From chanakya to modi evolution of india’s foreign policy

Mann Ki Baat
(literal translation ‘Stray Thoughts’) via radio – and modern instruments
like social media; Modi has over twenty-nine million followers on twitter.

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The Modi world view is underpinned by the intrinsic link between
economic growth and projection of power abroad. Modi does not seek
standing for India solely through speeches in international forums though
he is not averse to that variety of international attention. For example, Modi
championed the International Yoga day at the United Nations, taking pride
in yoga’s Indian origins and universal popularity. During his visit to the
Central Asian countries in July 2015, Modi spoke of the ancient
relationship based on India’s Islamic heritage ‘defined by the highest ideals
of Islam – knowledge, piety, compassion and welfare’. Emphasizing the
links of religion and culture, Buddhism and Sufi music, yoga and the Hindi
language used by Bollywood, Modi pointed out that India and Central Asia
‘have a special place in our hearts for each other. But, we have not paid as
much attention to each other as we should. This will change.’
Modi’s foreign policy has also honed in on the Indian diaspora. During
the freedom struggle, the Indian National Congress sought the assistance of
its diaspora and yet, after Independence, the Indian policy was that an
Indian living abroad, while culturally and civilizationally Indian, was now
the responsibility of their new country, not of India. During the 1960s
Burma expelled Indians and Sri Lanka forced Tamils to leave. During the
1970s Indians living in Uganda for years were forced to leave. The Indian
reaction was to preserve bilateral relations with the country in question
instead of standing up for their citizens of Indian origin.
In the last two decades, however, Indian governments have devoted
attention to the demands and problems faced by the Indian diaspora,
recognizing their potential as instruments of global influence. A Union-
level ministry was set up in the first decade of this century to take care of
the needs of the overseas Indians or Pravasi Bharatiya. There is an annual
Pravasi Bharatiya Divas (Overseas Indian Day) and successive Indian
governments have wooed their diaspora with awards and incentives. For
decades, Indian labour abroad did not find anything more than moral

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support from Delhi. Now, when Modi and a foreign leader meet, the needs
of the Indian labour is one of the issues discussed. Thus, what under Nehru
were deemed internal matters of another country have become part of
India’s international relations.
In his speeches and travels, Modi has specially appealed to the Indian
diaspora in every country he visits. Economic partnerships and investment
by both international and Indian business to collaborate in expanding
manufacturing in India are declared goals of Modi’s foreign economic
policy. The highlight of Modi’s first trip to the United States in September
2014 was his speech at New York City’s Madison Square garden where he
addressed an enthusiastic Indian-American diaspora. Modi promised
overseas Indians ease of travel, spoke of the ties between the oldest (United
States) and the largest (India) democracies in the world, promised an end to
bureaucratic red tape and sought investment by this diaspora in India’s
future economic growth.
11
On his second trip to the United States in
September 2015, Modi travelled to the west coast, the first time an Indian
prime minister had travelled since 1982. In San Jose, Modi appealed to the
Silicon Valley technology industry, dominated by the Indian diaspora,
seeking help for his Digital India initiative which provides ‘an opportunity
to transform lives of people in ways that was hard to imagine just a couple
of decades ago’.
12
Modi is keen to use the advantage overseas Indians bring to their ancient
homeland. On his monumental trip to the United Arab Emirates, the first
time an Indian prime minister visited in thirty-four years, Modi embraced
the huge Indian diaspora that helped build the UAE and continues to live
and work there. Modi offered the diaspora ease of visa and travel and
sought investment and tourism in return. Modi spoke of the ‘change in
India’ with respect to policies and bureaucratic red tape and sought
investment from the UAE.
13
For its part, the United Arab Emirates
government showed its interest in the welfare of Indians there by

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announcing the construction of a Hindu temple in Abu Dhabi, the first in
the Gulf region.
During his Pacific Islands trip in November 2014, the first visit by an
Indian prime minister in over three decades, Modi announced the setting up
of a $1 million fund and visa on arrival facility for Indians settled in Fiji
and other islands. In an attempt to boost trade with these islands New Delhi
will set up a trade office and also raise the annual grant-in-aid for
community projects to each Pacific Island country from $125,000 annually
to $200,000.
14
Subsequently, at the second Forum of India–Pacific Islands Cooperation
(FIPIC) held in Jaipur on 22 August 2015, Modi pitched for stronger
cooperation with the fourteen islands by offering to set up an Institute for
Sustainable Coastal and Ocean Research, provide naval support for coastal
surveillance and hydrographic surveys as well as set up Space Technology
Application Centres in these island nations.
15
China is both a major trading partner and a potential competitor for India.
On his first trip to China as prime minister in May 2015, Modi spoke of the
‘ancient spiritual and cultural links’ shared by the two countries. He
emphasized that India’s ties with China are one of its most important
strategic partnerships as the ‘re-emergence of India and China and their
relationship will have a profound impact on the two countries and the
course of this century’.
16
 In a speech before twenty-two top Chinese CEOs,
Modi pitched his ‘Make in India’ agenda and during his trip twenty-one
business agreements were signed worth US $22 billion. Modi sought
investment in India’s infrastructure plans – from railways, to highways to
road and port building – emphasizing that India had changed and was now
‘more transparent, responsive and stable’.
17
Among world leaders, Modi has a close personal relationship with
Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe, who like Modi is a centre-right
nationalist politician attempting to revive his country’s economy,

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revolutionize its defence policy and seek a role for it in a world challenged
by a rising China and a less assertive America. On his maiden trip to Japan
in September 2014, Modi wooed Japanese investment by remarking that he
had converted Indian red tape into a red carpet while the two countries
upgraded their ties to a special strategic global partnership. Tokyo promised
to invest US $35 billion in India over the next five years and talks are
ongoing about a civil nuclear deal between the two leading Asian nations.
18
On Abe’s return visit to India in December 2015, agreements were signed to
finalize Japanese companies building India’s first bullet train connecting the
industrial hubs of Mumbai and Ahmedabad. If Abe is able to change
Japan’s post–World War II policy restricting sale of defence equipment,
India will also be able to purchase Japanese US-2 amphibian aircraft.
Modi’s landmark economic programme is the ‘Make in India’ scheme
under which he seeks to balance the desire for economic self-sufficiency
with the aspiration of building a world-class economy. The fear of the East
India Company’s legacy is so deep-rooted that even today most Indian
leaders would rather India not be dependent on any country. However, India
needs foreign technologies and massive foreign investment if it seeks to
become a global economic powerhouse. Modi has invited investment from
corporations and businesses in every country. Foreign investors are eager to
access India’s large market but the drastic changes they expected are yet to
be adopted.
India’s economy has tremendous potential and there is a huge
demographic divided which is waiting to be harnessed. Modi’s
administration has a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to build on this by
harnessing the Indian and global corporate sectors to spur Indian economic
growth. This, however, will require as much attention to the domestic
economy as Modi has given to foreign policy. In both spheres, the prime
minister has to contend with entrenched views that characterize the Indian
bureaucracy’s way of thinking as well as the exigencies of domestic

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politics. While politics in India has come a long way, governments still
believe they need to appeal to identity politics and that economic reforms
do not win elections.
In the sphere of foreign policy, India is still wedded to old ideas and
British-era structures. ‘Institution building has not been our strength,’
observed a former foreign secretary.
19
But as Subrahmanyam stated, ‘Ours
is a ritualistic society. We are used to creating institutions and formulating
processes without any intention of putting them to use.’ 
20
According to
K.S. Bajpai, Indians believe in individuals rather than institutions. It is a
legacy India inherited from the Mughals through the British down to
present times. Although institutions were ostensibly developed, and India
has many, but ‘as far as policymaking is concerned, it is still a handful of
people who decide in a somewhat ad hoc manner’. Bajpai felt that he didn’t
know of any country, other than the United States, ‘where so much
expertise is brought into policymaking to so little effect’.
21
Indian policymaking depends on the vision and will of its leader of the
time and is run through networks of personal relationships. Since his
election in 2014, Narendra Modi has articulated a new vision, demonstrated
the will to change things and is creating the networks that might bring about
that change. But the institutions of governance created by the British,
including the civil service and the armed forces, were trained to think
within predetermined parameters. Leaders, from Nehru to Modi, have
promised to ‘restore’ India to its eminence.
India is, by all measures, an extremely significant country. However, the
experience of the last seventy years leads one to wonder whether greatness
as envisaged by India’s leaders can be made to materialize by institutions
designed to maintain a colonial enterprise. India’s bureaucrats are wedded
to the status quo even when India’s people want to enter the twenty-first
century as part of a new global order. India’s history is its asset as well as a
great burden. The fact that the country has existed for millennia creates

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hubris and the belief that, in the final analysis, India will go on. Why bother
with building a new framework for global engagement and international
leadership when the legacy is massive enough to enable muddling through?
India’s success as a twenty-first-century global power might depend on
jettisoning that way of thinking.

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Notes
INTRODUCTION
Kaunain Sheriff, ‘Traffic Hazard: Tribunal concerned over animal-driven carts on roads’,