C Raja Mohan writes: What Opposition manifestos say about changing domestic views on India’s foreign policy

In its manifesto, the CPM derides the Modi government’s policy as “shameful” and accuses it of not doing enough to stop Israel’s “genocidal war against the people of Palestine”. The CPM demands that India scrap “all security and military ties with Israel and demand UN imposed sanctions on Israel”. But as the party that established diplomatic relations with Israel and which has run India’s foreign policy for long, the Congress clearly has no intention of going that far.

CPM on India-US ties

The impact of the Left parties on national policy peaked during the first term of the UPA government (2004-09). Although its political weight in Parliament has significantly declined, the Left carries considerable intellectual influence in the chattering classes. Some of the Left’s positions — especially its trenchant critique of the US — have resonance not only among the traditionalists in the foreign policy community, but also the nativist right, including in the ruling party.

The CPM, which pulled out of the UPA coalition in 2008 on the question of India’s deepening ties with the US, has much to say on the subject a decade-and-a-half later. Its manifesto declares that the “BJP government has totally surrendered to US strategic, political, and security designs and to strengthen US imperialism’s designs for global hegemony”. The CPM accuses India of becoming a “subordinate ally” of the US and abandoning India’s “traditional leadership” of the non-aligned movement. You don’t have to agree with CPM to recognise that the US has emerged as India’s most important strategic partner over the last decade.

Congress silence on US

The US does not figure in the Congress manifesto’s foreign policy discussion. Having survived Left attacks on compromising with the US during UPA-1, Congress recognises that silence is golden when it comes to the US. Nor does “non-alignment” figure in it; the party’s references to the “Global South” cover that traditional ground. But the Congress party does talk about the “established policy” of “strategic autonomy in thought and action”. “Strategic autonomy” is often deployed in the Indian discourse to suggest the desire to maintain political distance from the US. Does the reference to strategic autonomy mean the Congress could reverse the BJP’s policies towards Washington?

Over the last decade, the Congress has avoided criticism of India’s deepening ties with the United States. During his visits to the United States and Europe over the years, Congress leader Rahul Gandhi refused to criticise India’s new warmth towards the West. But the emphasis on “strategic autonomy”, presumably, leaves some room for the Congress to differentiate itself from the BJP on the US question.

The China question

If Congress ducks a debate on the US, the Left does the same on China. The CPM brings utter clarity on US ties but minces its words on China despite the wide-ranging problems that bedevil Delhi’s ties with Beijing today. All it has to offer is a “negotiated settlement of the border dispute with China and promotion of all-round relations”. The Congress, in contrast, comes out swinging.

Its manifesto declares that “the Chinese intrusions into Ladakh and the Galwan clash of 2020 represented the biggest setbacks to Indian national security in decades”. It accuses Modi of giving a “clean chit” to China that considerably “weakened our negotiating position”. Criticism of the BJP’s China policy has been a consistent line of Congress attack since 2020. It now promises “to restore the status quo ante on our borders with China” and take the “necessary steps to adjust our policy towards China until this is achieved”.

For a party that has long been viewed, rightly or wrongly, as reluctant to engage with the US and soft on China, Congress appears to be rethinking the triangular dynamic with Washington and Beijing. The Congress perhaps sees that China’s power poses a great challenge to India and that the US must be a part of the answer. Assuming this conjecture is correct, it is not something that any mainstream party would say aloud. Does the Congress’s tough line on China mean we have arrived at a new normal in India’s triangular relations with China and the US?

A change in perception

In an interesting formulation that connects the domestic with foreign policies, the Congress promises to “repair India’s international image that has been damaged by the present government’s intolerance of dissent and suppression of human rights”. It would be surprising if this does not resonate well with sections of the Western foreign policy establishments that have been critical of India’s democratic backsliding.

What is not said is often as important as what is. Neither the Congress nor the CPM make a reference to Russia in their foreign policy sections. That is surprising given the special position that Moscow used to occupy in the worldviews of the Congress and the Left.

The Left’s rejection of India’s strategic partnership with the US, the Congress critique of the government’s China policy, and the collective lack of attention to Russia suggest how much the domestic political perception has changed in India’s great power relations over the last decade.

The writer is contributing editor on international affairs for The Indian Express and visiting professor at the Institute of South Asian Studies, National University of Singapore