Jawaharlal Nehru and Narendra Modi, two Prime Ministers of different era, are as different as chalk and cheese, the former being naïve and docile and the latter bold, pragmatic, and practical. While Nehru’s contributions in modernizing Indian agriculture, dairy, core industries, and education cannot be denied, his non-alignment and foreign policy proved a damp squib and showed his leadership in poor light.
Key ideas of the Non-Alignment Movement (NAM) were shaped in the 1955 Bandung conference and 1956 Brioni meeting to promote independence from the two major power blocs of the USA and the USSR during the Cold War era. Five leaders, Nehru (India), Tito (Yugoslavia), Nasser (Egypt), Nkrumah (Ghana), and Sukarno (Indonesia), formally established NAM in 1961 in the Belgrade meeting and sought to pursue an independent path in international politics. They advocated national independence, sovereignty, territorial integrity, non-interference, peaceful conflict resolution, and opposition to imperialism and foreign domination. A utopian world order indeed! But NAM proved to be a weak initiative due to the poor and timid quality of leadership of all these five nations against the two powerful countries that dominated the world through the back door of the United Nations Security Council (UNSC).
Nehru pursued a farcical foreign policy, and his role in NAM was docile. A few questions expose him as a weak, timid, and compromising leader who lacked both a long-term vision for the country and the will to stand up to world bullies and protect our national interests: i) Why are all Indian borders unstable today, making it expensive to defend them? ii) Why did most of our neighbours turn against us? iii) Why did Tibet, a friendly neighbour, lose its status as a sovereign state? and iv) Why did no country intervene in India’s conflict with China in 1962? Not even a single Non-Aligned Nehru’s buddies or the other socialist-communist countries showed up when India needed them.
And when China attacked us, Nehru ran to the USA for help. He wrote to President Kennedy requesting substantial military aid, including fighter jets and bombers, to counter the Chinese invasion, a significant departure from his non-alignment stance. Israel was the other country that Nehru refused to acknowledge, but it still came to India’s help in terms of weapons and security equipment.
Nehru steadfastly refused to reevaluate Chinese interest along India’s northern border even after it annexed Tibet in 1951. What kind of foreign policy he pursue, where India lost significant territory in the 1962 Sino-Indian War in the Aksai Chin in Ladakh and faced setbacks in the Tawang tract in Arunachal Pradesh? Nehru was more bothered by forming NAM rather than concentrating on India’s borders!
A leader with a vision would have acted differently. The rule of thumb is to make strategic alliances and economic partnerships with strong nations with a clear-cut road map that benefits our country and helps in marching towards a Viksit Bharat. This is no Rocket Science. Nehru did not have this foresight; otherwise, he would have sided with the USA as the times demanded; India would have been in a far stronger economic position, and neither China nor a weakling like Pakistan would have dared to attack us, and the Kashmir issue would have long since be resolved in India’s favour. He did not know the simple fact that there are no permanent friends or enemies in foreign policy, and the Nation’s interest comes first.
Cut to 2014. Narendra Modi arrived on the scene and changed the rules of the game from Non-Aligned to All-Aligned or Multi-Aligned policy, putting India’s interest first. He led from the front to create an image of India as a destination for Foreign Direct Investment by coining the “Make in India” phrase that showcases three “D” (Demand, Demography dividend, and Democracy) that India offers. He is aware that the world is facing recession, and with the Tughlaq Tariff policy of American President Donald Trump and the debt trap policy of China, big companies are looking for investment somewhere and realise that India can be the engine for growth.
Modi is equally hawkish. Take the example of Pakistan. He wanted to be friendly with them and invited Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif when he took oath as PM of India in 2014, and also made a surprise, unplanned visit to Lahore on his birthday. He wanted Pak to shun the culture of guns without realising that it is a proverbial dog’s tail in the pipe since partition that cannot be straightened out. In provocation to terrorists’ attacks in Jammu and Kashmir, without hesitation, he launched operations like Uri, Balakot, and Sindoor to teach them a lesson by striking deep in their hearts at strategic locations. He made it clear that he is open to friendship but not at the cost of the nation’s pride, and under the shadow of terrorism. Another example is the recent shadow boxing for one-upmanship of Donald Trump with him; he showed nerves of steel and refused to capitulate under tremendous US tariff pressure to open up the Indian agricultural sector to them, and also stop buying cheap oil from Russia. Every time Trump opened his mouth, he exposed himself as a non-serious US President who would ultimately harm the American people.
Modi has established himself as the most popular leader in the world, enjoying a 72% rating against a mere 43% for American President Trump. He has emerged as the voice of the global south that is making the United Nations irrelevant. He has warmed up to Japan and Vietnam, and his visits to Central Asian and African countries yielded several free trade agreements. He is very much loved in the Islamic world, barring a few countries, and is bestowed with the highest honour from them. He acts with world leaders as equals and wants to be genuinely friends with the world based on India’s ethos of Vasudhev Kutumbakam, where the whole world is our family. He believes in win-win deals, unlike the bulldozing techniques and kidnapping acts of Trump, a recent example is Venezuela and the threat of Greenland takeover and even Canada to be America’s 51st state. There is a long list of very impressive achievements of his foreign and All-Aligned policy that has put India in a pole position. The secret of Modi’s successful foreign policy is incomplete without the mention of the extraordinary and unstinted support of India’s genius Foreign Minister Dr. S. Jaishankar.
But the road is long. The shortcomings that arose when Nehru mishandled, blundered, neglected and mismanaged foreign policy in the aftermath of Indian partition and left issues unfinished and pending for posterity, need to be addressed by Narendra Modi, who has taken up this arduous task of cleaning up the mess created and amplified by the Congress rule in the country.
I will end with a remark of Narendra Modi at a rally in February 2014, as a prime ministerial candidate. Responding to critics like P Chidambaram, the then Finance Minister, who had a degree from Harvard Business School and had reportedly mocked Modi’s knowledge of economics. Referring to his own humble “chaiwallah” background and practical governance experience of Gujarat as the Chief Minister for 3 consecutive terms against the elite academic credentials of his opponents, he said, “hard work, not Harvard, was needed to develop the country”. I will end the article echoing the Prime Minister’s thought process, “Successful people need not be gifted with foreign degrees; they just work hard and then succeed on purpose.
