India and the Islamic world

By C. Raja Mohan

THE PRIME Minister, Mr. Atal Behari Vajpayee's on-going visit to the Islamic Republic of Iran brings into bold relief one of the more exciting aspects of India's current foreign policy - a conscious effort to engage the key nations of the Islamic world. Mr. Vajpayee's visit to Iran follows the fruitful trip to Saudi Arabia by the External Affairs Minister, Mr. Jaswant Singh, in January - the first ever by an Indian Foreign Minister since Independence. The Union Home Minister, Mr. L. K. Advani, will set out one of these days to Turkey, which could also turn out to be a politically productive journey.

The wooing of these three significant West Asian nations at the highest political level in such a short time span highlights the intensity of the current Indian political thrust towards the Islamic world. It also reveals the breadth of the diplomatic blitzkrieg, for no three countries could be as divergent ideologically as Saudi Arabia, Iran and Turkey.

Saudi Arabia is a monarchy and deeply conservative in its religious orientation. Iran has a unique political system that is at once a ``republic'' and strongly Islamic; and it is a state created by a popular revolution against a monarchy. And Turkey is a republic that is determined to preserve its secular character at any cost against all attempts to Islamicise the state.

The Indian pas de deux with Iran, Turkey and Saudi Arabia is only one small slice of the Indian rediscovery of the Islamic world stretching from the Maghreb on the western fringes to Indonesia and Malaysia on the eastern edge. President Boutefleka of Algeria was the chief guest at this year's Republic Day celebrations; Mr. Vajpayee has recently been in Jakarta and he will travel to Kuala Lumpur in the coming weeks. There have been an unending stream of other visitors from Arab and Islamic nations to India in the last few months, and Mr. Jaswant Singh has travelled to many Arab nations including such important ones as Egypt and Syria recently. Never before has Indian diplomacy seen such an expansive engagement with the Islamic world.

That this deliberate cultivation of the Islamic world should come from a Government in New Delhi widely viewed in the world as Hindu nationalist is perhaps one of the more interesting ironies of India's external relations. There is no question that the foundation for India's activism in West Asia was laid during Mr. Narasimha Rao's tenure as Prime Minister. Driven by the imperatives of the post-Cold War world and the requirements of internal economic reform, the Rao Government began the reorientation of Indian diplomacy towards the Islamic nations. The Vajpayee Government, in the last three years, has given it a robustness that was badly needed.

The current outreach to the Islamic world is marked by four important conceptual shifts in Indian foreign policy. The first is the transition from an ideological approach to a pragmatic one. A major determinant of India's engagement of the Islamic world in the past has been the idea of third world solidarity. The underlying principles of the non-aligned fraternity - anti- colonialism and anti-imperialism - made India more comfortable in dealing with those who were willing to mouth anti-Western slogans, and endorse thundering resolutions against the North, read the United States and the West. This verbal self-hypnosis of non-alignment also meant, somewhat unfortunately, that New Delhi had no time for some very important countries in West Asia. Nothing else can explain the Indian neglect of Saudi Arabia and Turkey. In its ideological approach to the region, India also preferred to deal with ``secular republics'' rather than ``conservative shiekdoms''. This differentiation has largely become irrelevant, as many of the secular republics have degenerated into authoritarian regimes while some conservative monarchies have kept up with the times by attempting cautious political liberalisation.

The ``third worldism'' of India also meant a gross under- estimation of the contradictions within the Islamic world and the enunciation of such simplistic formulations that all the problems in the region were because of intervention by the great powers. India tended to proclaim one neat answer to all the security dilemmas of the Islamic world - great powers should just get out of the region. From that endearing political naivete, India has now come to appreciate the importance of building a credible coalition of great powers and regional actors to ensure the security of the weak local regimes against the strong and venal.

Shaking off the past ideological prejudice addresses only one half of India's problem in dealing with the Islamic world. The other half relates to India's past defensiveness in relation to those espousing ideological causes in West Asia. India is beginning to appreciate that even those who wear the most tinted religious glasses in the Islamic world have a powerful streak of pragmatism that places national interest above ideology.

A second important transition in Indian policy is on the economic front - from the mercantilism of the past to the quest for deeper economic integration. In the past, India's commercial policy towards the region had two elements - figuring out the best possible deals on oil purchases and counting the value of remittances from Indian expatriate labour in the Gulf. India is now talking about ``energy security'' that looks beyond buyer- seller relationships to a long-term integration of the hydrocarbon sectors and pipelines that calls for more enduring energy linkages. More fundamentally, India has begun to appreciate that peace and prosperity in the Gulf and the Subcontinent are inextricably intertwined.

Third, while trade in energy and commerce in general will provide the sinews of an enduring partnership between India and the Islamic world, New Delhi is discovering a new common ground with the key nations of the Islamic world on the political front - support for political moderation and opposition to religious extremism. From secular Algeria and Turkey to deeply religious Saudi Arabia and Iran, today one single threat looms large in the Islamic world. It is the rise of new religious fanaticism and extremism that threatens peace and regime stability in large parts of the Islamic world. This has provided a huge opportunity for India to make common cause with a wide range of Islamic countries to support political moderation and oppose international terrorism. The rise of the Taliban in the recent years has sharpened the prospects for a new political convergence between India and as diverse a group of Islamic nations as Turkey, Iran and Saudi Arabia.

Finally, the biggest transition has been India's handling of the Pakistan factor in dealing with the Islamic world. In the past, India was peeved and put off by those countries that supported Pakistan in its conflicts with India, in particular over Kashmir. India has shunned for decades those nations which it saw as pro- Pakistan. For example, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Iran were all seen earlier as being too close to Pakistan. But today, India is reaching out to these nations without a reference to the Pakistan factor.

India's recent engagement of the Islamic world has often been misrepresented as a strategy to cut Pakistan off from its traditional allies and friends. That is farthest from the truth. What India is trying to do is transcend the Pakistan question and find ways to build mutually beneficial political and economic relationships with key Islamic states.

India no longer objects to the deep ties between Pakistan on the one hand and states such as Saudi Arabia and Turkey on the other. But India believes there is enough political and economic business that it can do with these countries without demanding an end to their ties with Pakistan. This new self-assurance and pragmatism are likely to bring significant strategic dividends to India in its engagement of the Islamic world.

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