An acclaimed senior diplomat – Mr. Shyam Saran (former foreign secretary, a former Prime minister‘s special envoy and a former chairman of the National Security Advisory Board) has come up with an extraordinarily engaging and revealing book on Indian diplomacy and making of India‘s foreign policy.
The initial part of the book traces history of the Indian tradition of diplomacy, pursuit of state power and prudence in interstate relations to the time of Kautilya. He presents the contributions made by Kautilya and Kamandaki as the sources of India‘s today‘s approach in making of foreign policy.
While pondering on the most important events and developments in the post world war world he examines and rationalizes the policy choices and role played by India during the cold war and after the end of cold war. The major take away of the first module of the book is that if one has to understand the current patterns of political behavior of a country it is important to have profound knowledge of the traditional wisdom and cultural heritage of that country. India has a great legacy of thinkers who have left their imprints and have shaped the way of strategic thinking.
It is also equally important to understand how your adversaries think. Faults in judgment in the dealing with the Chinese culminated in the war of 1962 and this lapse in judgment can be attributed to the utter ignorance of Indian diplomats and political authorities about the Chinese history, culture and approach towards the world. China has its own world view that has been shaped by its memories as an ancient civilization. As put very aptly by the author, ―The enormous corpus of detailed historical records in China provides a contemporary reference point to the Chinese. Contemporary events are often interpreted using the wealth of historical analogies in the corpus.‖
The author does take into account the insights of the ancient Indian thinkers and recognizes their theories in principle but strictly warns against applying them mechanistically to the present day political affairs at international level. He argues that the existing international body politic is too complex to blindly apply the ancient dictums.
The book focuses on centrality of India in the South Asian region and its prominence and indispensability vis a vis its neighbours. The defining feature of Indian subcontinent is perpetual asymmetry in favour of India. India shares de facto borders with all the countries in South Asia except Afghanistan. Therefore, India is integral to the South Asian economic integration. Indian subcontinent as a region was traditionally highly interconnected and integrated entity that carried the imprint if ̳sacred geography‘ was torn apart and got fragmented. Eventually new sovereign independent political entities came into being with no sense of unity or a shared vision. Transport arteries linking different parts of the subcontinent were severed from time to time due to events like partition and wars.
If India has to re-emerge like China, it will have to improve the cross border trade volume with its neighbours including Pakistan. The trade dependency and identifying complementary businesses across the border will promote peace. For that to happen, according to the Saran, wherever possible India should extend national treatment to the citizens of the neighbouring countries instead of blocking men, capital, goods and services from entering into its territory. He maintains that in certain cases India shouldn‘t hesitate from making unilateral concessions. India cannot take full advantage of the growing web of economic interaction and interdependence binding Asia together while remaining isolated from its own immediate periphery. It has been India‘s primary long term interest to integrate these long lost parts, not politically, not by use of force but through economic interdependence. The author articulates this interest of economically integrating the region because prosperity of this region is deeply entwined with the security interests.
Crises in neighboring countries, conflict situations, or failed states may so completely engage the energies of the Indian state that the other objectives may have to take a back seat. Hence borders must be seen as ̳connectors‘ or as ̳transmission belts‘ on which developmental impulses can travel without barriers. For India to not look at the border zones as buffers which safeguard the populous regions it will take a major attitudinal change which can only happen gradually.
So far as the neighborhood is unstable, prosperity cannot be achieved. For establishing interdependence in terms of trade and person to person relations it is essential to improve cross border transport infrastructure. By becoming a prosperous nation and improving its own profile India can achieve the other major objectives of an emerging power. Saran assumes that it is equally vital to re-establish links with the extended neighbourhood of India with which it shares deep and old cultural and historical ties.
In the chapter on the Indo-Pak relations, he focuses on the most important of the outstanding issues between India and Pakistan, most of which are territorial disputes. While he generally adheres to the liberal outlook to the international relations, in case of Pakistan he opines that the problem with Indian policy makers is that they don‘t have credible response options between the extreme options of military retaliation and appeasement when it comes to Pakistan sponsored terrorism. India needs a toolkit of options short of war that can inflict cost and damages on Pakistan. India must find weak point and must not hesitate in exploiting it by stressing on it in order to build up countervailing pressure on Pakistan whenever it raised Kashmir or any other matter to criticize India. Saran advocated making statements on the continued human rights violations in Balochistan as early as 2005. But it was only in 2016-17 did the Indian government make an explicit statement on condition of the Baloch. Still, it remains Mr. Saran‘s belated achievement. The government did work on his line of thinking.
Saran has been very realistic in dealing with Pakistan. He goes on to suggest that India should increase its presence in Afghanistan including the security front. Short of putting our boots on ground, India should every possible thing to strengthen the Afghan security forces. He also makes an unusually bold statement about the „implicit and unarticulated anxiety‟ that the disintegration of Pakistan or descent into chaos will present India with an existential crisis. He states that to refrain from rapping Pakistan‘s rulers for fear of destabilizing that country is a flawed proposition. Whether Pakistan will survive as a stable entity or not will depend on what its people want. But he also says that the political elites in Pakistan have shown a great deftness in avoiding Pakistan‘s balkanization.
There are two chapters on China namely; ̳Understanding China‘ and ̳The India-China Border Dispute and After‘. In the former chapter, Saran expatiates the differences between the worldview of Indians and the Chinese. These differences become very clear in when it comes to art, literature, music, way of thinking, language, etc. Saran puts that ̳the Chinese culture is predominately a visual one... India‘s is predominantly an aural culture with spoken words.‘ Such differences become even starker in strategic thinking because as said earlier the Chinese revivalism takes inspiration from the history and in this history China is often seen the center of all activity with minor states around it. The latter chapter talks about the Indo-Sino border dispute and an infamous legacy of Indian politicians of not understanding the hints given by the Chinese. This problem emanates from the ignorance on Indian side about the Chinese culture and history of China.
Nepal‘s relationship with India is indeed a relationship of paradox. A part of book that focuses on India‘s relationship with Nepal, has facts about Nepal which clear the background. Such as Nepal may seem to be a homogeneous nation but it is not. Madhesis are not outsiders but in fact they are a community divided by the international border though it is true that the line is very porous.
The Indian response to the popular movement which earlier demanded the twin principle of ̳multiparty democracy‘ and ̳a constitutional monarchy‘ was wrongly perceived by Nepalis. Nepal, later settled for the complete removal of monarchy. India had to maneuver in order to be a good guy in the eyes of Nepali people. India has by and large been successful because it helped bring Nepali Maoists to the mainstream politics.
The section of the book deals with the India‘s dealings at different multilateral forums on critical issues such as Climate Change and in Nuclear Energy regimes. The most engaging is the author‘s account of US- India nuclear deal which met with great success.
The book includes several first hand experiences and sources of the former diplomat. Saran not only helps us understand better where we have gone wrong in terms policy making but he also makes important recommendations on various international issues which indeed deserve due attention from policy makers and students of foreign policy. Mr. Saran did not shy away while enunciating the faults in the decision making mechanism that India has while he also appreciates whenever it functioned impeccable deftness such as in case of Indo-US nuclear deal. He doesn‘t try to cover up for the internal tussles among bureaucrats over the authority and role in decision making. He also makes it clear that the Indian diplomatic establishment is utterly understaffed.
The book is a must read for it consists of many of the author‘s own experiences which he gathered while he was on different assignments during his service. It has gotten up really well and Mr. Saran simplifies the basic but the most crucial of concepts in foreign policy so that a common man can comprehend them.
