Vishwaguru India flies under the radar

After the US Justice Department accused an Indian government agent of plotting to kill Sikh separatist leader Gurpatwant Singh Pannun last year, a former US official in Washington told me: “I’m worried that we let India get bold enough to target a US citizen on US soil. Why are we not pursuing this more seriously? What are we getting out of this relationship?”

Many in Washington are asking these questions in private: India doesn’t support the US on Ukraine or Taiwan. It won’t agree to fight alongside US forces anywhere. The Modi government is going after dissidents at home and abroad, including cancelling the Overseas Citizen of India (OCI) status of Western journalists long based in India and preventing Indian-origin academics and scholars critical of the government and the RSS from even entering India. And yet, America is selling India its best defence technology. Why?

Many American observers see these incidents as signs of a changed India — one that is willing to violate its own traditions of rule of law and democracy. The old India, they contend, did not try to take out dissidents, separatists, or even terrorists, extrajudicially; it followed the due process of law religiously.

These changes have upset many in Washington. Last year, amid Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s whirlwind diplomatic push with US President Joe Biden at the White House, at the G-20 and elsewhere, former US diplomat Ashley Tellis argued that America was making a “bad bet” on India. Others warn publicly and privately that if the US continues to sell weaponry to India, it would encourage the current dispensation’s “worst tendencies” and create “another Israel” out of India.

The good thing for New Delhi is that policymakers in Washington aren’t really thinking about India, let alone withdrawing any cooperation over Pannun or other issues. America is inundated with sundry other headaches at the moment. The US Congress is split over whether taxpayers should continue sponsoring Ukraine’s defence against Russia. Russian dissident Alexei Navalny’s mysterious death has triggered more questions over how the US can punish Moscow.

Meanwhile, Israel’s relentless assault against civilians in Gaza has vitiated Biden’s relationship with Democrat voters. In Michigan, where a large Arab population lives, voters registered their displeasure with Biden in the primaries last week. The war has also revitalised Washington’s old foes in the broader Middle East: Iran-backed militias have unleashed fury at commercial vessels in the Red Sea, exchanged fire with US ships, and sent shockwaves through US military assets as far as Jordan.

Under the circumstances, India is far from a pressing priority for US foreign policy. For all its newsworthiness, both good and bad, India is still flying well under the global radar. It doesn’t offer an opinion on global crises, initiate any resolutions at the UN, or participate in mediation. (As one cheeky Western diplomat put it to me this week, “Perhaps India should invade the Maldives” to draw attention.)

To its credit, Delhi has played its neutrality card really well so far. In late January, External Affairs Minister Jaishankar travelled to Iran while that country was quibbling with the West over the tantrums of its militias and with Pakistan over the shortest-livedborder conflict in the world. Any other world power would have drawn attention if its foreign minister had waded into that tinderbox. Yet, remarkably, Jaishankar offered no views and made no news.

This has now emerged as a cornerstone of India’s refurbished non-alignment strategy: draw no attention and displease none, lest they scrutinise the skeletons in your closet and pick fights over them. But this stealthy tiptoeing around eggshells also presents a dilemma for India’s own global leadership aspirations. How does one become a vishwaguru without drawing the scrutiny of the world?