phenomenon that peaked in November.

While Modi's government has maintained a studied silence, been slow to respond or blamed "fringe elements" for such actions, the BJP politics of hate towards Muslims has already faced international and domestic backlash in the past over Islamophobic remarks made by two party officials which invited condemnation from Muslim-majority countries like Qatar, Kuwait, and Saudi Arabia, who demanded apologies and summoned Indian ambassadors. This controversy, which coincided with then Vice-President Venkaiah Naidu's visit to Qatar, prompted calls for boycotts of Indian goods and caused a global embarrassment to India’s secular credentials. BJP did distance the two party officials, but the response came too late and was too little to salvage the damage done to the country’s reputation. 

One must be clear: Modi is not a Vishwaguru – world teacher – because to lead the world, one must stand for something. However, India is because it is India that has produced towering figures like Mahatma Gandhi, whose message Modi conveniently quotes abroad to win applause but shamelessly mutes at home to advance his divisive agenda. The PM does superficially utter “vasudhaiva kutumbakam” in G20 communiqués but seems to not understand its true essence. If the world truly is one family, then how is it possible for the PM to look away as hospitals and schools are bombed, or when entire populations are displaced out of their homes into ‘safe-zones’ only to be bombed in those safe-zone camps or when relief trucks are prevented from reaching the starving population of Gaza?

Hard times breed great expectations. With India’s democratic legacy, civilisational heft, and growing geopolitical weight (now the world’s most populous country and the 5th largest economy), we could play a defining role in global diplomacy. Unfortunately now, however, our foreign policy has become one man’s mood board – shaped by PR instincts, media cycles, and an allergy to hard positions.

This, of course,  isn’t to deny the world’s complexity. Strategic partnerships matter. Realpolitik has its place. But a mature foreign policy doesn’t flinch from difficult stands, it articulates values while navigating interests. 

India must return to the moral middle, where conscience isn’t sacrificed for convenience, where our primary responsibilities towards humanity are upheld with dignity and honour. Global leadership isn’t earned through hashtags or high-fives with presidents. It is earned by taking a stand when it’s hardest to do so. India must now decide: Will we remain spectators in history’s defining moments or shape them? Because history doesn’t remember fence-sitters. It remembers those who stood up, even if they stood alone.

Pawan Khera is a Congress spokesperson.

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