by JAWED NAQVI
The Beatles needed to breathe again after a traumatic experience with Imelda Marcos. They found solace in India even if they were not eventually convinced of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi’s healing powers.
Nelson Mandela needed to thank those who with their moral courage stood by him through the thick and thin of apartheid. He visited India at the top of the list just to express his deep gratitude. India was regarded as a spiritual Alamut and a politically upright comrade, not calculating or self-regarding, but an earnest friend.
It has taken 11 years to sully the image. Hindu Nepal or Muslim Saudi Arabia, Christian US or Buddhist Sri Lanka and, closer to home, the marooned Sikhs in Punjab — the message from everyone is unmistakable and loud. Hindu nationalism has humiliated India and has put it on a slippery slope to a catastrophe.
All the tight and usually unwarranted embraces the Indian prime minister unleashed on foreign dignitaries over a decade or so and got photographed for a captive media to sing paeans to, ring hollow today.
Indians abroad are increasingly enduring the slings and arrows of racism, jingoism and slur, all because they know that returning home holds even more dire prospects for them. How many Indian prime ministers before the advent of Narendra Modi needed to lunge at heads of state or government to hug them at any opportunity? Or which of them would even remotely consider committing electoral support to a foreign leader as Modi did, least of all to “my friend Donald Trump”?
Indira Gandhi comes to mind for famously ducking a fraternal bear hug from Fidel Castro when he handed her the gavel at the 1983 Non-Aligned Summit in New Delhi. And yes, she did make personal intervention with a foreign government, albeit when she was not in office. That’s when she pleaded with Gen Zia to spare Z.A. Bhutto’s life. She held Nusrat Bhutto’s hand from her rented home in Delhi throughout the traumatic denouement.
As for Modi’s halcyon days with Saudi Arabia before the rippling events of last week, he has much to thank Manmohan Singh for setting it right. During the Cold War, India had scant interest in the Saudi monarchy. In fact, Giora Becher, the Israeli envoy to India in 1992, shared a handy insight. “At any time the United States sold arms to Saudi Arabia, Indian and Israeli ambassadors made a beeline to the State Department to protest. They might have saved money by sharing a taxi, it was so regular.”
It can’t be blamed on terrorism that Modi’s India struggles to find stable relations with other neighbours too — of varied religious hues.
Singh broke the taboo by inviting the Saudi king as chief guest for the 2006 Republic Day parade. It had the high symbolism of A.B. Vajpayee visiting Lahore’s Minar-i-Pakistan in 1999. Why then the brouhaha when Saudi Arabia signed a defence pact with Pakistan?
Riyadh has always had special and equal ties with Islamabad. When the Saudis asked Pakistan to join the war against the Houthis in 2015, Pakistan’s parliament turned down the proposal. But after what Israel did with Qatar, it was a different story. Nobody in the South Asian neighbourhood is as worried as India is. It needn’t have been this way.
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