- Has India abandoned its Non-Alignment Policy?
In his first speech, after BJP’s landslide victory in the largest election in the history of the world, the re-elected Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi once again reiterated the idea of a ‘New India’. Earlier, in the aftermath of the Pulwama attack, Mr Modi while addressing a political rally, in Jhansi, UP, stressed on “Our neighbouring country [Pakistan] has forgotten that this is a ‘New India’.” He vowed to give a befitting reply to their “neighbours’ [Pakistan] intentions”. In a fiery speech to an enchanting crowd of thousands, Mr Modi claimed that all major world powers were standing with India and supporting him. However, Mr Modi has never mentioned the cost India has paid to win the support of the world powers, specifically the international order hegemon – the United States. The cost is abandonment of India’s founding fathers well-articulated and balanced foreign and strategic “Non-Alignment” policy.
Ever since India’s independence in 1947, “strategic autonomy has been the defining value and continuous goal of India’s international policy”. India inherited a nation of 370 million people with a bleak economic condition. Instead of joining US-led liberal bloc or the Soviet Union-led communist bloc, India adopted its own strategic autonomy in global circumstances with a Non-Alignment Policy, evidently refusing to have their foreign policy be dictated by other nations. Due to India’s colonial past, its founding fathers were apprehensive of the Western-style government structures, political ideas and economic institutions. The values of sovereignty, autonomy, and civilisational entitlement have also remained core components in defining India’s national identity throughout. Particularly, India’s pivot to strategic autonomy and anti-colonial nationalism has resulted in the articulation of the Indian Non-Alignment Strategy.
Cutting economic ties with a longstanding trading partner due to Washington’s pressure is unprecedented in the Indian history and signals a clear-cut abandonment of India’s signature Non-Alignment Policy
India’s first Prime Minister and a master-mind of Non-Alignment policy, Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru, tried to integrate the best practices of the east and the west in his political thinking. Pandit Nehru articulated the policy of non-alignment as ‘Panchasheel’, based on the five principles to direct India’s international conduct. These five principles were “mutual respect for each other’s territorial integrity and sovereignty; non-interference in each other’s military and internal affairs; mutual non-aggression; equality and mutual benefit and finally, peaceful coexistence and economic cooperation”. Though US Secretary of State John Foster Dulles, famously characterised the non-aligned ideal as immoral and opportunistic in 1956, India continued to follow the non-alignment approach during the Cold War era. In fact, during the first fifteen years of independence, India both endorsed and opposed the US and the Soviet Union at different times as per India’s best national interests. This policy of neutrality turned into the establishment of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM); the largest grouping of nations after the United Nations, with an aim to protect and safeguard the interests of newly independent and under-developed nations in international politics. Later in the 1960s, other newly independent states like Egypt, Indonesia and Yugoslavia also joined in the Non-Alignment Movement. Even in the 1970s, when China-Pakistan-US axis was threatening India, it didn’t make a formal alliance and only maintained a strategic partnership with the USSR.
Surprisingly amidst current escalating tensions between the US- Iran, upon pressure from Washington, India has stopped oil imports from Iran. India’s ambassador to Washington, Harsh Vardhan Shringla, told reporters “That’s it…India has ended all imports of oil from Iran”. Iran is India’s extended neighbour and formerly supplied 10 % of India’s petroleum needs. Similar measures have been taken by the Indian government on India’s oil imports from Venezuela. Cutting economic ties with a longstanding trading partner due to Washington’s pressure is unprecedented in the Indian history and signals a clear-cut abandonment of India’s signature Non-Alignment Policy.
Currently, Indian neo-nationalists, represented by PM Narendra Modi have found it challenging to uphold and pursue the non-alignment policy amid President Trump’s zero-sum international strategy. This ‘New India’ identity touted by the neo-nationalists, who appear to be inspired by the seeming success of the ‘New Pakistan’ slogan, serves as a bulwark for the new Indian power elite, who want to formulate a new strategic policy that reflects a more opportunistic approach to have a closer economic and military partnership with the United States. This strategic policy shift is being advanced in order to counter the increasing Pak-China cooperation along the economic and military fronts, as well as to take advantage of the souring relationship between Pakistan and the US on the other hand.
India, like it or not, has risen as one of the major emerging great powers in the post-Cold War era. However, India has clearly moved towards abandoning its non-alignment policy with a significant large dependence on economic and military deals with US- led western powers. On May 27, 2019, 55 years since the death of India’s first Prime Minister and architect of India’s Non-Alignment policy, Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru, with a victory of PM Modi’s “New India”, the world finally witnessed a demise of Nehru’s signature “Non-Alignment” foreign and strategic policy. Indeed, as PM Modi has been continuously enchantening, this is a New India where Pandit Nehru’s political wisdom and statesmanship sagacity have no place.
