By M.R. Josse
KATHMANDU: Popular blogger Maila Baje, whose nebulous identity continues to fuel lively debate in political salons and excite the media chatterati, has penned an intriguing piece mockingly entitled “Maybe the Almighty has spoken to Oli.”
Therein, he refers to Prime Minister K.P. Sharma Oli’s reported directive that the Madi municipality in Chitwan be renamed Ayodhyapuri; that preparations be initiated for constructing a Ram temple; and, furthermore, that it host a grand fair on Ram Navami, the deity’s birthday.
GRAND STRATEGY?
Apart from raising the enigma of “what prompted our officially atheist premier to espouse such a profoundly religious cause”, Maila Baje employs his cutting, trade-mark sarcasm in, first, speculating whether it’s all part of a Grand Strategy on Oli’s part, “to draw in the Chinese closer to save his government”- prior to demolishing it!
But, before venturing any further, it is necessary, I believe, to provide some relevant background or context, including that relating to its timing. Most meaningfully, as the blogger reminds, Oli’s latest pyrotechnics comes on the heels of his 13 July accusation of “Indian cultural encroachment vis-à-vis the birthplace of Lord Ram”, not to mention that the allegation issued forth not long after “his effort to remedy India’s cartographic aggression through a constitutional amendment enshrining Nepal’s new map.”
And, significantly, such policy gyrations come smack in the middle of a prolonged, opaque power tussle between Oli and his party co-chair Prachanda, with clued-up political pundits offering this explanation: if today Oli remains the Nepali politico the Indian political class loves most to hate, Prachanda has, over the years, morphed, magically, into something of a Nepali political poster boy.
What Maila Baje, for whatever reason, has failed to refer to is this: that Oli’s latest ‘curveball’ in the Nepal-India relations park has come around the time of India’s Minister for External Affairs S. Jaishankar’s egregious public claim, made at a webinar in the Indian capital, 8 August, that the Buddha was Indian.
Though Jaishankar’s ludicrous claim was immediately shot down – in official India, as expectedly in Nepal – it raises the question whether it was an integral component of an Indian Grand Strategy on foreign policy which ordinary mortals may not quite grasp, at first blush.
Was it just a petulant tit-for-tat exercise – to counter Oli’s 13 July claim the genuine birthplace of Lord Ram is not in Ayodhya, in the state of U.P. in India, but in Chitwan, in Nepal – or something more insidious?
That Jaishankar is not stupid – indeed, he has been projected in India as a polymath whose depth and scope of knowledge of world history and protean diplomatic skills are nothing short of Kissinger’s – renders such an enquiry perfectly kosher.
Quite aside from the transparently anti-Nepal element of Jaishankar’s absurd allegation about the Buddha’s nativity, could that rhetorical quiver not simultaneously be aimed at a much wider target – to wit, the world where Buddhism, not merely exists, as in India, but in countries such as Sri Lanka, Myanmar, Thailand, Cambodia, Laos, Vietnam, South Korea, Japan, Mongolia – and China, particularly in her Tibetan Autonomous Region – where the religion vibrantly thrives?
‘JAISHANKAR DOCTRINE’?
Is an incipient ‘Jaishankar Doctrine’ in the works – one component of which would have the above countries elevate India into a special category: perhaps akin to Catholic countries’ relations vis-à-vis the Vatican?
But, seriously speaking, what is much more transparent and tangible – and, in any case, much more salient as far as we are concerned – has to do with Jaishankar’s recent assertions on another front. Specifically, this refers to his 20 July statement, at a virtual conference in New Delhi, affirming that India would not be joining an alliance in the future.
As not a few Indian commentators have parsed it, henceforth, India will basically ‘limit and counter-balance China through informal alliances’; India has surpassed the era of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM), irrelevant in an era of multi-polarity; and, crucially, that India will not be joining the U.S camp, even as its standoff with China continues!
While the validity of such postulates at the execution level, of course, remains to be tested, it does seem a wee bit out of whack coming from the Indian official who is, according to consensus Indian expert opinion, most identified with advocating India going full-steam-ahead for an unapologetic, no-holds-barred, strategic tie-up with the United States, with all its bells and whistles.
Though time will, as usual, clarify matters, in the interregnum, one may legitimately wonder if Jaishanker’s apparent U-turn has anything to do with the growing perception – in America and worldwide – that President Donald Trump’s re-election bid is heading south, fast and furious.
While on the fascinating theme/possibility of India jumping the U.S. ship, I believe it may be germane to recall some acute observations made recently by Amit Gupta, an Indian American and Associate Professor at the USAF Air War College, in a fairly lengthy write-up not long ago in the South Asian Monitor. Gupta’s piece, headlined ‘India cannot win a war with China’, was published in this journal’s 23-29 July 2020 issue.
The following excerpts need no further elaboration: “Indian politicians, diplomats and academics will typically reject the idea of an alliance (with the United States) because in their eyes this would reduce or remove India’s ability to act with freedom on the international stage. This is a tired argument that comes from the time in the 1950s and 1960s, when India was a poor nation that would have been constrained by an alliance with a superpower.
“Today, India is too big to be asked to be an obedient supplicant. Further, and Indian officials have trouble answering this question, have American allies lost their foreign policy autonomy through their alliance with Washington? One cannot make the argument that Japan, Germany and Britain have lost their autonomy and Turkey has been able to chart an independent foreign policy that made Ankara decide by buying the Russian S-400 air defense systems even though it was seen as threatening the technological safeguards Turkey had put in place to buy the American F-35 Lightening fighter jet.
“A more formal alliance would help alleviate the Indian security dilemma, but can the over-cautious, incremental, and unimaginative Indian foreign policy move in this direction? Not doing so may be a long-term threat to India’s security that will be costly to overcome.”
If such a ‘Jaishankar Doctrine’ is for real, its foundation would plainly rest on the assumption that Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s skills as a nimble geostrategic manipulator – juggling an odd variety of geopolitical and diplomatic balls in the air – cannot be bested.
Or, more simply, this is grounded on the hypothesis that India could continue to successfully advance substantial foreign policy and geopolitical gains, without any firm strategic commitments to anyone or several world powers. Like it or not, international power politics/international relations are zero-sum games. Such a Grand Strategy would, therefore, flop due to the time-tested truism about one not being able to fool all the people, all the time!
Besides, the benefits of such a Grand Strategy could be illusionary at best, leaving her without dependable allies when push comes to shove.
For, as Yale University’s acclaimed historian of the Cold War, John Lewis Gaddis, explains in his masterly work, On Grand Strategy (Penguin, Random House, UK, 2018), “essentially, the strategy is all about aligning aspirations with capabilities.”
In other words, India’s burning obsession (aspiration) to be acknowledged as a Great Power – by whatever designs or devices – should be consistent (aligned) with her proven capabilities, as a world power. If anything, India’s less-than-shining mid-June military performance against China – despite considerable rhetorical support from the United States and others – clearly reminds all that a chasm-like gap exists between the two defining poles: aspirations and capabilities.
Thus, in my view, for India to continue on such a trajectory would be pursuing a Grand Illusion. But, don’t take my word for it. Listen, now to what some reputed Indian foreign/security wallahs and policy sages have pronounced on Modi’s record recently.
As per Shahidul Islam Chaudhary Bangla in the South Asian Monitor, many Indian experts believe New Delhi’s current policies are not helpful in boosting India’s national interests. In a recent virtual discussion organized by the Indo-American Friendship Association, Shashi Tharoor, Congress MP and former state minister charged that the Modi government had jeopardized national interests by creating hostility in the neighbourhood with the combination of arrogance and ineptitude.
Tharoor claimed that the government was using foreign policy tools for domestic divisive purposes, seriously undermining India’s stature internationally, projecting her as an intolerant narrow-minded nation.
Pratap Bhanu Mehta, former VC of Ashoka University and leading academic, criticized India’s dealings with Bangladesh and Nepal and, like Tharoor, alleged that the Indian government has used foreign policy apparatus to advance only domestic political objectives through propaganda and lies.
Former Indian foreign secretary and national security advisor Shivshankar Menon also echoed the concerns of Tharoor and Mehta, while underlining the need for the Indian authorities to work “for the reintegration of the sub-continent” with making India “the economic hub” and “the provider of security in the region” to become a “source of stability” for India’s neighbours.
GRAND ILLUSION
Returning to where we began – Maila Baje’s poking fun at Oli’s unnatural exploitation of the religion/Hindu card – I should refer to the prime minister’s courtesy congratulatory telephonic call to his Indian counterpart on the occasion of India’s 74th Independence Day, 15 August. Though, understandably, made into a big deal by the official media, its basic significance lies in the Foreign Ministry’s disclosure that the two leaders agreed to discuss bilateral issues “in the days ahead.”
Similarly, too, while spin doctors made much of the fact that the two caudillos agreed to work together in coping with the challenge posed by the Covid-19 pandemic, the absence of any reference to the open Nepal-India border, in that context, was telling.
Interestingly, Maila Baje teasingly wonders whether the prime minister could be “thinking of a tradeoff of sorts between Ram’s precise birthplace and Nepali territories India currently controls” adding – tongue-in-cheek – that “If religion could help him bring back lost territories, wouldn’t he risk deploying it politically?”
No less provocative are these observations: “Admittedly, there is that imperative of tying India down tightly enough to prevent it from flashing the Tibet card as an ageing Dalai Lama portends a bitter succession struggle. Oli knows he needs to camouflage any such maneuver with a national narrative.
“Could Oli be playing a shrewd game here? An India exhausted by Nepali tactics on multiple fronts might be amenable to returning those lands and redefining the bilateral relationship on a more equal footing?
“If, on the other hand, Oli is resigned to a full display of Indian displeasure at its erosion of influence in South Asia and Nepal’s particular vulnerabilities therein, why not make the most of the situation by drawing the Chinese closer to save his government?”
While it is not fully clear what the bogger is actually getting at, there can be little doubt that any attempt by India – or anyone else – to play the ‘Tibet card’, including in the context of succession to the ailing incumbent presently residing in Dharamshala, Himachal Pradesh, in Inda will be tantamount to entertaining a Grand Illusion, rather than represent a Grand Strategy for the advancement her/their national/geopolitical goals.
For, to go back to Professor Gaddis’s sage reminder, all strategy – and more so, Grand Strategy is, at its very root, ultimately about ‘aligning aspirations with capabilities.’ That’s the rub.
Admittedly, while every individual or nation is entitled to dream big, mere wishes will not be enough for the fulfilment of unrealistic ambitions. Or, phrased otherwise: ‘if wishes were horses, beggars would ride.’
Grand Strategies are one thing; Grand Illusions, quite another!
The writer can be reached at: manajosse@gmail.com
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