Category Archives: Opinion and Response

The Emperor’s New Words

23 Wednesday Aug 2017

Posted by in Opinion and Response, United States

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President Donald Trump’s speech on Monday in which he declared a new American policy towards Afghanistan and South Asia is a postmodern masterpiece – you can choose beforehand how you want to respond and find something in the address to validate your decision. The announcement was awaited with some trepidation by US and South Asia observers, accustomed by now to the 45th US president’s unceasing social and policy gaffes, but there was ultimately little need for concern at the end of the night.

The new US policy jettisons the previous administration’s phased withdrawal that was beholden to the calendar and instead replaces it with a withdrawal policy that considers local political and security conditions. This is exactly what regional observers had stressed to Washington over the years but had been disregarded by a weary Foggy Bottom that was eager to extricate itself from a war that did not seem to have any end in sight. “The consequences of a rapid exit are both predictable and unacceptable,” Trump declared, reminding everyone of the American experience in Iraq where too rapid a US withdrawal precipitated in part the resurgence of terrorism and the birth of ISIS; scheduled US withdrawal from Afghanistan had caused a similar upswing in the Taliban’s fortunes.

While the Obama administration was willing to saddle the region with America’s mess, Trump has gone back to the thinking of George W Bush: a secure, stable Afghanistan and US withdrawal were desirable but in that order. In that sense, Trump’s new direction is actually a return to an old plan that had been abandoned by his predecessor, Barack Obama. The reasoning, Trump said, was that the security threats in the region were immense and the United States sought an honorable and enduring outcome worthy of the sacrifices made.

Trump’s words will be met with approval in Afghanistan and India but with frustration back home. Despite near-total support among US parliamentarians (Senate: 98 ayes, 0 nays, 2 abstentions; House: 420 ayes, 1 nay, 10 abstentions), involvement in Afghanistan has steadily lost support among ordinary Americans over the years. Now, many would rather wash their hands off and forget about the whole misadventure than see it to an unforeseeable conclusion. The fundamental premise of Trump’s strategy – the use of military force to create a favorable political situation – was felt wanting by many the last time around.

Reminiscent of the George W Bush years, Trump emphasised that the United States was not there to “dictate to the Afghan people how to live or how to govern their own complex society” but as “a partner and a friend.” Afghans would be ultimately responsible for their own future, the United States did not want to build nations but kill terrorists.

More frustrating for many analysts was the lack of detail in the president’s Monday night address. Trump did not suggest what success in Afghanistan might look like nor did he mention any other details of how his administration was going to tame Afghanistan. To Delhi’s certain chagrin, who has consistently railed against the American concept of good and bad terrorists, the US president did not close the door on a negotiated settlement with the Taliban: “Someday,” Trump said, “after an effective military effort, perhaps it will be possible to have a political settlement that includes elements of the Taliban.” India can only hope that US estimation of what “effective military effort” entails would be maximal.

Trump’s address comes in the wake of news that the United States is redeploying 4,000 additional soldiers to join the 8,400 already present in the country. This number will be seen as insufficient in some quarters and as unnecessary in others.

What has probably attracted most comments about Trump’s Afghan policy is his statements on Pakistan. Calling out Pakistan’s practice of providing safe havens for terrorist activity on its soil while taking billions in US aid, the president warned that the United States can no longer remain passive on such perfidy. The threat is worse, Trump warned, because Pakistan possesses nuclear weapons and its actions cause tense relations in the neighbourhood that may well spiral into conflict. With uncharacteristic grace, Trump softened his rebuke by recollecting the Islamic republic’s contributions and sacrifices to the mission in Afghanistan.

Trump’s public rebuke to Pakistan has no doubt gladdened hearts in Afghanistan and India, where the afterbirth of Indian independence is seen as the greatest instigator of terrorism in its neighbouring realms. Peace in Afghanistan, many academics, bureaucrats, and politicians – from the United States as well as India and Afghanistan – have repeatedly stressed, can be achieved only after Pakistan has been effectively dealt with.

There is no cause for optimism, however. Trump is not the first US president to criticise Pakistan – and there have been countless other officials and analysts – for its links to terrorism and extremism and will unlikely be the last. Obama did the same – multiple times – and Bush ’43, Bill Clinton, and George HW Bush were all troubled about Islamabad’s ties to the Taliban and its support for terrorists in Kashmir. None of this concern manifested itself in any concrete manner and the United States continued to call Pakistan an ally in the global war on terror. Trump’s own flip-flop on China from campaign to presidency gives little reassurance that this time will be different.

Perhaps the most interesting aspect of Trump’s speech was his call upon India to do more in Afghanistan economically. In the past, the United States has usually sought a greater Indian military role in Central Asia but Trump’s call is a rare exception. Delhi’s military aloofness from Afghanistan has been criticised by many, myself included, in the past but it has been active in Afghanistan’s social and political recovery. Since the fall of the Taliban in 2001, India has extended over $3 billion in aid to Afghanistan, making it the fifth-largest donor to the country. Delhi has built roads, schools, hospitals, dams, and other vital infrastructure in its war-ravaged neighbour. The US president’s criticism of India in this regard is therefore puzzling.

What has jarred some observers, at least on Twitter, is Trump’s blatant and crass linking of Indian economic contributions to Afghanistan to the trade surplus it runs with the United States. The US president’s penchant of seeing the world through a prism of economic transactionality notwithstanding, it is unclear what the Trump administration’s larger economic role for India in Afghanistan specifically entails beyond the South Asian country’s already generous efforts.

What was left out of the Trump blueprint for Afghanistan is as interesting as what was said. One word the president did not mention at all is Islam, either as provocation or as platitude. The omission is striking because one of the first moves of this new US presidency was to restrict the entry of Muslims from certain countries into the United States. Although Pakistan was not in that original list, US visas have become harder to obtain even for legitimate visitors such as the Afghan robotics team in July.

A more consequential absence is China, widely accepted as Pakistan’s new godfather. Although the Trump White House is yet to publicly formulate how it intends to win Islamabad’s cooperation, it is unlikely that any coercion will succeed without some assistance from Beijing. And succour will not be coming from China, who has already proven unhelpful over North Korea, and feels threatened by Washington’s build-up of India and challenged by American proxies in the South China Sea. Although Beltway wisdom has been keen on impressing upon the president the seriousness of the Russian threat, China appears to be the one stuck in America’s craw.

Trump’s speech on Monday marks no new direction for American policy towards Afghanistan though it might still be celebrated as slightly more sensible than the earlier one to hie. As with all US presidents, it will be interesting to watch how Trump squares the Pakistani circle, especially now with China on stage. While success is doubtful, India and Afghanistan can at least hope that US policies will increase the pressure on Pakistan – a better alternative to sitting back and doing nothing.

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Heartburn over Hugs and Hummus

10 Monday Jul 2017

Posted by in India, Israel, Middle East, Opinion and Response, South Asia

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Indo-Israeli relations have been all hugs and hummus of late, a point that neither Jerusalem nor Delhi seem to be tired of reiterating. Narendra Modi’s trip to Israel without even a perfunctory drop-in at Ramallah has been portrayed as historic by most observers, although there have been some doubts about how much of a departure this really is from India’s previous policy given the three-day visit by Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas just a couple of weeks earlier.

Whether there really is a shift in Indian policy or not, the perception certainly exists that there has been one and this has caused much heartburn among the ossified grand daddies of entrenched interests. The crux of a string of critiques that have appeared in the Indian press is that the Modi government has made the morally odious choice of abandoning Palestine and in doing so descended into the realm of ordinary states, and that this desertion is but another manifestation of the prime minister’s anti-Muslim Hindu nationalism that has found resonance in Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s equally anti-Islamic Zionism.

In Foreign Affairs, Michal Ben-Josef Hirsch and Manjari Chatterjee Miller argue that “India’s and Israel’s historic perceptions of colonial ideology and religious nationalism are at the root of their longstanding divergence.” According to them, India’s experience as a colony and of bloody Partition created in Indian leaders an aversion to colonialism and religious nationalism; Jewish ambitions in the Levant was, therefore, anathema to them on both counts.

Although Hirsch and Miller are correct in how the Congress leadership viewed Israel and this view did shape Indian policy towards the Jewish state for decades, their article does not grapple with the fact that this was a highly ignorant and erroneous held by Mohandas Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru. To denounce Zionism as a “child of British imperialism” as Nehru did is laughable, and Gandhi admitted to some of his interlocutors sent by the Jewish Agency to inform and persuade the Indian leader of their worthiness of their cause that he did not know enough about Jewish history. Gandhi thought that Israel was being created “under the shadow of the British gun,” a sentiment difficult to arrive at despite the infamous Balfour Declaration of 1917. His simplification of “Palestine for the Arabs” also indicates a severe lack of understanding of the convoluted history of the Levant.

Today, whatever else may motivate the Bharatiya Janata Party’s course correction, it also reflects an acknowledgement of these mistaken views. Old dilemmata over identity will not, contrary to what the article argues, hinder relations but more mundane aspects of economics, regulations, and logistics take time to be streamlined. Additionally, the focus on non-defence matters was a deliberate move by both governments to highlight the civilisation-to-civilisation connections being fostered rather than a purely transactional one – which has been blooming on the sidelines, too.

A churlish piece by Manini Chatterjee in The Telegraph betrays ignorance of Israeli culture as well as any deep engagement with European history or political philosophy. Playing on the tired trope of ethnonationalism, Chatterjee wants to draw attention to the “fusion of religious and cultural identity with a ‘holy’ geographical entity common to both Hindutva and Zionism.” This has, in fact, spared the world of the limitless expansion of more universalist (imperialist) creeds. Chatterjee also takes a swipe at MS Golwalkar for his racial weltanshauung. However, it bears note that Golwalker’s understanding of race was substantially different from the European definition and that Zionism did grow as a response to the liberal European project that sought to dilute and destroy Jewish identity. Instead, Chatterjee prefers to further the myth – as the Dreyfus Affair proved – of civic nationalism.

Rajeesh Kumar’s plea that foreign policy be based on principles rather than on interests (though he sees the two as coterminous) in Outlook is naive at best. His attempt to rescue Nehruvian thinking on Israel, however, is an exceptional attempt at fiction writing. His claim that “India’s support to the Palestinian cause was not determined by the policy of appeasing the Muslim minority population at home” falls flat simply by virtue of Nehru’s own words to the effect that he did not wish to vex Indian Muslims so soon after Partition by cosying up to the Jewish state. Kumar does not explain how Indian policy was pragmatic and not idealistic as he claims but goes on to make another incredulous argument that Israel must be seen as India’s junior partner because of its desire to help the South Asian nation despite being rebuked so often. While Kumar’s point raises an interesting point for further research into Israeli attitudes and thinking towards India, the casting of the receiver of aid as the senior partner is bewildering.

There is no denying of the benefits of better relations with Israel for Kumar, though he warns that this should not mean that India should give Tel Aviv (?) a blank cheque. Kumar’s solution is to extract benefits from Israel via trade and scientific cooperation yet continue to condemn it as has been India’s hypocritical custom in the past. Given Indo-Israeli history, Kumar’s suggestion might work but it will not foster warmer relations.

Finally, he appeals to dharma as a guiding principle of Indian culture and policy. That dharma is not constant but depends on place, time, and situation is entirely lost on Kumar. In a specific circumstance, Krishna advises the Pandavas to go to war even against their own kith and kin. Additionally, Kumar’s appeal to ethics, while noble, has served no purpose in the past. India’s bid to join the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation as a country with one of the highest Muslim populations was rejected and Arab states have historically sided with Pakistan politically as well as economically and militarily in its conflict with India.

Gopalkrishna Gandhi tries to resurrect the flawed Indian historical understanding of yesteryear in his article in The Wire. Amusingly, he states that “India’s position has been appreciated, respected by all for its honesty and integrity,” probably referring to only Arab states and the coterie of non-aligned irrelevants. He clings to the old custom of Indian prime ministers abstaining from visiting Israel on principle without addressing the errors of the past or the changes since in the geopolitical climate. Ignoring his preposterous claims of a Palestinian genocide in 1948 for the moment, Gandhi fails to explain why Palestine ought to matter more to Delhi than its own interests. In his selective history, he omits the Egyptian wall along its border with Gaza or the Jordanian action against Palestinians during Black September, not to mention the occupation of “Palestine” by Jordan and Egypt prior to the stunning Israeli victory in the Six-Day War in 1967.

Modi’s visit, according Gandhi, gives legitimacy to the “occupation and brutal suppression” of Palestinians by Israel. This conveniently overlooks the Indian statement of support for the Palestinian cause just two weeks ahead of Modi’s trip to Israel. Gandhi goes on to argue that India’s policy now is “wholly political, ideological,” implying, one only assumes from the tone, what his cohort has expressed more explicitly about the BJP being anti-Muslim. This ever-ready, lazy label may have some superficial truth to it but ignores a strong undercurrent of historical grievances and political minoritarian discrimination that has now run its fuse.

It is not so much that the caviling is premised on faulty understandings of Hindutva, Zionism, and the Palestinian Question – sometimes by Gandhi or Nehru – but its ornery nature that makes any genuine debate moot. Nehru’s fundamental failure was that he, as a modern Liberal, approached society – India – as tabula rasa upon which he could put down his doodles. Communities, however, do not work like that – they are a brown field project with all its attendant baggage. More importantly, the debate never moves forward because opponents of Israel in India never tire of repeating their worn out and fallacious mantras rather than responding to a counter that has been put forward decades ago. In this climate, there is no argument – only an attempt to overpower the public sphere by sheer volume.

The Next Ten Years

27 Tuesday Jun 2017

Posted by in India, Israel, Middle East, Opinion and Response, South Asia

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As Narendra Modi embarks on his trip to Israel, many await the outcome of this historic trip. Modi will be the first Indian prime minister to ever visit Israel and symbolically, the Indian prime minister will not stop to visit the Palestinian Authority while in Jerusalem. Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, is rumoured to share a good personal chemistry with Modi and has tweeted warmly, welcoming the Indian leader to Israel. Netanyahu has cleared his schedule for the two days Modi is in Jerusalem and plans to spend the entire time in discussions with him.

Ahead of Modi’s visit, the Israeli cabinet has proposed several measures to strengthen relations with India. They include a joint fund to encourage Indo-Israeli business cooperation, an expansion of cooperation in water management and agriculture, and the promotion of tourism. There is already some speculation about the several arms deals the Indian prime minister will also be signing during his trip.

There is no question that relations between India and Israel have been on an upward trajectory for at least the past decade and have achieved an even steeper gradient since the Bharatiya Janata Party came to power in 2014. Trade has increased as has cooperation in the realm of security and neither show any signs of slowing down in the near future. As Israel’s ambassador to India, Daniel Carmon, prophesied about his country’s ties with India, the best is yet to come.

However, the ambassador also made a perceptive point in an interview with the Indian media: for relations to become truly strategic or special, they must move beyond the purely transactional sphere. Towards this end, Carmon pointed to the cooperation between his country and his host country in agriculture and water management. Such interactions bring what Israel has to offer to the doorstep of every Indian. Nonetheless, there is yet tremendous scope for the blossoming of Indo-Israeli relations at the non-governmental level.

The truly special relationship between two states in the modern era must be the United States and Britain. Srdjan Vucetic, a professor at the University of Ottawa, makes a compelling case that this relationship was based, at least initially and for a substantial period, on racial affinity than a congruence of interests and values. India does not share any racial kinship with Israel or the Jewish people. Regardless, the Anglosphere is a good example of what harmonious relations should look like. Despite their differences, the five countries – America, Australia, Britain, Canada, and New Zealand – have supported each other diplomatically on the international stage; Australia has even provided soldiers for every major conflict the United States has found itself in.

Not bound by race or even a shared history, India and Israel can nonetheless base their bond over the fact that the former remains one of the few, perhaps the only, major country that has never had anti-Semitism in its history. This, combined with the obvious strategic imperative and economic opportunities should serve to foster people-to-people relations between Indians and Israelis. While political pressures will motivate strategic cooperation and economic realities will propel trade on their own, both governments must take an effort to encourage cultural connections. This is best done through education, tourism, and the arts.

India may not have too many universities that Israeli students might be interested in but it still has a few good medical and engineering colleges, at least at the undergraduate level. Scholarships should be created for Israelis wishing to study at these institutes, with opportunities for work-study and internships. There is no substitute for living in a country for four years or more to become familiar with its work ethic, politics, and culture. Similarly, avenues should be created to facilitate Indian students who wish to study at Israeli universities or intern at their think tanks. Already, hundreds of thousands of Indians seek intellectual enrichment in the United States, Britain, Canada, and Australia; there is no reason Israel cannot be a destination for Indian scholars, especially given its reputation in information technology, trauma medicine, artificial intelligence, and robotics.

University exchange programmes – for lecturers as well as students – may well serve in improving Indian education. An inflow of foreign students could increase pressure to update curricula, spark off research programmes, improve university governance, and ameliorate financial woes. The power of educational exchanges must not be underestimated – the role played by the British Rhodes scholarship and the American Fulbright Programme in influencing young minds world over in the Anglo-American way of thinking comes to mind.

Another important industry that is open to more than just young scholars is tourism. Both Israel and India are ancient cultures with histories that go back at least five millennia. Several historical sites in both countries are even dated several millennia earlier. More than for just history buffs, India also offers a bewildering array of cuisines and terrain that will excite and entrall tourists. Israel’s beaches and adventure sports are similarly a powerful draw for visitors. While Israel has already started to entice Indians to tour its treasures, there is much for India to do on this front. Cleanliness, adequate bathroom facilities, and protection of the monuments from the picnicking masses would be a start; accurate information in multiple languages available online and multilingual tour guides would be another measure to bring Indian tourism to even basic standards. On the larger scale, lodging and transportation need to be improved to tourist destinations.

About 40,000 Israelis visit India every year. Most of them are young people who have just finished their mandatory military service, have financial constraints as they are yet to start working, and prefer the peace and quiet of remote towns in the foothills of the Himalayas than Ellora, Khajuraho, or the Taj Mahal, at least initially. Better connectivity and infrastructure in these areas might not only persuade more Israelis to visit India (rather than South America, the other favourite destination after military service), but entice them to stay longer. Better upkeep of tourist destinations may not immediately interest this crowd but it will attract their parents – who may have spent six to twelve months of their youth in India too – to make a second trip to India. More importantly, development of tourist places is not an Israel-specific project but will make India’s attractions bearable for people all around the world.

Towards bettering tourism traffic, both countries could take several steps in making travel easier. First, visas can be made easier to apply for via an online application process that accepts scanned documents as well as the application form. Two, criteria for tourist visas can be relaxed. Three, keeping in mind the nature of Israeli tourism to India, the period of e-tourist visas can be extended to a year. All these steps would be towards the eventual goal of eliminating the requirement for visas for tourist travel between the two countries. Admittedly, some of these measures have been partially put in place. However, there remains much progress to be made.

Additionally, connectivity between India and Israel stands to be substantially improved. There is only one carrier that flies directly between Israel and India – that is the Israeli airline El Al, with two weekly flights between Tel Aviv and Bombay. Such things are largely commercially influenced but it is not inconceivable that additional carriers operating at least weekly from India’s IT hub, Bangalore, and Delhi might find passengers.

On the cultural front, Delhi and Jerusalem must do more to promote their music, art, literature, and language in each other’s countries. There is some very intelligent Israeli cinema and theatre that have not made it to India except, perhaps, on torrents, because of the language barrier. Sponsoring tours by theatre groups and promoting foreign language films can be a great way to expose Indians and Israelis to each other’s societies. As the French have their Alliance Française and the Germans their Goethe-Institut, Israel could promote Hebrew via its literature and philosophy. Stronger business and educational ties will spur an interest in learning Hebrew among Indians. Similarly, India can promote Sanskrit and Indian philosophy in Israel, which, for some odd reason, seems to have a fair number of people interested in Indian thought and literature.

It must be remembered that culture is by its very nature an elite preoccupation and will not have too many takers. However, the rewards will be ample from those who do take advantage of the new options and become ambassadors of their culture to the other. What makes it worse is that unlike defence or economics, culture remains ambiguous both in its promotion and reception. It is not possible to have clear metrics of investments to results, it is perfectly possible that some visitors either to India or to Israel had some personal experiences that left them with a bitter taste of the other’s culture. One only hopes that familiarity breeds brotherhood.

Over the next decade of Indo-Israeli ties, both Delhi and Jerusalem must indeed strengthen defence cooperation in terms of sales, joint ventures, and manufacturing. On the economic front, the free trade agreement that has been languishing in the doldrums since 2004 would be a welcome catalyst to increasing trade. However, the absolute numbers will not be much – Israel is only slightly larger than Nagaland with the population of Bangalore – but the value will be in the reliability of the relationship. It is the people-to-people connections that will ultimately be the bedrock of ties and give meaning beyond the mundane. Unlike security and trade, culture needs support, encouragement, and nurture. This should be the next focus in both capitals.