World of difference

In underlining the essence of a pragmatic foreign policy at the foundation-laying ceremony this week for the Jawahar Bhavan, which would become the home for the Indian Foreign Office, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has said all the right things. But that is unlikely to end the charade of a debate on foreign policy that the Indian political class has been conducting in the last few days.

At a time when the entire world is speculating on the global implications of India8217;s rise as a great power, Delhi is pretending it is a weak third world country under external pressures. The visits of Presidents Jacques Chirac and George Bush should have been moments for the celebration of India8217;s entry into the nuclear club house. Instead, Delhi is about to squander the moment. In the slightly surreal world reflexive anti-Americanism, 8220;independent foreign policy8221; is the code word for tailing Moscow and Beijing and opposing the US on every issue. The BJP, which ran a confident foreign policy and liberated India from the shackles of third worldism, has not distinguished itself either. It was Atal Bihari Vajpayee who called the United States India8217;s 8220;natural ally8221; six months after the nuclear tests in May 1998, and successfully got the American sanctions lifted by 2001. Today Vajpayee8217;s party, which had conducted the nuclear tests, has joined the Communists, who decried Pokharan II, in muddying the debate on the nuclear pact and relations with the United States. The responsibility for this drift falls squarely at the door of the Congress. Instead of taking credit for the foreign policy advances under the UPA government over the last few years, the party has allowed the loud mouths, opportunists and whiners to make the party jump at its own shadow.

Twenty years ago, Rajiv Gandhi had the courage of conviction to keep the Congress doubters at bay as he built India8217;s first bombs, normalised relations with China, engaged Pakistan, renewed contacts with Israel and opened the doors to the United States. In the last two decades, India has been stronger than ever before. If only Sonia Gandhi and Manmohan Singh could pick up a fraction of Rajiv8217;s conviction, they would be leading the debate on the nuclear pact and the US relationship. And they would not have let one recalcitrant Department8217;s trade unionism come in the way of implementing a pact that delivers strategic parity with China and political differentiation from Pakistan.