A tale of two VVIP diplomatic events

India’s embrace of Israel and the UAE may deepen regional fractures and leave New Delhi exposed diplomatically

After Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s inspiring exhortation to the citizens during a recent speech at Hyderabad to tighten their belts due to the war in the Persian Gulf region, it comes as an anti-climax that he himself is embarking on an extended tour of the Netherlands, Sweden, Norway, and Italy spread over six days starting from May 15 when Europe is grappling with an existential crisis and is gasping for breath.

Be that as it may, what lends curiosity to the view is something else: Modi is also reappearing in the West Asian region en route to Europe, in the United Arab Emirates, after a gap of 10 weeks since his controversial visit to Israel in late February. If the sojourner’s intention in February was to express solidarity with the extreme Right-wing regime headed by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu just about 48 hours before he embarked on a risky military adventure to attack Iran jointly with the US, this time around too, what is unfolding is an audacious attempt to boost the sagging morale of the regime headed by Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan in the UAE, which foolishly joined the US-Israel bandwagon and is being battered.

Suffice to say, the leitmotif is Iran. The most bizarre part of this diplomatic initiative is its cavalier abandonment of India’s time-tested decades-long approach to tread softly a median line in the Arab-GCC bickering with Iran until the advent of the current Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government in 2014, wedded to the ideology of Hindutva, which morphed into anti-Muslim politics of expediency. It is futile to pretend not to notice the ensuing fault lines in India’s political economy consequent upon the relegation of around 200 million citizens to second-class status.

The appalling truth is that by this proposed visit to the UAE, India is proclaiming at the highest level of leadership that it is in empathy with the two most ‘anti-Islamist’ regimes in West Asia. Israel is the flag carrier, while the UAE plays a subaltern role in spearheading a geostrategy of expansionism across the West Asian region (and the Horn of Africa) whose locus happens to be in the Persian Gulf region currently, where their real objective is to weaken and destroy the Islamic Republic of Iran in a military confrontation.

A vital sub-plot here is also to be noted — the ‘containment’ of Saudi Arabia, the pre-eminent leader of the Muslim world, being the Custodian of the Holy Places, which stubbornly refuses to enter the tent of the Abraham Accords and surrender to Zionist paramountcy. One manifestation of this subplot is the furious eruption of the seething rivalry vis-à-vis Saudi Arabia in the Emirati and Israeli mind. To be sure, it comes as no surprise that Saudi Arabia is tacitly backing the mediatory role by Pakistan and Türkiye to end the war in the Persian Gulf region, whereas, Israel and the UAE promote a ‘forever war’ until Iran is reduced to the Stone Age, as Donald Trump unabashedly admitted.

While we speak of oil price or scarcity of fertilisers as two obvious consequences of the war, it should not escape the attention of policymakers in New Delhi that the Persian Gulf region is facing the spectre of profound instability going forward. The region’s stability ought to be a paramount concern for India, stemming from a multitude of variables in the evolving situation: the welfare of the 10-million Non-Resident community and their profound contribution to India’s economy; energy security; petrodollar recycling; the potential for trade and investments, etc.

The natural corollary is that India has a role cut out for it in the Persian Gulf region, which New Delhi often grandiloquently used to call our country’s ‘extended neighbourhood’— namely, promoting peace and harmony by reconciling intra-regional differences between and among the regional states, including Iran. However, what we are witnessing in the Modi government’s approach to complicate the geopolitics of the Persian Gulf region is tantamount to shooting oneself in the foot.

If one were to reframe the metaphor for self-sabotage in simpler terms, New Delhi’s approach is to inadvertently damage our own cause, plans, or interests through absurd, careless, or unnecessary actions. The paradox is, as a famous quote on ambition puts it with a touch of black humour, ‘You might as well aim high, why shoot yourself in the foot when you can shoot yourself in the head.’

Indeed, our political masters are not dumb. Yet, why are they indulging in a myopic exercise to fuel the fragmentation in the Persian Gulf’s geopolitical mosaic that can only bring disrepute to India, and is doomed to end in humiliation and defeat? Historically, India never subscribed to the colonial approach of ‘divide and rule’.

The answer, succinctly put, is that in the prevailing world situation, the Modi government sees Israel and the UAE as two battering rams fighting the tidal wave of political Islam in the region surrounding India. The assertiveness of political Islam is the spectre that haunts India’s ruling elites. There is existential angst that political Islam sets a bad precedent for India’s fragmented polity.

This becomes crucial in times ahead, since this war is also, by the passive process of osmosis, about the efficacy and ultimate destiny of the ideology of Hindutva breeding out of an anti-Muslim mindset — like the uncertain future of the Israeli State ideology of Zionism predicated on US support, or the UAE’s tribal autocracy pegged on the unique concoction of political quietism and anti-Islamism.

India is skating on thin ice. Modi seems unaware that he is dogmatically placing New Delhi on the side of ‘losers’. For Riyadh is on surer ground, as it diversifies its over-dependence on US assurances as provider of security, harmonises with the Arab Street to be at peace with itself, and is done with the archaic US-Israeli stratagem of ‘anti-Iran front’ — all of which Tehran notes approvingly.

M K Bhadrakumar is a former diplomat.