Interview: India's Foreign Policy Under Modi
#74: With Milan Vaishnav
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Milan Vaishnav is a senior fellow and director of the South Asia Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, where he also hosts the Grand Tamasha podcast. He is the author of When Crime Pays: Money and Muscle in Indian Politics and the co-editor of Costs of Democracy: Political Finance in India. Our questions are in bold, his answers in block quotes.
How is India’s international position perceived from India?
I think there is a feeling of self-confidence and assuredness in India today whenever the topic of India’s role in the world arises. To a certain degree, I think this is a result of broader geopolitical factors—a more assertive China, a revanchist Russia, a declining unipolar America. This fragmentation has given India much greater room to maneuver, to be able to customize partnerships with a range of countries, many of whom disagree among themselves. Beyond geopolitics, I think there is a growing desire among the Indian public for their country to reclaim their rightful place at the global high table—a seat many believe was snatched away from it thanks to colonial rule and centuries of “foreign invasions.” This confidence is also, in part, a reflection of India’s developmental success but also the leadership of Narendra Modi and his government. He has helped create a perception that he has firmly placed India “on the map.”
What are India’s most important foreign policy objectives?
I think India’s core foreign policy objective is still inward looking. That is to say, this is a country with a per capita income of around $2500. Despite four decades of strong growth, it has a long way to go. For India, foreign policy is a tool by which India can address some of its developmental gaps at home, be it through technology, foreign investment, trade, manufacturing, and so on. Of course, India lives in a dangerous neighborhood, flanked by both Pakistan to the west and China to the north and to the east. So, foreign policy is also about protecting India’s territorial sovereignty and integrity and ensuring that its sovereign borders are not transgressed.
How have India’s foreign policy objectives changed under the Modi government?
There is a lot of continuity in Indian foreign policy going back to the Nehruvian period. The Modi government likes to say, under its watch, India has pursued a policy of “multi-alignment” as opposed to “non-alignment.” What this means is that India is not afraid to align with partners, but it will do so on an issue-by-issue basis. Many foreign policy experts believe India always did this, but it is just more open and transparent about how it conducts foreign policy now. Be that as it may, the idea of protecting and preserving India’s “strategic autonomy” very much remains a cornerstone of Indian foreign policy, even under this government. I would say there have a few new points of emphasis.
First, the Modi government has been much more ambitious and forward-leaning about using the diaspora as a force multiplier for Indian foreign policy. Previous governments have acknowledged this possibility, but Modi has taken to it like a moth to a flame.
Second, this government has sought to build soft power through celebrating tradition and Indic culture. Lobbying the United Nations to declare an “International Day of Yoga” or winning global recognition of an “International Year of Millets,” a cereal crop with supposedly ancient roots in India are two good examples.
Third, I think this government has been less shy about tilting toward the United States in its foreign policy outlook. The strategic embrace between India and the United States did not begin with Narendra Modi—not by a longshot—but his government has taken decisive steps to broaden and deepen that relationship in ways that have surprised some observers.
How have the tools used by Delhi to pursue its aims changed in recent years?
I mentioned the soft power tools earlier – I think India has seized on these to try and build India’s brand. It has been much more assertive in the conduct of its diplomacy and you see this is in its diplomatic statements, tweets, one-liners, and generally the way many Indian diplomats comport themselves. It’s also utilized controversial tools like covert action, not just in the neighborhood (as it’s done for some time) but also in further stretches of the globe.
The Indian government has been implicated in multiple assassination attempts on Sikh separatist leaders. Why is Sikh separatism such a concern for New Delhi?
All governments care deeply about territorial integrity and the sanctity of their borders. This government has embraced a more hawkish stance in defending these norms. While Sikh separatism has relatively few followers in India today, there is a violent legacy of insurgency in Punjab that is deeply scarring for many Indians, including many who work in the national security establishment. Therefore, the government took steps it believed were necessary to try and cut off overseas nodes of support for the Khalistani movement—a movement that ironically has more supporters outside of India than inside.
The alleged targeted killings on Canadian or American soil seem like awfully risky moves. What’s the rationale?
The rationale is to send a clear signal to those who advocate for the dismemberment of India. It comes from a similar place as the government’s decision in 2019 to unilaterally abrogate Article 370 of the Constitution, which had long granted the border state of Jammu and Kashmir a semblance of constitutional semi-autonomy. Many people inside the BJP have long felt that this constitutional arrangement helped fuel separatism. But the policy of targeted killings is indeed very risky, not least because you are carrying out an operation (in the case of the foiled assassination in New York) on the sovereign soil of one of your closest international partners. This is not my area of expertise, but I think it is pretty rare for one democratic country to conduct a targeted assassination of a citizen of another democracy on their own homeland. The U.S. administration does not want to let this get in the way of bilateral ties but there will be a trial and so quite a lot will end up in the public domain. The constant drip-drip-drip of information and salacious revelations will become hard to control.
Does the United States have a realistic chance of influencing New Delhi’s calculus? If so, how?
The United States does have leverage, but it has to use it sparingly. I think it has tried to use its energies to nudge India away from its near-exclusive military and defense partnership with Russia. It has tried, sometimes successfully and sometimes not, to use commercial and economic arguments (and the lure of greater investment) to push Indian leaders (including at the state-level) to enact reforms. On democracy, I think it has limited leverage and is also aware of its own reduced moral credibility, especially after Donald Trump and January 6th. There, it has preferred to work privately outside of the spotlight.
To what extent is India’s new assertiveness due to President Narendra Modi?
I think it is a bit of structure (changing geopolitics, rising incomes, greater access to technology) and agency, in the form of Modi’s leadership. There are few world leaders who would have the audacity or the capacity to sell-out Madison Square Garden or the Houston Texans football stadium for a diaspora event. But Modi did both of those things. He’s created a persona of a decisive leader, a doer, someone who breaks barriers in multiple ways—whether it is breaking through the glass ceiling of poverty or caste or authorizing retaliatory strikes on targets in sovereign Pakistani territory after terrorist attacks on Indian soil.
What role does foreign policy play in India’s elections?
I do think that it is playing a role in national elections. I don’t think it is the principal determinant of how an Indian voter votes (where kitchen table issues matter much more), but I do think that it figures into their decision somewhere. I’ve been struck, in the past five years, at how many ordinary Indians point to India’s growing role in the world—say, its hosting of the G20 last year—as a symbol of national renewal. Clearly, it was not enough to secure a third consecutive parliamentary majority for Modi and the BJP. But I think, net-net, it certainly helped his image.
What’s a question you wish you were asked and what’s your answer to it?
What impact is India’s politics having on its diaspora?
We are seeing signs that the social polarization that is evident in India is seeping into Indian communities overseas. We discussed the Sikh issue already. But there’s also the question of Hindu-Muslim relations and the presence of a dominant party that espouses majoritarian beliefs, which has had a knock-on effect in the diaspora. For instance, in the United States, we’re seeing more evidence that these divides are playing out in local U.S. politics. In the United Kingdom, there was the violent unrest in Leicester in 2022, which had communal overtones. In Canada, there is of course the question of Sikhs feeling disaffected by the pro-Hindu policies of the BJP and the way, for example, it tarred protesting Punjabi farmers as “Khalistanis” or “terrorists.”
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