In preparing to host the Group of Twenty (G20) Summit in New Delhi, Prime Minister Narendra Modi has claimed credit for converting a heads of government meeting into “a people’s festival”. The government did well to popularise the Indian G20 agenda among people across the country and the world, even if this was sometimes done a la Bollywood style. It is, therefore, striking that in the run-up to the summit there has been considerable criticism of the Prime Minister’s leadership style in international media.
The world is taking an increasingly critical view of India. The Pew Research Institute recently reported that while 68 per cent of Indians polled felt that India is “getting stronger”, in most other G20 countries, including the United States, no more than a third felt this way and close to a half in fact felt nothing much had changed as far as India’s “influence in the world” is concerned.
Part of the reason for this may well be that global “influence”, so to speak, is not shaped by governments alone but by people and civil society institutions and the interaction between them. Official propaganda only feeds one’s own ego and is usually a waste of money. Consider the fact that at the government-to-government (G2G) level, China has become very “unpopular” in the West and yet, even today, China attracts more western tourists and business than India. Public perceptions about nations are as important as G2G relations. In fact, when diplomatic relations worsen, people-to-people (P2P) contacts can help maintain a balance in the relationship between nations, especially neighbours.
This, however, has not been the Modi government’s approach to both Pakistan and China. A deterioration in diplomatic relations has been accentuated by reduced P2P contacts. Apart from an occasional cricket match, which is played as if sportsmen are soldiers, there is virtually no social contact between the civil societies of India and Pakistan. It was certainly heartening to see athlete Neeraj Chopra’s mother gently rebuke an Indian journalist for suggesting that her son’s victory was sweeter since a Pakistani had been worsted.
Social contact among peoples through tourism, cultural festivals, academic programmes and so on is generally very low between India and her neighbours, but minimal with two important ones, China and Pakistan. All three governments are to blame for this situation and so there is no point in indulging in a blame-game. The low civil society traffic between China and India stands in contrast to the continuing P2P contact between China and the United States despite worsening G2G relations.
It is in our national interest that even as our government adopts a tough stance on national security issues pertaining to our neighbourhood, it ought to encourage greater civil society contact across borders, especially among media and academia. Neighbours must permit each other’s media to be properly stationed and represented. One of the best books in recent times about life in China was written by the Indian journalist Pallavi Aiyar. But that was over a decade ago. The absence of such media contact explains how dependent Indian media has become on western media for views on China.
Indian society and culture retain a certain appeal across much of Asia, including China, even as Indian elite attitudes and prejudices do not. Indian elites are viewed as arrogant, pro-West and lacking in cultural and nationalistic spirit. It is precisely for this reason that in the past many in China had enthusiastically reached out to the activists and intellectuals affiliated with the RSS, and preferred dialogues in Hindi and Mandarin to English. But the more recent closing of the Indian mind poses a challenge to a better understanding of important neighbours. More than one’s friends, it is of one’s enemies that one must have a better understanding.
Over the past decade, India-US civil society contacts have vastly increased and considerable official patronage has been extended by the Modi government to American think tanks and Indians invested in relations with the US. While this is useful in itself, it is a pity that no such interest has been shown in promoting India-China civil society contacts. On the other hand, most of the research on and study of China has been “securitised”, being increasingly restricted to retired military officials, diplomats and intelligence staff. While the non-governmental Institute of Chinese Studies is starved of funds, a well-funded China study group has been created within the government. In doing this, India is increasingly mimicking China where all research on India is confined to government institutions.
While experienced members of the armed forces, diplomatic corps and intelligence services must continue to study China closely and government policy would, understandably, be shaped by their assessments, it is also necessary that a democracy like ours encourages greater interaction and scholarship across civil society. Even if the Chinese government tries to create barriers to such interaction, we should, on our part, pursue it with vigour. Ironically, many Indian Americans long settled in the US have developed better professional contacts in Chinese institutions than Indian professionals have been able to. The few Indian scholars outside of government who have invested in the study of China find local funding difficult to come by. In fact, they have found it easier to secure American funding for the study of China.
If Prime Minister Modi has found it difficult to get President Xi Jinping to come down for the G20 summit, it is in part due to the deterioration in the bilateral relationship and questions in the minds of both about each other’s intentions. President Xi has contributed more to this unease than Prime Minister Modi. For his part, Modi has tried to reach out on the banks of the Sabarmati, around the lake in Wuhan and on the beach at Mahabalipuram. President Xi’s decision is regrettable but it is not in India’s interest to allow this snub to either overshadow the relationship or narrow India’s strategic options. As ancient civilisational entities and neighbours, both nations have to think long-term and not become trapped in strategic straitjackets that western textbooks offer.
The writer was advisor to former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh
