Modi And The World: (Re) Constructing Indian Foreign Policy

(Re) Constructing Indian Foreign Policy

Sinderpal Singh

• Publisher: WSPC
• Year: 2017
• eBook ISBN: 9789813203877
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Asian Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

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Contrary to prior expectations, Narendra Modi has expended a significant amount of time, energy and political capital in conducting India's engagement with the outside world since becoming Prime Minister in May 2014. In accordance with wider perceptions about Modi, there were expectations of significant, if not radical, change in Indian foreign policy under his charge. This sentiment led to a section of Indian strategists and foreign policy watchers conceiving the notion of a 'Modi Doctrine' in Indian foreign policy. This notion of foreign policy 'doctrines' is not new to the analysis of Indian foreign policy. Previous incarnations include the 'Indira Doctrine' of the 1970s, the 'Gujral Doctrine' for a brief period in the late 1990s and the 'Manmohan Doctrine' in the period before Modi was elected as prime minister.

This edited volume attempts to interrogate the extent to which Indian foreign policy, under Modi, has undergone significant change and the extent to which this manifests itself as a new doctrine in Indian foreign policy. The individual chapters cover key bilateral relationships (the United States, China, Australia and Pakistan) as well as broader regional relationships (South Asia and the Indian Ocean Region) and specific themes (such as economic diplomacy).

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--> Contents:

• Bilateral Engagements:
  • Modi's China Policy — Change or Continuity? (Manjeet S Pardesi)
  • Constructing an Indo-Pacific Partnership: Modi's Engagement with Australia (David Brewster)
  • Modi and America: Great Expectations and Enduring Constraints (Sylvia Mishra)
  • Embracing Japan: A Work in Progress (Anthony Yazaki)
  • The Pakistan Challenge: Modi's 'China Card' (P S Suryanarayana)
• Themes/Geo-Political Regions:
  • Modi's 'Neighbourhood First' Initiative (S D Muni)
  • Modi's Foreign Economic Policy (Amitendu Palit)
  • The Indian Ocean Policy of the Modi Government (Rajeev Ranjan Chaturvedy)

Part 1

Bilateral Engagements

Chapter 1

Modi’s China Policy — Change or Continuity?

Manjeet S Pardesi

Introduction

During his campaign in the run-up to the 2014 Lok Sabha elections, Narendra Modi, the leading candidate of the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) warned China to abandon its “mindset of expansion” and asserted that Arunachal Pradesh (an India-administered state claimed more or less in its entirety by China) was an integral part of India.¹ While China was hardly an issue in Indian elections, and even this reference to China was noteworthy only because it was rare, the general assumption in the Indian media was that a BJP-led government would be tough on national security issues, especially compared to predecessor United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh of the Congress Party, which was seen as pusillanimous on defence issues (especially as they pertained to China). This chapter argues that in spite of the fact that the BJP won a simple majority in 2014 — thus upending a quarter century trend of coalition governments in New Delhi — India’s foreign and security policy vis-à-vis China under Prime Minister Modi is essentially a continuation of the overall approach of the UPA governments (followed over the previous decade, UPA-1 from 2004–2009, and UPA-2 from 2009–2014).

In fact, India’s current approach towards China was established by Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi (of the Congress Party) during his 1988 visit to China which ended the estrangement between the Asian giants that had set-in in the aftermath of the 1962 Sino–Indian War. During Gandhi’s visit, the Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping observed that an “‘Asia-Pacific Century’ will arrive only after China, India and other countries of this region become developed.”² In other words, the two leaders decided to begin the process of economic engagement while leaving the more contentious issues (including the border issue) for the future. This pragmatic approach towards China has been followed by governments from across the political spectrum in India over the past three decades or so.³ Furthermore, this chapter demonstrates that while maintaining overall political stability in Sino–Indian relations and promoting economic cooperation, the governments of the outgoing Prime Minister Singh (UPA-1 and UPA-2) also began the process of military modernisation to address India’s growing gap with China. There has been no radical departure under Prime Minister Modi who has built on the policies of his predecessor.

The remainder of this chapter is divided into four sections. The next section provides a brief overview of the Sino–Indian rivalry. This section highlights the complex nature of this rivalry and tries to understand the changing balance of (material) power in Sino–Indian relations. The following two sections focus respectively on the military and foreign policy dimensions of the Sino–Indian relationship. Militarily, India is in the process of upgrading its conventional strategy from defence to deterrence to address the power gap in Sino–Indian relations. In terms of foreign policy, a nascent pattern of Sino–Indian competition is emerging at the pan-Asian level as New Delhi and Beijing vie with each other for geopolitical influence as they simultaneously rise through the international order. While China’s close partnership with India’s subcontinental rival Pakistan, and India’s growing ties with the United States and Japan might seem like an emergent bipolarization in Asia, this chapter concludes by arguing that such a view is not tenable as India’s long-term strategy is to emerge as an independent great power in international affairs in Asia (if not globally). As such, this chapter argues that while individual leaders — Singh and Modi — certainly add their own diplomatic style to India’s foreign affairs, especially as they pertain to China, there is an underlying structural logic that is guiding the evolution of Sino–Indian ties.

Overview of the Sino–Indian Rivalry

The positional dimension

China and India are locked in a complex strategic rivalry that has multiple dimensions. Their rivalry began as a positional rivalry for status and influence in Asia along with their simultaneous emergence as modern states in the late 1940s. Both China and India viewed themselves as the natural leaders in post-war/post-colonial Asia due to the historical influence that the two giants had had on Asia, at least in the perceptions of their nationalist elite. While China saw itself as a powerful civilisation that influenced large parts of Asia, especially Korea, Japan, and Vietnam, through Confucianism, the Chinese elite also had residual memories of a China-centred international system in precolonial East and Southeast Asia (under the Ming and Qing Dynasties). Although India has no such history of geopolitical ties with its eastern neighbours, India’s elite took pride in the influence that religious-cultural systems of Indic origin had wielded in East and Southeast Asia via the spread of Buddhism and Hinduism.

More importantly, Jawaharlal Nehru, the first Prime Minister of India, was convinced that it was Indian civilisation that had wielded enormous historical influence on China through the Buddhist impact, while China’s civilisation had not had a comparable influence on India. In his autobiography, Nehru cited one of China’s leading Confucian philosophers of the early 20th century, Hu Shih (who was also the Nationalist Chinese Ambassador to the United States, 1938–1942), as he had written on the “Indianization” of China through Buddhism.⁴

As such, both China and India believed that they had overlapping spheres of influence in Asia.⁵ Consequently, China and India began to view one another as rivals for the apex position in Asia around the time of India’s independence. This “rivalry for leadership in Asia” was clearly visible in New Delhi in March–April 1947 (even before India’s independence), when India organised the Asian Relations Conference.⁶ “The Chinese had no wish to be tied to an organisation in which India was predominant. Their tactics at the conference were to keep India’s status within bounds. No more did the Indians wish to surrender any power to the Chinese.”⁷

Tibet — The nexus of the positional and spatial dimensions

This positional rivalry was further complicated by the status of Tibet. When the Chinese leader Mao Zedong announced the creation of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) in October 1949, the Chinese (whether Communist or Nationalist) did not physically control Tibet. Although a complete analysis of the historical status of Tibet is beyond the scope of this chapter, it suffices to say that the Qing Dynasty directly ruled Tibet for approximately eight decades after its invasion of Lhasa in 1720. However, the Tibetans understood this relationship very differently. First, the Tibetans now had political ties with the Manchu rulers of the Qing Dynasty, and not with Han China per se. Second, Tibet–Qing relations were defined as priest–patron relations between the Dalai Lama and the Qing Emperor on an equal footing.⁸ In any case, Tibet was independent for all practical purposes after 1800 and even declared its formal independence (in 1913) after the collapse of the Qing Dynasty.

However, Mao was of the opinion that Tibet had to be “reintegrated” with China in order to demonstrate that China’s “century of humiliation” was over. In this Maoist view, Tibet had been (partially) severed from China due to British imperial maleficence (via British India) through the idea of Chinese suzerainty (as opposed to sovereignty) over Tibet.⁹ However, an autonomous Tibet (whether politically independent or under nominal Chinese suzerainty) was important for independent India too. Indian strategists such as K. M. Panikkar were of the view that a Tibet with minimal/symbolic Chinese presence was important for India to keep the Chinese military pressure away from Indian frontiers, thus allowing India to invest in power projection capabilities (in Asia and beyond) instead of getting tied down in the defence of its Himalayan frontiers.¹⁰ In other words, China could not become a major power in Asia without reversing its century of humiliation (which among other things called for Tibet’s “reintegration”). At the same time, New Delhi believed that it would be difficult to develop the capabilities befitting India’s self-perception as a great power in Asia were Tibet to be militarily dominated by a power hostile to India.

But the PRC’s invasion and annexation of Tibet in 1950–1951 — after the establishment of the PRC — transformed the Tibetan–Indian border into the Sino–Indian border. However, since the border between Tibet and India was only partially defined, and not accepted by China, the Tibet factor linked the positional and spatial (or territorial) dimensions of the Sino–Indian rivalry. When the British left India in 1947, the border between Tibet and India in the eastern sector (stretching from the east of Bhutan to Burma/Myanmar) was defined by the so-called McMahon Line negotiated between Tibet and British India in 1913–1914. However, the Chinese had refused to accept this agreement because Tibet was not an independent state capable of negotiating with foreign powers on issues such as border delineation in the Chinese worldview. In any case, there was no legally accepted boundary between British India and Tibet in Kashmir/Ladakh in the western sector at the time of India’s independence. Therefore, the Chinese invasion and annexation of Tibet in 1950–1951 meant that the entire Sino–Indian border was now officially unmarked.¹¹

The Dalai Lama’s escape into India in the aftermath of the 1959 Lhasa Revolt and the brutal Chinese military crackdown that followed brought to fore the positional and spatial dimensions of the Sino–Indian rivalry. However, the 1962 Sino–Indian War was unable to resolve the boundary issue. While India’s ill-prepared and ill-equipped forces quickly fell in the face of a determined Chinese assault, China declared a unilateral ceasefire and restored the territorial status quo ante.¹² However, the presence of the Dalai Lama and a Tibetan government-in-exile (although not recognised by the Government of India) along with thousands of Tibetan refugees in India meant that even the Tibet issue remained unresolved despite the war (and continues to remain so). This is true (from Beijing’s point of view) even as New Delhi officially maintains that Tibet is a part of China, and that the Tibetan exiles in India are religious-cultural exiles, not political refugees, and that they will not be allowed to conduct political activities in India.

While the Dalai Lama’s position has evolved in recent decades from independence for Tibet to an autonomous Tibet within China (with minimal Chinese military presence in the ethnically Tibetan regions of China, including the Tibet Autonomous Region), China rejects such demands for “independence by stealth”.¹³ In the meanwhile, the Tibetan issue has flared up in Chi...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Halftitle
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• About the Editor
• About the Contributors
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• Part 1 Bilateral Engagements
• Part 2 Themes/Geo-political Regions