Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi with Afghanistan President Ashraf Ghani
As India surges ahead as a predominant voice in the global realm, its domestic foreign policy framework has imbibed substantial changes. It has been further argued that, Modi’s policy parameters echoes utmost pragmatism, a significant deflection from Nehruvian foreign policy patterns.
Over decades, India has vouched for itself a distinctive ‘status’ and ‘social recognition’, premised on foreign policy stances and strategic endeavours posited on values of non-violence and non-authoritarianism. Nehru’s insistence on India playing a preeminent role in the Non-aligned Movement, resulted in India’s distinctive claims at the Bandung Conference in 1955. In a similar vein, India refrained from ratifying to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty — hurling stronger opposition to the agreement that let open doors of nuclear proliferation for the five major powers.
With Modi’s administration, however, many believe the ideational support-system has been significantly amended. A decline from extensive reliance on ideological value-based principles to realist/pragmatic foreign policy endeavors. India’s abstention from the recent NAM summit, for instance, marked a prominent departure. To this end, Modi’s perceived change of strategy pertaining to strategic neighbor, Afghanistan — transfer of Mi-25 attack helicopters — reflects Modi’s pragmatic foreign policy approach.
On keener observation, however, the exchange of helicopters, first-of its kind lethal transaction between India and Afghan, is an evidence of Modi’s reliance on those ideational principles that has long served India’s policy making elites and the leadership, at large. To an extent, this deal denotes of India’s insistence on adding a flick of pragmatism to the ideational elements of India’s foreign policy behaviour.
A lethal ‘gift’ for peace-building in the Afghan Land
India’s renewed Afghan policy revealed through New Delhi’s ‘gift’ of lethal weapons (Mi-25s) to Kabul — first in the history of Indo-Afghan ties — finds resonance with the ideational framework of Indian foreign policy. Amidst floating interpretations claim, this transaction as a bold and pragmatic diversion from India’s earlier refrain from militarily partaking in the Afghanistan fray. Nonetheless, this foreign policy stance is rooted in India’s preoccupation with an ‘identity’ and ‘role’ distinctive in the global arena — to facilitate self-representation of nation-states and ensure sustenance of non-aggressive and non-violent regimes.
Since independence, for most part of the century, Indo-Afghan relation was guided by India’s non-aligned stance and Afghanistan’s official policy of neutrality. In the 1970s, with simmering Afghan-Pak border differences, New Delhi studiously stayed away from the dispute.
India under Prime Minister Moraji Desai grew skeptical of the Saur revolution owing to Soviet’s overwhelming presence. Following which, India abstained on a January 1980 resolution condemning Soviet Invasion. With Soviet’s withdrawal in 1988 and the victory of the Taliban in 1996, Afghan politics entered a ‘fluid’ and ‘uncertain’ period. India as a supporter of the Northern Alliance, made up mainly of ethnic Tajiks and Uzbeks support, lost significant clout in Kabul. However, New Delhi provided crucial support — in the form of weapons, limited to non-lethal, training of police and military wings, defense advisers. Alongside, India has invested over $2 billion in developmental efforts since 2001.
Sooner 9/11 stationed U.S’ eyes on Afghan affairs like never before. U.S’ intervention installed President Karzai at the helm of affairs — and surrounded by the Northern Alliance cadre — Afghan government attached enormous value to New Delhi. India re-opened its embassy and two consulates in Kandahar and Jalalabad, and instated two more in Mazar-I-Sharif and Herat. To reinvigorate ties with India, Afghanistan -- for the first time -- sent the Afghan Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Abdullah Abdullah to India in mid-march 2015.
Progressing on lines of developmental support and re-installment of democratic regimes, India has consciously opted to refrain from military alliances, let alone with USA, to fight the Taliban in Afghanistan. In a first of its kind, Strategic Partnership Agreement signed by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and President Hamid Karzai, India vouched to offer military cooperation, going beyond training of military and police personnel. However, India has stalled transfer of Mi- 25, that figured in Afghan’s wish list since 2012. In the joint statement, announcing transfer of Mi-25 helicopters, Modi reiterated it is to support Afghanistan preserve its unity and territorial integrity and ensuring security. Prime Minister Modi strongly supported Afghan government-led reconciliation process which respects the redlines drawn by the people of Afghanistan and the international community.
Only in 2015, Modi government agreed upon the transfer of lethal weapons, strategically coded as a ‘gift’ in the popular media forums. For resurgence of peace and conflict resolution, India chose to transfer the weapons to support Afghans fight against Taliban, which is in sync with its ‘exceptional’ behaviour in the foreign policy domain. On a similar line, the joint statement between India and Afghanistan maintained, India’s abiding support for a ‘unified, sovereign, democratic, peaceful, stable and prosperous Afghanistan’. Reiterating the essence of values in Indian foreign policy, Minister of State for External Affairs stated, ‘India has made an effort to play strong role in reconstruction of Afghanistan’s new abode of democracy’, at the Brussels Conference on Afghanistan.
Alongside, as Pakistan continues to forge its strategic presence in Afghanistan — even garnering support from Russia and Iran — India’s military ‘gifts’ signals of its persistent attempts to upkeep its regional ‘peacekeeping’ motives, carried forward since independence. In doing so, India has been a diligent aspirant of ‘Great Power’ status premised on an exceptionalism, that no other state of India’s nature possess.
This exceptionalism provides a basis on which Indian leaders claim greatness in India’s foreign policy discourse and behaviour -- premised on moral and spiritual superiority -- in contradiction to the Great Powers of the twentieth century. Contrary to popular discourse on military weapon sharing, India has persistently retained its moral and spiritual stance vis-a-vis Afghanistan’s fight against radical forces. Hence, Mi-25s transfer reflect both ‘continuity and change’, former through ideological semblance with earlier policy makers, and the latter with attempting to implement the long impending weapon transfer.
However, ensuring emotional sanctions from the domestic public realm as well at the international domain with extensive US support, Modi government invoked Indo-Afghan cultural symphony, alike at the Heart of Asia conference on December 5th 2016. Now with the transfer of helicopters, India has gained profound international recognition and legitimacy — not merely as a tactical move, rather a friendly gesture that rests preeminently on its exceptionalism as both a leader of the developing world and committed to goals of non-violence and non-authoritarianism in its foreign policy initiatives.