Tag Archives: Kargil

Does India Have An Israel Policy?

10 Wed Jan 2018

Posted by in India, Opinion and Response, South Asia

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There will be nothing but bonhomie for Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu who is expected to arrive in India in a couple of days for a three-day state visit. The Israeli delegation will begin their visit from Ahmedabad, visit Sabarmati Ashram and hold a roadshow in Gujarat, and perhaps visit Agra and Bombay. While in India’s financial capital, Netanyahu is scheduled to visit the Chabad House which was targeted by Lashkar-e-Taiba terrorists in a horrific attack in November 2008. The diplomatic agenda, predictably, will revolve around agriculture, water management, cyber security, innovation, and defence.

While there is no question about the Indian public’s warmth for Israel, there have been some whispers of doubt recently about its government’s intentions. Indians, by and large, admire much about the Jewish state and even those who do not are indifferent rather than hostile. Israeli diplomats do not have to waste their time countering anti-Semitism or Boycott-Divestment-Sanctions sort of political movements in the South Asian country. That said, India’s recent vote in the United Nations General Assembly essentially condemning the US decision to recognise Jerusalem as the capital of Israel followed by its sudden cancellation of a $500 million deal to purchase Spike anti-tank guided missiles (ATGM) from the Israeli firm Rafael Advanced Defence Systems has raised eyebrows in Jerusalem and among observers. The deal is apparently moving forward, according to latest media reports. Are good relations between India and Israel to be limited to Modi’s occasional charming tweets to his Israeli counterpart?

Such misgivings from Jerusalem are not only perfectly understandable but justified; yet the compulsions of India’s own domestic political chaos are also an important set of inputs to policy and must at least be understood if not tolerated for a fuller picture of the intentions of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party administration.

When Modi swept into office in 2014 in an election that was just short of a landslide, policy wonks warned his euphoric supporters that the nature of government policies is continuity and incremental change rather than the desired abrupt departure from the “idea of India” espoused by the Indian National Congress. This warning has been borne out to some extent – the economy, which Modi has correctly prioritised, has seen several small yet critical positive reforms but many of the more emotive (and less dry) issues that Modi’s core supporters care about such as education and culture have so far received short shrift; other matters such as terrorism and defence have seen some movement but will take a longer time to reveal the lasting impact of the new regime in Delhi.

Foreign policy, in so far as it does not pertain to the economy, appears to have been largely relegated to the boondocks. The immediate reason for this is the global experience of democracies that there are few votes in foreign affairs. India has yet to cultivate a large and vibrant foreign policy circle as might be observed older and more developed democracies and the community as it exists now has several foci and plenty of challenges regarding access to decision makers, policy documentation, a bureaucratic hostility to transparency, career opportunities, and funds. India’s foreign ministry has rarely been blessed with the sort of polymath ideal for the job, either in its politicians or its bureaucrats, even when the portfolio has remained with the prime minister. With insufficient attention from elected officials, governance slips into maintenance mode administered by the civil service and the policies of earlier decades continue unabated.

This is visible from India’s insistence on clinging to expired motifs such as strategic autonomy, a fancy 21st century upgraded phrase for non-alignment. For example, India recently courted Australia, Japan, and the United States in a security quadrilateral (Quad) that observers understand is designed to balance an increasingly aggressive China and in the same week participated in a trilateral forum with Russia and China. Similarly, India’s approach to the Palestinian question is based on Mohandas Gandhi’s fundamental ignorance of Jewish history that was supplemented by Jawaharlal Nehru’s own political inclinations; the policy was maintained as a hagiographic monument to the two men well after it had proven to be detrimental to Indian national interests.

It is no secret that India’s foreign ministry is understaffed, and the same is true of the ruling political party when it comes to policy formulation. Besides the core issues its supporters would like addressed, foreign policy remains a step-child of the BJP’s internal thinkers. The party seems to have forgotten that to replace an ideology, an alternative is needed. In essence, the BJP has tinkered with the edifice of the Nehruvian state and such incomplete measures occasionally fall short of the hopes of not just the citizens but even the party’s own lofty rhetoric.

It is often argued that India’s policy towards Israel must be tempered by the strategic considerations of its relations with other countries that may be hostile to the Jewish state. Domestic calculations regarding India’s large Muslim minority must also influence how close India can drift towards Israel. The problem with this argument is two-fold: first, it implicitly suspects all Indian Muslims of treason in that they would put the well-being of Palestine and Islam above Indian interests. Second, it cannot explain the tacit Arab acceptance of not just Israel in the face of a rising Iranian threat but even Jerusalem as the capital of the Jewish state: there were few protests in Arab streets after Donald Trump’s recognition of the Holy City as the capital of Israel. This flimsy argument, in addition to the bogey of seven million Indians returning from the Persian Gulf and the loss of $35 billion in remittances as Arab retaliation against India’s warming ties with Israel, are unfortunately treated as gospel by an intellectually anaemic coterie in the BJP and outside. While India may not strive to become Israel’s closest ally, there is plenty of room for it to move closer to the Middle Eastern democracy if it so wishes.

To repeat dozens of articles already, there are plenty of reasons for Delhi to desire closer ties. Beyond transactional considerations of trade and security, it is also important to remember that the tiny country has been among the more reliable suppliers of know-how and equipment. After the nuclear tests at Pokhran II when no one was willing to supply arms to India, Israel remained one of the very few markets still open. Similarly, the important role Israel played during Kargil is also undisputed.

Optimistic assessments of India’s recent uptick in relations with Israel opine that a change in policy cannot be abrupt, especially when drastic. This is simply not true: in one of the greatest about-turns in recent diplomatic history, the United States de-recognised Taiwan and recognised Communist China in its stead in 1979. The entire process took seven years from Richard Nixon’s visit to Beijing in February 1972 until the Joint Communiqué on the Establishment of Diplomatic Relations in January 1979. Such events are admittedly rare and challenging but pursuing a wrong policy for the sake of continuity is insanity. As mentioned earlier, the lack of political interest or vision within the BJP coupled with an understaffed foreign service does not allow for a nimble policy environment capable of quickly and thoroughly assessing the ramification of ideas on allies, security, economics, and international obligations.

A clear-eyed view of friends, enemies, and interests has the immediate benefit of signalling to partners that you are worth investing in; a bonus is that it gives others confidence in your national purpose and dependability in forging trade and security alliances. India’s waffling – sorry, strategic autonomy – will only ensure that it trails behind its rivals and fights its battles alone. France, despite being a member of NATO, has a far better track record of strategic autonomy than India ever had as a perennial “leading member” of the have-nots.

Nowadays, scholars hesitate to describe foreign systems or people as irrational. This is partly to avoid imposing the observer’s perspective and values on the subject and to allow for a potential alien framework in which things might make perfect sense. However, Indian foreign policy has long veered dangerously towards that word which must not be spoken. American leadership is defined in schools of thought – Jeffersonian, Hamiltonian, Jacksonian, and Wilsonian; in India, there is only the cult of Congress and no opposition party, despite the political cacophony, has come remotely close to offering a complete and alternate weltanshauung comprising economic, security, social, and cultural programmes. Diplomacy suffers the same fate. The real question is not if India has an Israel policy but if the BJP actually has a foreign policy.

Taming the Dragon

01 Sun Oct 2017

Posted by in Book Review

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Sawhney, Pravin and Ghazala Wahab. Dragon on our Doorstep: Managing China Through Military Power. New Delhi: Aleph Book Company, 2017. 488 pp.

Let alone China, India cannot even win a war against Pakistan. This is the provocative opening sentence of Dragon on our Doorstep: Managing China Through Military Power by Pravin Sawhney and Ghazala Wahab. While most Indians grudgingly admit to the vast disparity between their country and its giant northeastern neighbour, they are emotionally unprepared to accept that India might struggle to win a war with its Islamic twin to the west. Sawhney, a journalist with 13 years of service in the Indian Army, and Wahab, a career journalist covering security and terrorism, describe in their book the disturbing lack of strategic thought in India’s defence policy. While the material is nothing new for seasoned analysts, it brings to to the general public in a readable manner what the authors see as shortcomings in the country’s security and their proposed solutions.

The crux of the central point of Dragon on our Doorstep is made at the outset – Sawhney and Wahab begin with the argument that bean-counting the number of tanks, artillery pieces, fighter jets, and other hardware may make for colourful charts and captivating news coverage but says little about military strength. The authors differentiate between military power, which Pakistan has developed, and military force, in which India enjoys numerical superiority. The latter is merely the stockpiling of war materiel while the former is concerns the optimal utilisation of that force through well considered defence policy and political directive.

If the famous Prussian military theorist was right that war is the continuation of politics by other means, Sawhney and Wahab have put their finger on the fundamental weakness in Indian security that propagates to all other aspects and levels. The authors’ observation that India’s political will and institutional structure is ambivalent at best reinforces an observation made by an American analyst, George Tanham, in that has been received with some rancour in the Indian establishment. In a now famous 1992 essay for Rand titled, Indian Strategic Thought: An Interpretive Essay, Tanham bemoans that India has always lacked in strategic thinking. This has only been to the advantage of Delhi’s enemies. As Sawhney and Wahab contend, “India’s political and military leaders, in cahoots with its diplomats, have sold falsehoods to their own people” about the country’s security.

Establishment weakness is partly due to incompetence: in its crusade to establish civilian primacy over the military, the government has effectively eliminated the armed forces from decision-making process and replaced them with generalist civil servants who are simply unaware of the implications of policies. Dragon on our Doorstep gives several examples of diplomatic errors that were caused by having little knowledge of precedence, history, and facts on the ground.

The lack of a coordinated security policy sometimes results in different government departments working at cross purposes with each other. The lines of authority are also inordinately ambiguous; for example, the Indo-Tibetan Border Police falls under the Ministry of Home Affairs during peacetime but is seconded to the Ministry of Defence in wartime. Not only do such regulations denude cohesiveness and self-awareness among units at the border but they create multiple chains of command that report to different bureaucracies that do not always have the same goals.

Sawhney and Wahab contrast the Indian condition with a conference they attended in China. From the beginning to the end, all representatives of the Chinese media had only one message to impress upon their guests, from the political leaders and bureaucrats to military officials and the media. Such is Beijing’s coordinated strategy, aligning everything from the battlefield to the airwaves.

Not only are Chinese forces well-coordinated, they have, through arms exports and constant training, achieved a high degree of interoperability with the Pakistani Army. This means that India’s enemies retain the physical option to fight on two fronts against a common enemy, holding only the political decision in abeyance. Delhi, on the other hand, suffers from poor coordination between its units, its services, and with foreign powers. Blurred chains of command and the lack of a joint chief of staff has hurt military planning severely, and Raisina’s reticence to establish regular and comprehensive exercises with foreign militaries has left India completely unprepared even if foreign assistance were immediately forthcoming in the event of war.

Sawhney and Wahab take readers on a tour of India’s security blunders and make a convincing case that someone, somewhere, who should know what is going on in fact does not. As the authors explain, weakness at the top has percolated to all levels – from strategic to operational and tactical. The elimination of military inputs from foreign policy and even, to an extent, defence policy, has created a dangerous blind spot in the manner India views the world.

One of the concerns is that India does not seem to learn from its mistakes; perhaps the structure of the defence establishment is such that it does not retain an institutional history. For example, Operation Vijay (1999) was preceded by an Operation Meghdoot. Just as Indian soldiers returning to the mountain tops of Kargil in the summer of 1999 discovered that Pakistani soldiers had infiltrated into India during the winter and occupied the heights, Indian soldiers at Siachen had already had a similar experience in 1983. Sawhney and Wahab describe how Indian delegations were surprised to bump into their Pakistani counterparts in Europe shopping for the same winter accoutrements. The inability to learn from experience is a death knell for any organisation.

There is nothing particularly new by way of data or analysis in Dragon on our Doorstep for scholars or even seasoned observers of Indian foreign and security policy. However, the solutions offered are bound to raise hackles and ignite spirited debates. Ultimately, however, this is perhaps what Sawhney and Wahab seek – greater discussion of issues of vital importance among citizens and decision-makers alike.

For example, it is suggested that the path to India becoming a leading power is Pakistan because Delhi would not be able to focus on global issues or dedicate resources to them without a stable neighbourhood. This would indeed be ideal but the observation underestimates Pakistan’s hatred of India. The authors remind readers of how close both nations were to peace during the Agra summit in 2001 with Pakistani military dictator Pervez Musharraf but India was wary of trusting any offer from across the border so soon after the Kargil conflict.

On a related issue, Dragon on the Doorstep warns that Kashmir is potentially destabilising for India and goes on to criticise the highly controversial enactment of the Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA) in the state. Again, the ideal of diplomacy over bullets is proposed without taking into account relentless cross-border instigation. Sawhney and Wahab also work on the assumption that Kashmir is the root of India’s problems with Pakistan, something that has always been rejected by India and recently been dismissed by even Western scholars such as Christine Fair and Daniel Markey.

Provocatively, the authors write, “India needs to understand that the road to managing an assertive China runs through Pakistan.” This is not the first time this suggestion has been made. Bharat Karnad, a scholar at the Centre for Policy Research, has long advocated some emollience with Pakistan so that India may better focus on the real threat to its security from China. As Sawhney and Wahab see it, India has three options towards China. One, it can form a closer partnership with the United States to contain Chinese ambitions; however, India will always have a deficit of trust with a country that is as supportive of Pakistan as the United States has been.

Two, India can go it alone – build the requisite military and economic strength to become a true rival to the dragon; this is easier said than done and the umpteen structural weaknesses in the Indian state will make this a decades-long process, assuming there is no wavering of political will in the meantime. Three, India can bluff its way along without aggravating China too much; the authors leave the substance of this ambiguous but it possibly means maintaining the status quo and playing the unsatisfying balancing act between Beijing and Washington. The language leaves one suspecting that this would be the authors’ choice.

While the title may imply a hawkish position on China, some of the authors’ suggestions are surprising, some may even say naive. For example, Sawhney and Wahab recommend that India join Chinese infrastructural initiatives like One Belt, One Road (OBOR) and even the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) because it would give Delhi leverage to open negotiations on Tibet and facilitate a stable peace with Pakistan.

The same credulity is witnessed when Dragon on the Doorstep accept every positive claim about the Chinese and Pakistani armies while questioning the Indian army at every turn. The simple fact of the matter is that India managed to “win” its wars with Pakistan and hold its ground with China in later conflagrations such as at Nathu La in 1967, Sumdorung Chu in 1987, and Doka La in 2017. The People’s Liberation Army (PLA) has no doubt advanced leaps and bounds since the modernisation begun by Deng Xiaoping in the early 1970s – which Dragon on our Doorstep discusses at length – but despite its clear strategic vision, the PLA still suffers from lack of decent hardware, regular political indoctrination, insufficient training, a crisis of loyalty, and corruption much like the Pakistani Army.

It is important to understand the assumptions behind these evaluations, for they are not limited to the authors alone. In this world view, the United States is seen as untrustworthy, and India’s nuclear deal with it a failure. Russia is the model relationship, and China is a regrettable enemy. With these parameters, Dragon on our Doorstep makes a far more compelling argument than without. Sawhney and Wahab do not explore these assumptions beyond a superficial glance, unfortunately.

Otherwise, it might be countered that the United States remains the only country that has the economic and military wherewithal to catalyse India’s hesitant rise to an international power to reckon with. Furthermore, its relations with India and Pakistan over the decades have been coloured by Delhi’s (Jawaharlal Nehru’s) assumptions about the United States. Regarding Russia, there are more thorns in that relationship than are publicly discussed. The ballooning cost of the Admiral Gorshkov aircraft carrier was just one incident among several disagreements on transfers of technology, quality of equipment, and cost. Finally, on China, it is unfathomable that a rising superpower would ever tolerate a powerful country on its border. Regardless of how much both countries can achieve together, Beijing can never countenance Delhi’s power.

Dragon on our Doorstep has a questionable foreign policy analysis but that should not detract readers from its strength – the discussion of the nitty-gritty of military planning and preparation, from foot soldier to president. The expertise of both the authors is on display as they marshal facts and anecdotes to make their argument that security-wise, India is ill-prepared at all levels. Sawhney and Wahab present a comprehensive accounting of India’s weaknesses, from border logistics to Islamist and Maoist insurgencies that draw soldiers away from military operations to counter-terrorism, from an anaemic domestic defence manufacturing industry to over-confidence in India’s armed forces.

A more conscientious editor would have certainly helped Dragon on our Doorstep sharpen the argument and reining in the authors when they got carried away by their narrative. What should be obvious by now is that Sawhney and Wahab are primarily interested in revealing the inefficiencies and incompetence in the Indian security structure despite the ominous, admonitory title implying China. In this, the book certainly succeeds, and is a valuable addition to the security buff’s reading list .

Going to the Holy Land

18 Sat Apr 2015

Posted by in India, Israel, Middle East, South Asia

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The subject of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s possible response to an invitation by Israeli prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu and president Reuven Rivlin to visit their country has set tongues wagging both domestically and internationally. Arab News, a Saudi broadsheet owned by one of King Salman’s sons, warned that the Indian prime minister was making a risky gamble on relations with Israel while domestic tabloids indicated bureaucratic unease with the strengthening of relations between India and Israel, at least at this juncture. This is quite a strong reaction to a potential state visit to a country that has so far only existed on the periphery of Indian political thinking. No matter, the Indian prime minister must go to Israel and not fall prey to this tactic of unmaking government decisions before they are made.

Israel occupies an odd place in Indian thinking. Despite the extension of recognition by the Indian government to the Jewish state in 1950, formal diplomatic ties were not established until 1992. Jawaharlal Nehru blocked Israel’s entry into the Non-Aligned Movement and turned the organisation into an unequivocally pro-Arab forum. India refused to accept Israeli assistance in improving agriculture in its semi-arid regions and in the mid-1960s, refused to even accept famine relief sent by Israel in response to a plea by the UN Secretary General, U Thant – lest it hurt relations with Arab nations! In the United Nations, Delhi was persuaded by its own rhetoric of third world solidarity and established a long record of voting against Israel. Indira Gandhi went so far as to vote in favour of UN Resolution 3379 in 1975, which equated Zionism with racism. Interestingly, none of this was without domestic opposition, political as well as in the media, but it was they heyday of Congress hegemony. Support for Palestine even merited a privileged mention in the manifesto of the Indian National Congress for the general elections of 2014.

Despite an avowedly pro-Arab stance, India initiated clandestine relations with Israel in the late 1960s. This has been documented as much as is publicly possible in B. Raman’s The Kaoboys of R&AW: Down Memory Lane as well as Dan Raviv and Yossi Melman’s Every Spy a Prince and most recently Srinath Raghavan’s 1971 – A Global History of the Creation of Bangladesh. Indian intelligence received training from Mossad and assistance in the Indo-Pakistan War of 1971. According to Harsh Pant, professor at King’s College, London, India received tacit support even earlier, during the Chinese invasion in 1962 and the Indo-Pakistan War of 1965. Since, Israeli assistance has continued clandestinely despite official diplomatic insults. Its intelligence agency was quite capable of serving as an alternative diplomatic service, providing military and other assistance to countries who would prefer their ties to Israel not be known. More recently, it has been acknowledged in academic and military circles alike that Israel’s role in the Kargil War in 1999 was timely and critical for the Indian war effort.

India’s rabidly anti-Israel position was diluted significantly after it established official diplomatic relations with the Middle Eastern democracy in 1992 – the last non-Arab, non-Muslim country to do so. There have been several high-level visits from both sides though support for Israel is deeply partisan in India. Though ties between the two countries were normalised under PV Narasimha Rao, the first foreign minister to visit Israel was the Bharatiya Janata Party’s Jaswant Singh and it was Atal Behari Vajpayee who first invited then Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon to India in 2003. No Indian prime minister has ever visited Israel, though Modi has been to the country when he was the chief minister of Gujarat in 2006. Pace the Indian ruling class, the Jewish people and Israel have always been viewed warmly by Indians at large. In a 2009 survey done by Israel’s Ministry of External Affairs, it was found that the popularity of the Middle Eastern country was the the highest among the Indians. Interestingly, a 2014 survey by the BBC showed the majority of Israelis neutrally disposed towards India and only a small section of Israeli society as positive about the South Asian giant, presumably because of Delhi’s policies in the past. As the Jewish genealogical journal Avotaynu observed of India a few years ago, “Bene Israel flourished for 2,400 years in a tolerant land that has never known anti-Semitism, and were successful in all aspects of the socio-economic and cultural life of the people of the region.”

Modi’s rise to power has raised hopes in Jerusalem. Having dealt with Modi during his tenure as the chief minister of Gujarat, Israelis have developed a fondness for a man whom they see as very Israeli in many ways. Very tachles is how one editorial described him, a Hebrew slang word that means the ability to talk about the bottom line, the concrete, the tangible…basically, getting down to business. Israeli businessmen invested billions in infrastructure, energy, pharmaceuticals, water treatment, agriculture, desalination, and semiconductors in Gujarat during Modi’s tenure, finding the environment in the state to be business friendly and less bureaucratic than the rest of India. If Modi carries even a fraction of the same enthusiasm for ties on to the national level, it would mean an unprecedented boom for the Israeli economy. Non-military trade between India and Israel has risen from the paltry $100 million in 1992 to slightly over $5 billion in 2015 but this could double if a free trade agreement that has been in the works is concluded while creating much employment through the Make in India campaign simultaneously.

Beyond the obvious economic drivers to closer relations with Israel, there is, of course, the strategic imperative. Although Brajesh Mishra, Vajpayee’s National Security Advisor, nearly caused an aneurysm in some circles when he openly called for a strategic India-Israel-United States alliance in 2003, the fact remains that both India and Israel suffer from the same Islamist plague, whether it comes in the form of Hamas or the Laskhar-e-Taiba. Cooperation in counter-terrorism measures and intelligence has only grown between the two nations as has the supply of defence equipment to India – Israel now stands third behind only Russia and the United States in supplying the Indian military. Despite its size, population, and political turmoil, Israel is a high-tech island in the Middle East that has much to offer a technology-hungry India that is looking to leap past a couple of stages of development.

An unpleasant truth, perhaps, but there is, of course, another reason that Modi is popular among many of Israel’s lawmakers. His profile as firm and outspoken opponent of Islamic extremism, a common enemy, particularly in the wake of the Bombay attacks of November 2008 that targeted the Jewish community, among others, makes him more appealing than other Indian leaders. Then, the Indian representative to the United Nations had condemned the attack in his speech and while naming the several locations in Bombay the terrorists had attacked, left out the Jewish synagogue in Colaba, Chabad House.

Despite the obvious synergies between the two countries, any talk of closer ties is usually dampened by a heavy shroud of caution and pessimism. Israel’s relationship with China and India’s connections to Iran are frequently seen as obstacles to close ties between Delhi and Jerusalem. This interpretation does great dishonour to Israeli tachles: Jerusalem has made it clear that its relations with Beijing are purely commercial while it views ties to Delhi as strategic as well as economic. Israel has not made particular efforts to augment its arms sales to China in recent years, in large part because its primary ally and investor, the United States, imposes strict restrictions on the sale of weapons and technology to the rising superpower. With India, however, these restrictions have substantially weakened and Israeli firms frequently push for maximum cooperation on technology as well as weapons platforms with India, wiling to discuss not just sales but even manufacturing under license and co-development.

On Iran, cooler heads in Jerusalem accept that commercial ties with Iran are crucial for India not just for the obvious hydrocarbon trade but also as access points via Chabahar into Afghanistan and Central Asia. Greater Indian influence in Afghanistan, Central Asia, and Iran may even work to Israel’s advantage eventually, securing one middleman in the region who is not the Great Satan. With the second largest Muslim population in the world, India’s bonafides are beyond suspicion. To revive an old worldview of Israel’s first prime minister, David Ben-Gurion, India is the new periphery state for Israel, at least in the East. Unlike during the Cold War, this new periphery cannot survive on hard power alone. Delhi’s soft power in the region may be of great use if it can only be reinforced with some hard power.

Proponents of the status quo in Indian foreign policy towards the Middle East also bring up the potential fate of India’s large diaspora in the region. Of the almost 22 million Indians living overseas, about six million still reside in the Middle East, with Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Oman, Kuwait, and Qatar accounting for 5.2 million Indians between them. If an overtly pro-Israel policy is adopted by Delhi, it is feared that the Gulf countries might curtail the employment of Indians and even send some back. Not only does this create unemployment at home but it will also reduce the remittance flow into India; last year, India was the highest recipient of diaspora remittances with about $70 billion out of which almost $19 billion came from the Middle East. Furthermore, the Middle East is a premier destination for Indian exports and equally importantly, the source of some 60 per cent of India’s hydrocarbons.

However, it is unlikely that any move by the Modi government will see a drastic shift on the ground: it is unlikely that the Gulf states will expel thousands of Indians or refuse to sell oil to India on the basis of a single state visit. Indeed, their greatest benefactor, the United States, has been one of Jerusalem’s closest allies for decades. India can move significantly closer to Israel all the while espousing almost the same rhetoric as Modi’s predecessors used: India still wishes to see a peaceful resolution to the Palestinian question and supports a two-state solution. Since Delhi is not a major player in the Middle East, it will not be called on for more details, wherein the devil resides. Without such a clear break, there is ample wiggle room for India to play on the differences between the Gulf states themselves: Qatar and Saudi Arabia, for example, have had somewhat of a prickly relationship over the past decade or so, and Oman stood against its GCC comrades on a joint military command perceivably to counter Iran.

Yet what makes a Modi visit to Jerusalem unpalatable to Arab Street at this particular juncture is Netanyahu’s recent outbursts – regarding Palestine and the two-state solution as well as the allegedly racist observation that Israeli Arabs are bringing out the vote – in the heat of the recent closely contested Israeli general elections. That, in concert with his adamant opposition to the potential outcome of the ongoing negotiations on the Iranian nuclear programme are said to be major landmines for an Indian diplomatic overture at this moment. As one diplomat explained, “That whole region is already on fire, and what Netanyahu is doing is to throw a tanker of oil into that fire.” However, it is an unbelievably naïve view of politics and human affairs in general to assume that one agrees with and supports every view of any interlocutor one happens to chance upon. By the same token, would dialogue with Pakistan be seen as an endorsement of terrorism against India? Modi goes to Israel strictly in pursuit of Indian interests; to read anything else into it is mischievous.

Allegations that a potential state visit by Modi might upset the delicate balance in the Middle East also puts too much import on the power of one summit. Additionally, it views – wrongly – the Israeli-Arab knot as a zero-sum game, for even outsiders. In 1992, when India sought to normalise relations with Israel, it sought approval from the Palestinian Authority. The Palestinians told India, ”There are signed accords between us [and Israel] and we are now talking to the Israelis; your establishing relations with Israel helps us.” It is difficult to believe otherwise now.

Modi must indeed respond positively to Netanyahu’s invitation and visit Israel soon. The Middle East’s problems are not India’s to solve and to think it carries much weight in the region at present is comical. So far, Delhi has mistreated a potential ally in the region and tolerated humiliation by those whom it desperately wished to befriend. It is time Raisina Hill replaced this obsequiousness with a more balanced and pragmatic policy that works on a simple quid pro quo. If even this simple stance is to be feared as jeopardising relations with other states in the region, perhaps those relations were never worth having in the first place. After all, it is India’s interests Modi must pursue and not any other. If a prime minister cannot unabashedly pursue the interests of his nation, who else can?

This post appeared on FirstPost on April 20, 2015.