By P Kharel

In his third prime ministerial term, Narendra Modi’s folly precipitates India’s isolation in South Asia, the world most-populous region and the fourth largest economy in the world GDP ranking list. However, all its six South Asian neighbors have distanced themselves farther than ever from New Delhi. This underscores Modi’s foreign policy failure. Even Rajiv Gandhi had not engaged in such folly in the latter half of the 1980s.

Bangladesh-Pakistan ties in the last 16 months have undergone sweeping changes that no one could logically have predicted in the previous 53 years since the erstwhile eastern wing of Pakistan became independent with New Delhi’s active support in 1971.

New Delhi must be recoiling with the series of steps that Dhaka has taken since the interim government was installed under the leadership of Nobel laureate Mohammed Yonus in the wake of mass demonstrations across the Muslim majority country with a population of 170 million.

DHAKA DISTANCE: The Yunus team has dramatically redirected Bangladesh’s foreign policy course and expanded strategic military ties with China and Pakistan much to India’s consternation. Dhaka’s military contacts with Islamabad were perfunctory at best before and during the 15 consecutive years of Hasina Wajed in power. The youth-led protest movement changed all that only six months after Wajed won a landslide majority in an election effectively boycotted by the main opposition parties and which only 40 per cent voter turnout.

Following a grim notice by the military that she had an hour to decide whether to remain in the capital and face the boiling wrath of protestors or leave the country for personal safety, Wajed contacted New Delhi and fled the country in a tearing hurry. She later complained of not having enough time for even packing her baggage, and did her shopping for clothing and other basic items as soon as she landed in India.

Ironically, the first time Modi was sworn in as prime minister at a sports stadium in Delhi 12 years ago in the presence of all SAARC leaders, he pledged a “neighborhood first” policy which was widely welcomed. SAARC leaders, attending the ceremony that marked BJP’s first majority government, were hopeful that a new beginning might unroll. But Modi’s vow ended in mere rhetoric.

Had he put his pledge to practice, the Bharatiya Janata Party leader might have emerged as a truly towering personality to reckon with among South Asians both in heart and mind—at least in most of the neighbors of this region of 1.8 billion population.

Twelve years later, India has frittered away an opportunity for credentials as the country’s tallest leader on the foreign policy front since its independence 1947, outshining even the first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru not only in this region but also in the rest of the world’s estimation.   

FRESH MEMORY: Indian elites have begun accepting that if their government cannot forge amiable relationship with Nepal— “sharing bread and martial ties since time immemorial”—how can New Delhi hope to improve ties with others? India trained, equipped and financed Nepalese Maoist rebels for a decade in a civil war that claimed more than 17,000 lives and staggering setbacks to the economy of the one of the poorest nations.

In a cruelly blatant hypocrisy, New Delhi declared the Maoists a terrorist organization, though the latter’s supremo Pushpa Kamal Dahal alias Prachanda confessed during his first official visit to New Delhi as prime minister that he had spent eight years in India.

New Delhi clamped economic sanctions on Nepal at least four times since the 1960s. Memories are long. Most Nepalese term the 1950 treaty with India an unequal treaty, imposed during the dying months of the autocratic Rana rule. Trying to hold another country hostage does not pay off, except to extract under duress or extort something for immediate gain but at the cost of creating subtle enmity in the long run.  

Ties with Sri Lanka and the Maldives too are cool and only correct. Colombo has not forgotten the manner in which New Delhi propped up ethnic Tamils for three decades in civil war that claimed more than 60,000 lives and huge economic setback. President of the Maldives, Mohamed Muizzu, in office since November 2023, refuses to kowtow to New Delhi’s directives, unlike his predecessors. Indian tempers ran high and trade difficulties were created, though Muizzu stood his ground firm, with the Indian government now maintaining a strategic ceasefire.    

Bhutan signed a memorandum of understanding with China in 2023 after 25 years of Thimpu’s painstaking efforts and New Delhi’s persistent use of veto.  Although a very small step forward for landlocked Bhutan under the vice-like stranglehold of a 1949 treaty, updated in 2007, basically bequeathed by the British colonial rule, it is considered a feat.

AMERICAN VERDICT: The US intelligence, CIA, released a report last fortnight, with a verdict that Pakistan defeated India in the 12-day Pahalgam incident, which New Delhi had codenamed Operation Sindoor, in May. Deploying China-supplied J-35 fighters, Pakistan downed three to five counterpart Rafale fighter aircraft purchased from the French at four times the cost of the Chinese supply.  

In the 2017 military standoff with China in the Doklam border, too, New Delhi took a while for admitting the casualties its troops suffered at the hands of the Chinese. Although both have disengaged to normalcy, China continues to administer most of Doklam.

The geography of a country or region might not change but events and politics are ingredients that shape tectonic shifts in geopolitics. Not all is lost for India, with such high potential. It needs to summon the desire to shift gear for its interests also in deference to those of neighbors’.

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