We are India, and we have chosen to be transactional with the world

On 12 June, the United Nations General Assembly adopted a resolution demanding an immediate, unconditional and lasting ceasefire in Gaza. It spoke of ending Israel’s use of starvation as a weapon of war.

A total of 149 nations voted in favour.

America and Israel opposed.

India abstained from voting, repeating a pattern adopted during the Modi era.

While this has upset a handful of Indians because it is a break from India's longstanding position on Palestine and Palestinians, it is in keeping with the thrust of the BJP's Hindutva ideology.

Meanwhile, the government’s supporters are upset by the even-handedness with which the world has approached our recent conflict with Pakistan. But — and this is tough — what we must acknowledge is that we cannot get nations to take our side.

This column is not a critique of India's foreign policy under Narendra Modi — it is an attempt to explain it.

From the very beginning — that is, during its Jana Sangh avatar in the 1950s — the BJP’s manifestos have had little to offer in terms of foreign policy doctrine. However, foreign minister S. Jaishankar has laid out his thesis in his writings, which will surely help us appreciate what India is attempting to do in the world.

Jaishankar — whose first book of essays was published just before Trump lost in 2020 — assumes that in our time, the United States and Europe will look inward, while China will continue to rise. This would open up space for countries like India to be opportunistic in our engagements with the world and — here’s the nub — for this, we do not need consistency.

What India wanted was a ‘multi-polar Asia’ — meaning one in which India could claim parity with China. Resorting to the juggling metaphor, Jaishankar writes that many balls would need to be kept in the air, which India would handle with dexterity. This was opportunism — but that was all right, because opportunism, as he tells us, is in India’s culture.

Perhaps this amazing insight should help us understand our abstention from voting against genocide and the starvation of children by Israel.

Jaishankar says the Mahabharata teaches us that deceit and immorality help us to ‘not play by the rules’. Drona demanding Eklavya’s thumb, Indra appropriating Karna’s armour, Arjuna using Shikhandi as a human shield — these were but ‘practices and traditions’.

Inconsistency in policy was not only fine but essential in this world view, because ‘obsessing about consistency’ made little sense in changing circumstances.

What might such a doctrine to be called?

In a speech he made where he first laid out this doctrine of opportunism and inconsistency, Jaishankar said it is hard to think of a name. He adopts and discards the phrases as they come — ‘multi-alignment’ (‘sounds too opportunistic’)? ‘India-first’ (‘sounds self-centred’)? He settles on ‘advancing prosperity and influence’, though he says it is accurate but not catchy enough.

He believes, however, that if the policy is pursued long enough, some name will eventually emerge, because part of the challenge is that we are still in the early phase of a major transition.

Opponents will point out that this was no real foreign policy at all. This was a cover drawn on top of what was already going on. What interested Modi — inconsistent and made for pageant and ceremony — was being passed off as something meaningful.

Opponents will also ask why Jaishankar's doctrine is detached from the rhetoric offered by the BJP.

Truth be told, here there is no role for India, the civilisational entity that nationalists from Nehru to the BJP have made so much of. There is no vasudhaiva kutumbakam-style romanticism or Vishwaguru-type bombast here.

Jaishankar’s nameless doctrine is stripped of all forms of morality and ethics.

This is not India engaging with the world on the strength of Indian pluralism. Fact is, the world is a transactional place, and India must be dexterous enough to be able to take advantage of it.

One important element of this line of thinking would have been to take advantage of the war in Ukraine and buy cheap Russian oil. Europe, dependent on Russian gas for energy, could hardly lean on other nations for buying from Russia. India did so, along with China.

How much cheaper was the deal? The average landed price of imported crude for April–December 2022 was USD 99.2 per barrel. If oil from Russia was excluded, the average price was USD 101.2, which works out to a saving of USD 2 per barrel.

This money did not come back to the Indian citizen, however; instead, it enriched private refiners.

Jaishankar does not appear to have anticipated that this theory of his works both ways. In the world he imagined there is this perspective he overlooked — that others would also seek to take advantage of India and treat it in an opportunistic fashion.

This might help explain why our global outreach has received such a tepid response.

As our UN votes reveal, we have chosen to be transactional with the world.

The major powers understand and accept this — and they will, in turn, be transactional with us.

Whether this is good, bad or indifferent foreign policy is for the reader to decide.

Views are personal. More of Aakar Patel's writing can be read here.