INDIA: Hostile Diplomatic Exchanges Undo Foreign Policy Consensus

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Analysis - Praful Bidwai

NEW DELHI, Sep 21 1998 (IPS) - India’s right-wing government has unravelled the fairly solid consensus on foreign policy among diverse political parties by openly clashing with China and South Africa.

The country’s oldest and biggest political party, Congress, has decided to send its own delegations to Beijing and Pretoria to assure them that the Hindu-chauvinist led government’s foreign policy views do not represent common national policies.

The move is unprecedented in independent India’s 51-year history of international relations, perhaps the only issue on which there has been agreement in this deeply divided society.

At the recent Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) summit at Durban, South Africa, the Indian delegation led by Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee clashed very publicly with their hosts.

President Nelson Mandela’s naming Kashmir at the meeting, where he said “all of us remain concerned that the issue of Jammu and Kashmir should be solved through peaceful negotiation”, was objected to as “totally unacceptable” by Vajpayee at an official banquet.

When Mandela’s deputy Thabo Mbeki clarified that the remarks were not meant “to hurt India”, nor offer mediation, India claimed Mandela had “apologised”. This further offended South Africa’s sensibilities.

The episode, and the manner in which it was handled with some Indian newspapers carrying officially inspired reports about how Mandela is really “pro-West”, has introduced rancour into relations between India and South Africa, which were warm until recently. India was a strong supporter of the ruling African National Congress (ANC) and the anti-apartheid movement.

The Vajpayee government’s criticism of Mandela has shocked many Indian political leaders. A Congress party spokesman compared it to “puny David taking on a Goliath” and discrediting for India. The Congress, as well as the Left, believes in close relations with the ANC.

Before the hostile diplomatic exchanges with Pretoria, since early May, China has been a target of hostile verbal attacks by Indian ministers, notably Defence Minister George Fernandes who has repeatedly named China as a “threat”.

Within weeks of the new Indian government taking over this April, Fernandes had accused Beijing of building a helicopter landing-pad in Arunachal Pradesh, India’s northeastern state to which China lays a claim.

Prime Minister Vajpayee, however, denied the allegation, but did not repudiate Fernandes’s other unsubstantiated charges. Neither did he mention that relations between India and China, which fought a border war in 1962, has considerably improved. 8 The improvement was considered the foreign policy “breakthrough” of the 1990s. China is believed to have suspended in 1995-96 a programme to develop medium-range ballistic missiles which can reach targets in peninsular India. (Existing Chinese missiles can assuredly reach only Northeastern India.)

But this growing mutual confidence, including booming trade (which expanded by 30 percent last year), was suddenly undermined by the Indian nuclear explosions on May 11.

In a letter immediately afterwards to the U.S president, Prime Minister Vajpayee accused China, “an overt nuclear weapon state on our borders … which committed armed aggression against India in 1962”, of causing a deterioration in India’s “security environment”.

Vajpayee underscored the “atmosphere of distrust” with China: “To add to the distrust, that country has materially helped another neighbour” (a “bitter” Pakistan) “to become a covert nuclear weapons-state.”

A stunned Beijing reacted sharply, accusing India of showing contempt “for the will of the international community” by testing and provoking distrust and instability amongst neighbours. Besides censuring India in the Security Council, China has repeatedly warned it would be compelled to revise its strategic posture unless New Delhi shows restraint.

China distinguishes between Indian and Pakistani nuclearisation, treating the second as a reaction to the first, which it terms unwarranted.

Many Indian political parties are worried at the BJP’s “nuclear adventurism” and the consequent deterioration in India’s relations with her neighbours.

The Indian government has made few attempts to hold talks with China on the nuclear question. It has concentrated on the United States – with which it has held four rounds – and to an extent, France, which has a relatively “soft” line on India. (India was reluctant to condemn the deeply unpopular French tests in the Pacific in 1995-96 during the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty talks.)

Opposition parties are also critical of New Delhi’s refusal to condemn last month’s U.S missile strikes against Sudan and Afghanistan, and its recent generally pro-Western, pro-US, orientation, and its shift away from non-alignment.

Since the end of the Cold War, India’s foreign policy has been adrift. Under the BJP, it is taking on a strongly right-wing character.