AS per Nikkei Asia dated 4 November 2023, India’s quick condemnation of the Hamas attack on Israel and its decision to abstain the General Assembly resolution calling for a humanitarian truce, against its long standing traditional stance of supporting the Palestinian’s rights, have raised eyebrows in the world. According to the DW, ‘Made for Minds’ website, the Hamas attacks on Israel prompted sharp condemnation from India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi, leading some to speculate that India might be revising its official policy. “Deeply shocked by the news item of terrorist attacks in Israel. Our thoughts and prayers are with the innocent victims and their families. We stand in solidarity with Israel at this difficult hour,” Modi wrote on X, formerly Twitter, on the day of the Hamas terrorist assault.
DW further added, five days after the Hamas attacks, India’s Ministry of External Affairs reiterated its stance in favour of direct talks and “establishing a sovereign, independent and viable state of Palestine living within secure and recognized borders, side by side at peace with Israel”, which indicated that New Delhi is trying to balance the act between Israel and the Palestinians.
After its independence in 1947, India voted against the United Nations partition plan for the British Mandate of Palestine. Later, it went on to vote against admitting Israel to the United Nations General Assembly after the country was established, thinking that accepting Israel would upset the Arab world. However, after recognizing Israel in September 1950, India has been supporting the two-state solution of the Palestinian issue.
DW comments that India established its embassy in Tel Aviv only in January 1992, against the backdrop of the demise of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War, with the US emerging as the undisputed superpower. Since then, however, Israel and India have formed strong diplomatic ties. This is especially true for the period after Modi took power in 2014. As per the NDTV World, initially PM Modi also spoke to the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and said, “India stands firmly with Israel, and strongly and unequivocally condemns terrorism”. In its subsequent response, India has been seen as a recalibration of stances in the light of Israel’s devastating response, and when Modi’s initial response was criticized by the opposition.
According to the Wire, the new Indian stance on Israel-Palestine is likely to raise questions in West Asia/the Middle East, especially among its people if not in all of its governments, as well as within India itself and its entire neighbourhood. In light of the unveiling of a new line on the Palestine-Israel question, India’s carefully nurtured reputation may also suffer in much of Africa and amongst sizeable sections of civil society in Western Europe and North America, though not necessarily with their governments.
In view of the above mentioned information/discussion, the Hindutva-led BJP governed India’s likely futuristic foreign policy on all regional and the world issues will be as deceptive and untrustworthy as it has displayed in case of the Israel-Hamas War. And, India’s foreign policy will be based mainly on its ambitions to achieve and display major power status. India’s foreign policy is likely to be implicitly against the Muslims in the world and explicitly against the Muslims of South Asia, especially the Muslims of Jammu and Kashmir and the Muslims living in India.
Like, India first termed Hamas’s attack on Israel as terrorism to preserve its deep friendship with this state, and to please its strategic/defence partners, the US and major EU major powers, ignoring Israel’s terrorism against the Palestinians/strangulation of Hamas in Gaza for the last many years, and then, India started stating that it supports the two-state solution, just to maintain its relations with the Arab states since it wants their investments and it has to get oil from these states. Of course, India will continue its this fence sitting policy in this conflict.
To the Kashmiris’ legitimate freedom struggle, India will continue to call that terrorism to justify its state terrorism against them to crush their freedom struggle, to blame Pakistan for supporting this struggle to tarnish its international image to discourage foreign economic investment in Pakistan, to exploit the sentiments of the US and EU major powers against terrorism to turn their opinion against Pakistan and to mask its sponsored and supported terrorism in Pakistan, especially in Balochistan and Khyber Pakhtunkha (KP) provinces.
India’s foreign policy will be against China to show to the US/western world that it was serious in containing its rise, being part of US’s major defence partner and its Indo-Pacific strategy mainly to get West’s economic investments, weapons/technology to become a major power and their diplomatic support to become a permanent member of the UNSC, to become an equal power to China.
India’s policies will be against Pakistan to keep it economically weak by discouraging foreign investments, to make the US/West unfriendly with Pakistan to get its 5 August 2019 actions in Jammu and Kashmir approved by them to grab the state on the permanent basis. Apart from turning the US/Western countries’ opinion against Pakistan, India will also try to further advance its relations with the Arab/Gulf countries, Iran and Afghanistan, Indonesia and Malaysia to internationally isolate Pakistan, to attract the Gulf countries’ economic investment and to discourage the CPEC-related investment of the Gulf countries in Pakistan by continuing to sponsor/support terrorism in Pakistan’s Balochistan and KP provinces. But India will also turn against Arab/Gulf and other Muslim countries, when the geopolitical situation warrants, as India has done in its initial response to Hamas-Israel War.
In view of the above discussion, while Pakistan/Muslim countries and China have to be conscious about India’s deceptive/double foreign policy, the US and EU’s major powers should also understand that India’s only objective of friendship with them is to get their support to become a major power to resolve its border dispute with China on a parity basis and not to fight with China or turn against Russia for them. And, India will only cooperate with them to contain China implicitly in peace time, like discouraging the construction of the CPEC by sponsoring/supporting terrorism in Pakistan and discouraging other South Asian countries from joining that.
—The writer is also a former Research Fellow of IPRI and Senior Research Fellow of SVI Islamabad.
Email: hanifsardar@hotmail.com
views expressed are writer’s own.
