THE Beatles needed to breathe again after a traumatic experience with Imelda Marcos. They found solace in India even if they were not eventually convinced of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi鈥檚 healing powers.
Nelson Mandela needed to thank those who with their moral courage stood by him through the thick and thin of apartheid. He visited India at the top of the list just to express his deep gratitude. India was regarded as a spiritual alamut and a politically upright comrade, not calculating or self-regarding, but an earnest friend.
It has taken 11 years to sully the image. Hindu Nepal or Muslim Saudi Arabia, Christian United States or Buddhist Sri Lanka and, closer to home, the marooned Sikhs in Punjab 鈥� the message from everyone is unmistakable and loud. Hindu nationalism has humiliated India and has put it on a slippery slope to a catastrophe.
All the tight and usually unwarranted embraces the Indian prime minister unleashed on foreign dignitaries over a decade or so and got photographed for a captive media to sing paeans to, ring hollow today.
Indians abroad are increasingly enduring the slings and arrows of racism, jingoism and slur, all because they know that returning home holds even more dire prospects for them. How many Indian prime ministers before the advent of Narendra Modi needed to lunge at heads of state or government to hug them at any opportunity? Or which of them would even remotely consider committing electoral support to a foreign leader as Modi did, least of all to 鈥榤y friend Donald Trump鈥�?
Indira Gandhi comes to mind for famously ducking a fraternal bear hug from Fidel Castro when he handed her the gavel at the 1983 Non-Aligned Summit in New Delhi. And yes, she did make personal intervention with a foreign government, albeit when she was not in office. That鈥檚 when she pleaded with General Zia to spare ZA Bhutto鈥檚 life. She held Nusrat Bhutto鈥檚 hand from her rented home in Delhi throughout the traumatic denouement.
As for Modi鈥檚 halcyon days with Saudi Arabia before the rippling events of last week, he has much to thank Manmohan Singh for setting it right. During the cold war, India had scant interest in the Saudi monarchy. In fact, Giora Becher, the Israeli envoy to India in 1992, shared a handy insight. 鈥楢t any time the United States sold arms to Saudi Arabia, Indian and Israeli ambassadors made a beeline to the State Department to protest. They might have saved money by sharing a taxi, it was so regular.鈥�
Singh broke the taboo by inviting the Saudi king as chief guest for the 2006 Republic Day parade. It had the high symbolism of AB Vajpayee visiting Lahore鈥檚 Minar-i-Pakistan in 1999. Why then the brouhaha when Saudi Arabia signed a defence pact with Pakistan?
Riyadh has always had special and equal ties with Islamabad. When the Saudis asked Pakistan to join the war against the Houthis in 2015, Pakistan鈥檚 parliament turned down the proposal. But after what Israel did with Qatar, it was a different story. Nobody in the South Asian neighbourhood is as worried as India is. It need not have been this way.
The thought is conditional. Had there been routine good neighbourly ties with Pakistan, the Saudi pact wouldn鈥檛 have amounted to anything more than its purpose 鈥� to vacate any threat to the Gulf state from Israel. Terrorism is cited as a factor for bad ties with Pakistan, which does not wash. It cannot be blamed on terrorism that Modi鈥檚 India struggles to find stable relations with other neighbours too 鈥� of varied religious hues.
According to Manmohan Singh, both neighbours were close to clinching a win-win closure on Jammu and Kashmir. It was stalled when Musharraf was removed from power.
Which is to say that peace was possible despite the Mumbai carnage of 2008. The idea was to remove terrorism from its roots, and the reflection was discussed in Sharm El-Sheikh. Moreover, Xi Jinping told Modi precisely that during their meeting at a retreat in Tamil Nadu. For India to be truly prosperous, it would require normal ties with China and Pakistan, Xi said. Instead, Modi poked Xi in the eye with what China calls a cartographic aggression over Ladakh in August 2019.
The Galwan episode put paid to any further hopes. The good news is that the recent SCO summit in its statement condemned the horrific killings in Pahalgam, and slammed terror attacks in Pakistan, namely the Jaffar Express slaughter. Ergo: the world is ready to be guarantors against the scourge. It was this confidence that spurred Singh to be positive, which Modi will find difficult to be. He must play to the Hindutva script targeting Muslims and Christians much of the time, Pakistan all the time. The fallout is that India鈥檚 image stands dented enormously by its shocking isolation in Operation Sindoor.
In the Middle East, Hindu nationalism has played both sides of the street, embracing a genocidal Benjamin Netanyahu while hugging the sheikhs simultaneously. After the Qatar incident, this luxury may not exist.
Other questions remain though: Netanyahu had a reason to attack Qatar because it was host to the Hamas leadership; Saudi Arabia is inherently anti-Hamas. It is, therefore, excessive to fear an imminent Israeli attack. But why should India worry about the defence pact? Discussion in the Indian media suggests the 鈥榮uspended鈥� Operation Sindoor could be adversely impacted. How will Hindu nationalism negotiate that?
Yes, Donald Trump called to greet Modi on his birthday last week. Then he proceeded to give what some cartoonists vicariously described as birthday bumps. Trump slapped prohibitive costs on visas for Indian IT professionals to work in the US with the option of staying on. An all-round humiliation from the one who believes Modi is the father of the Indian nation.
鈥榊esterday, all my troubles seemed so far away,鈥� the Beatles song from 1965 tugs the heart ever more.
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Dawn.com, September 23. Jawed Naqvi is Dawn鈥檚 correspondent in Delhi.
