Israel-Iran War | When silence becomes India’s foreign policy

India’s muted stance on the Israel-US war on Iran makes its BRICS presidency look irrelevant

If Congress leader and Leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha Rahul Gandhi was to take a leaf out of his father’s diplomatic book, he would be in the Gulf now, reassuring the nearly one million of his compatriots there that India stands with them. Or he would be in Moscow, which is the only capital in the world where any meaningful effort is currently underway to bring peace in West Asia.

As a frequent overseas traveller on visits which combine politics and diplomacy, Gandhi has the required contacts abroad to conduct shuttle diplomacy of the kind his father did when he was the Prime Minister and even afterwards when he was out of office. As the Leader of the Opposition, Gandhi has credibility, and he has pedigree, which is important when dealing with foreign leaders.

Saddam Hussein refused to meet Rajiv Gandhi after invading Kuwait in 1990. He went to Moscow and Tehran to put together a Non-Aligned Movement peace initiative to end the occupation of Kuwait. Pulling out of the emirate was not something the Iraqi dictator wanted to discuss with anyone. Especially when India’s then External Affairs Minister I K Gujral was supportive of the invasion. Shades of such Indian policy prevail now, but nobody would spurn a peace initiative from India, whether it is by the government or by the Opposition, as long as their peace proposal is viable.

Legacy for politicians, even for nations, is created through diplomacy more than most other things. Rajiv Gandhi is remembered for his diplomacy. Margaret Thatcher, who was the United Kingdom’s Prime Minister, said in a speech several years after his death that “history is sometimes the biography of great families … And India has the Gandhi family.” In his Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech, the former President of the Soviet Union, Mikhail Gorbachev, recalled Rajiv Gandhi’s efforts for world peace. Gorbachev said “peace is unity in diversity … It is an ethical value. And here we have to recall Rajiv Gandhi, who died so tragically.” His son will be remembered, like the father, if Rahul Gandhi now launches a peace initiative instead of making irrelevant remarks about Jeffrey Epstein in Parliament on the fallout of the West Asia war.

In two interviews this week that are going viral, former National Security Adviser Shivshankar Menon said, “India has chosen silence on all the big issues over the last five years. It diminishes the value of your voice. If you stay silent, then you cannot expect to have a role. I find our silences and our actions quite inexplicable.”

India is the current chair of BRICS, the Brazil-India-China-South Africa plurilateral group, which was expanded two years ago to include more countries. BRICS has not issued any statement on the war on Iran, which is a member of the group. Four of its five original members have criticised the United States and Israel for bombing Iran. India is the only holdout. The silence of the India’s BRICS presidency is bizarre. It makes the organisation appear impotent, especially when one of its members is the victim.

As Thatcher forcefully argued in the speech in which she praised Rajiv Gandhi, “do not treat the aggressor on equal terms with his victim. Do accept that internationally recognised countries have a right to defend themselves and to acquire the means to do so.” If Thatcher was alive today, she would have had to eat her words in the context of the ongoing war on Iran because that is just what the Islamic Republic has been trying to do.

As BRICS chair, India should not abdicate its solemn responsibility to say so. India has no right to hijack BRICS merely because it disagrees with the other founder members on this war. The honourable thing would be to follow in Argentina’s footsteps and quit BRICS or at least give up its incumbent presidency. India’s silence within BRICS is similar to Saudi Arabia’s ambivalence. No one knows whether the kingdom is a member of BRICS or not. India’s silence is tantamount to similarly not knowing if India is BRICS chair or not.

It is the same with Quad. India was to host a Quad summit last year. The tariff spat between the Donald Trump administration and the Narendra Modi government, and the differing perceptions on how Operation Sindoor ended, made it impossible to host a summit of Australia, Japan, the US, and India.

Another plurilateral group grounded in West Asia, the I2U2, with India, Israel, the US, and the United Arab Emirates, is in a shambles. So is India’s signature initiative unveiled with great fanfare at the Group of Twenty’s New Delhi summit — the IMEC or the India-Middle East-Europe Economic Corridor. Ships are being torpedoed within earshot of two South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) members, India and Sri Lanka. But SAARC is helpless.

Maybe it is time for the Modi government to give up its Vishwaguru posturing and formally embrace a policy of isolationism.

K P Nayar has extensively covered West Asia and reported from Washington as a foreign correspondent for 15 years.

(Disclaimer: The views expressed above are the author's own. They do not necessarily reflect the views of DH)