Vicious domestic politics, shock to foreign policy

The unprecedented diplomatic backlash against India a few days ago over derogatory remarks against Islam by now-suspended spokespersons of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) exposes the BJP-led government’s meticulously calibrated and limited limits of politically useful binary. Efforts to steer its relations with West Asian states in New Delhi reject as. This reaction has clearly put the government on the backfoot, which is now struggling to prevent diplomatic repercussions.

While no Muslim-majority state in West Asia can claim to have taught India the virtues of religious tolerance or pluralism – for India, this is not just a lesson in religious tolerance and pluralism. But one is that the home should be taught that vicious domestic politics has foreign policy implications. Furthermore, when bilateral relations carefully maintained over decades by professional diplomats begin to be undermined by sectarian politics and electoral calculations, hate speech can no longer be dismissed as “our internal matter”; It becomes a matter of national interest.

big binary

There is, in fact, a large binary that has been at the center of the conduct of India’s foreign policy in recent times. So far, India has been able to shrug off external criticism about the shrinking democratic space and growing religious intolerance in the country, as well as being a champion of those global platforms rooted in democratic values ​​- the Quad (India, USA, Japan) and Australia) is an example; The Summit of Democracies is another. New Delhi has consistently rejected criticisms of the US and the West about India’s internal issues, using a politically smart mix of ripostes rooted in its post-colonial identity, and Western hypocrisy and their imperialism. The urge has the right to stand up. However, India’s ability to manage its international benchmarks identity, while at the same time defying criticism against its domestic failures, will diminish, and a carefully calibrated binary will find fewer takers, thanks to the current crisis.

After all, India has been called ‘colonial’, ‘hypocritical’ and ‘imperial’ not by the West/America, but by smaller regional states that do not come with any of these labels. In other words, New Delhi has the blueprints designed to push back the US/West, but none of those templates can help quell criticism from small but influential regional powers in West Asia.

When Insurgency Boils

The bigger question is whether domestic extremism can be fueled but controlled without external consequences. Historically, India has had its struggles and experiences with extremism, and sometimes it has fueled it. Tackling Pakistan-sponsored terrorism, which has been one of the major engagements of the Indian state, and the deadly repercussions of initially backing the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, have taught India an important lesson: tingling with extremism is counterproductive.

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Despite this valuable lesson, India today has a growing number of ‘fringe’ but extremist groups determined to make life difficult for Indian Muslims, and which are hardly taken up by the BJP-led government. . The international community has been more or less tolerant of such domestic extremist elements in India as they are, for all practical purposes, domestically concentrated and contained.

This is also, in some ways, an important distinction between extremist organizations in Pakistan and those in India: while Pakistan’s domestic extremism spread as terrorist violence with active state sponsorship to other countries, in India, domestic extremism and intolerance Neither manifested as terrorism nor spread across national borders.

Furthermore, most manifestations of extremism in India have never received any state patronage (despite occasional tolerance by the ruling party), and various domestic checks and balances have been able to blunt its acrimony. But when extremism or communalism is seen as tolerated by the ruling party, and it boils down to places outside borders, even without any physical manifestations, it is bound to have foreign policy consequences.

Take the example of global reactions to India’s policies in Kashmir, especially in 2019, or how some right-wing Hindutva organizations are going after Indian Muslims. While there was some criticism of India’s Kashmir policy, especially from Islamic countries, it even ignored these issues for most practical purposes. In any case, India’s relations with Islamic countries have improved since the Narendra Modi government came to power in 2014.

It means quite straightforward. Outsiders more or less ignore the happenings in the domestic space in India provided that what happens there is kept below the boiling point and contained. While external reactions to how Indian Muslims are treated by Hindutva extremist organizations in India may be muted, derogatory comments about Islam in general are unlikely to be tolerated. So, the question before us is two-fold: one, is it possible to keep the temperature below the boiling point on anti-Muslim stances in India, and second, once the country has a politically convenient anti-Muslim narrative, Would it be possible to ensure that there is no spillover, either physically or figuratively?

West Asia is not West

A notable gap between how India has reacted to criticism from the US/West on the treatment of Muslims in India or other issues related to democracy and human rights, and how it has chosen to react to the criticism and call it out The difference is. Diplomats by Muslim-majority states in West Asia. In any case, the Indian charge of hypocrisy against the US/West is more applicable to Muslim-majority states in West Asia. And yet, India’s response has been very different. Why so?

For one, the physical consequences of defying Western/U.S. outrage have little to do with aggressively or defensively pushing back criticism of Islamic countries. India needs remittance, energy and more importantly this sector for the well being of its millions of migrant labourers. Of course, India needs the US/West for similar reasons and other reasons. However, given that the US and the West are more advanced democracies, they are highly unlikely to impose any arbitrary material cost on India or Indian citizens living in those countries.

If the Prophet is maligned then this cannot happen to West Asian countries. In other words, if India backtracks against the West/US using the same language, it could lead them to impose material costs on New Delhi. 2 India is needed.

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India’s foreign policy under Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s second term has been at a high level with many achievements. In fact, just a month ago, the world was in line to grab New Delhi’s attention. Today Indian diplomats are being summoned to apologise. There is no doubt that New Delhi’s diplomats will be able to deal with the current crisis and improve the country’s relations with the Middle East. But the recent incident has exposed the undeniable danger of unrestricted domestic extremism undermining India’s foreign policy objectives.

Happyman Jacob teaches India’s foreign policy at Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi