India’s increased wealth and power mean that multiple partners are keen to work with it. This has helped Narendra Modi look statesmanlike
Save time by listening to our audio articles as you multitaskSupporters of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his Bharatiya Janata Party often attribute India’s growing stature to a more assertive foreign policy that dispenses with the deference and dithering which, they say, characterised the approach of previous governments. Mr Modi, a charismatic Hindu nationalist who claims to want to be the “world’s guru”, is said to epitomise that change.
Closening ties with America, which since the 1990s has viewed India as an important potential counterweight to China, are often said to have put paid to non-alignment. Indian officials in 2013 formally adopted a new guiding principle, strategic autonomy . In 2016 Mr Modi became the first Indian prime minister since 1979 not to attend the annual summit of the 120-country Non-Aligned Movement, which Nehru helped found. Under Mr Modi the closening with America has accelerated.
In reality, India’s commitment to non-alignment was never as pure as the traditionalists suppose. As needs arose, it has always got into bed with one power or another. During its border war with China in 1962 it turned to America for arms. After America grew close to Pakistan it veered so far towards the Soviet Union, whose ideology the Nehruvian elite adored, that non-alignment became a euphemism for anti-Americanism.
But if its policy has changed less than advertised, how it is received abroad has changed enormously. India’s increased wealth and power mean that multiple partners are keen to work with it. This has helped Mr Modi look statesmanlike, guru-like even. And India’s many suitors are willing to excuse whatever in its behaviour they dislike. That was long true of Russia’s eagerness to sell India arms despite its friendliness with America.
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