Opinion PM Modi in Egypt: Why the country’s boycott of G20 meet in Srinagar must not affect bilateral ties

PM Modi’s visit will provide an opportunity to build on this common ground and expand it into new areas. A comprehensive strategic partnership document is under discussion and could move closer to fruition if both sides get over some lingering reservations. Trade is growing and defence cooperation, in particular, has seen a fair bit of activity with air force and special ops exercises and a series of high-level visits. As India shifts its focus towards defence exports, Egypt could be a potentially significant market. But the Egyptian army does have a strong preference for pricey Western hardware despite its cash-strapped economy and I wouldn’t hold my breath unless we can soften the deal with a concessional line of credit. That might prove to be a bit of a challenge because Egypt, as a middle-income country, won’t be eligible for the generous terms that we offer to the highly-indebted poor countries unless we can come up with a special dispensation.

But there is a more exciting opportunity on the horizon in the form of the Suez Canal Economic Zone (SCZONE) that straddles both banks of the Suez Canal and includes six ports that offer easy access to markets in Europe, Africa and the Gulf. It also benefits from the fact that Egypt has an extensive web of free-trade agreements with each of these geographies. I had drawn attention to the importance of the Zone in January, highlighted the rapid inroads being made by China through a 7.3 sq km area, and argued that we should do something similar. In this context, it was particularly refreshing to meet Waleid Gamal Eldien, the Chairman of SCZONE who was in Delhi on the eve of PM’s visit. He spoke about his team’s efforts to attract Indian business groups into the zone and also his willingness to earmark a dedicated tract of land for India. It will be interesting to see if this topic figures prominently during the PM’s meetings with President Sisi and with PM Mostafa Madbouly and his “India Unit” of senior ministers. Even as we focus on our Make in India campaign, a substantial presence in SCZONE could be a boost for an export-oriented “Made by India for the World” programme.

There is also a dimension that goes beyond these imperatives of geoeconomics and geopolitics. Egypt occupies a very special place in the Muslim world and Cairo’s Al Azhar University, founded during the Fatimid Caliphate in the 10th century is widely regarded as the world’s most prestigious institution for Islamic learning. It is the leading centre for Islamic jurisprudence and many of its alumni go on to become ulema in countries across Asia and Africa. Over the last decade and especially after the demise of the short-lived Muslim Brotherhood government in 2013, Al Azhar has played a key role in countering the half-baked theological doctrines spouted by terrorist groups like Al Qaeda and ISIS. But Al Azhar also has students in regular faculties like commerce, engineering, medicine, etc., and India has done well to establish a Centre for Excellence in IT at the hallowed campus as part of an MoU that was signed during my time in Egypt in 2013.

The Grand Mufti of Egypt is traditionally elected by a council of senior scholars at Al Azhar and we have built a good relationship with Sheikh Shawki Allam who has occupied the position since 2013. We took the sensible initiative to host him in India as part of ICCR’s Distinguished Visitors Programme in May 2022 even after Al Azhar had issued a mildly worded rebuke on Nupur Sharma’s prurient comments in March. It is significant that the PM will be meeting the Grand Mufti in Cairo.

He will also visit another famous monument from the same Fatimid era to which India’s Dawoodi Bohra community traces its heritage — the 11th-century mosque of Al Hakim in old Cairo. It was reconstructed and restored by the Bohra community in the 1970s and opened to the public by President Sadat in 1980. They undertook a second major round of renovation that was completed in 2017, a feat that secured the Order of the Nile for their spiritual leader Syedna Mohammed Burhanuddin. The visit to a historic mosque is good foreign policy optics with a tinge of domestic politics because the Bohras have been steadfast supporters of PM Modi since his days as Chief Minister of Gujarat.

The diversity of engagements planned during PM’s visit suggests that after a long hiatus, relations between two of the world’s oldest civilisations are on an upswing and it is churlish for some of our armchair commentators to pounce on the fact that Egypt did not participate in the meeting of the G20 working group on tourism in Srinagar in May. Just because we invited Egypt to G20 does not mean that it will jettison its longstanding position on J&K or on UN reform. Despite the difficult economic circumstances that it is currently facing, Egypt strives to maintain a degree of autonomy in its foreign policy postures and we Indians should understand this approach better than most. The fact that PM Modi is going ahead with the visit despite that unnecessary kerfuffle over Srinagar shows that there is a far greater vision and maturity in our foreign policy establishment than in some of our armchair media warriors. But we should also be clear-eyed that the trajectory of our ties with Egypt will be a lot less linear than the dramatic transformation that we have seen with UAE and Saudi Arabia. Like India, Egypt is replete with contradictions. It is ancient and modern, authoritarian and argumentative, egotistic and naïve — all at the same time. As we embark on this journey, we will have to be prepared for the long haul.

Navdeep Suri is a former ambassador to Egypt