India is now paying dearly for what may be called diaspora politics that Prime Minister Narendra Modi played by canvassing for US President Donald Trump asking Indian-origin settlers in the USA at the ‘Howdy Modi’ programme in Houston last year to vote for Trump. Modi turned India’s time-tested, age-old foreign policy of non-involvement in internal elections of other democracies on its head and interfered in the internal affairs of the USA.
Resultantly, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau merrily threw to the winds whatever scruples he might have had over ‘interfering’ with India’s internal affairs and openly extended support to farmers of Punjab and Haryana agitating outside Delhi for the repeal of the three controversial farm Bills the BJP-led NDA government has passed, bulldozing protests by farmer organizations and Opposition parties.
Now, to the consternation of India’s Ministry of External Affairs (MEA), the UN chief António Guterres has apparently taken a cue from the Canadian Prime Minister and supported the cause of the Indian farmers saying “people have a right to demonstrate peacefully and the authorities should let them do so.” Compounding matters further, 36 cross-party UK parliamentarians have also rallied behind the agitating farmers, while Trudeau didn’t pay any heed to India’s protest against the remarks he and some of his ministers had made expressing concern over the plight of farmers of Punjab and Haryana. He even iterated “Canada will always stand for the right of peaceful protests anywhere around the world.”
Because of the current Indian government’s adventurism in foreign relations other countries, they too have now started interfering with India’s internal matters in the name of making common cause with the relatives and friends of Indian diaspora in their respective countries. “This is an issue of particular concern to Sikhs in the UK and those linked to Punjab, although it heavily impacts on other Indian states. Many British Sikhs and Punjabis have taken this matter up with their MPs as they directly affected with family members and ancestral land in Punjab,” said a letter written to UK foreign secretary Dominic Raab by 36 MPs.
The response by the MEA so far tends to create the impression that it is trying to defend the indefensible. For this, the career diplomat and foreign minister S Jaishankar has to make a puerile move of staying away from Canada-led Foreign Ministers’ meeting on the COVID situation to be held on 7 December, obviously in protest against Trudeau’s support to the protesting Indian farmers. The COVID meeting is aimed at forging a common strategy to tackle the pandemic. Other members of the grouping include the UK, France, Germany, Italy, Brazil and Singapore. In fact, the group has been meeting once a month and Jaishankar himself attended the previous meeting on 19 November.
He performed a similar act by refusing to be at a programme held in the USA on the plea that a US Congresswoman, Pramila Jayapal, a Democrat, who had criticised the Modi government’s Kashmir policy, was to participate in it. Notably, Vice President-elect Kamala Harris has been a consistent supporter of Pramila in her activities.
It seems like the MEA has no option but to go through the motions of registering protests at various forums according to the set pattern, though these are bound to prove futile because of the government’s amateurish foreign policy initiatives solely aimed to suit the domestic needs of the ruling party. Staying away from such crucial discussions may eventually grossly harm India’s interests in the long run. Earlier, the Canadian High Commissioner Nadir Patel was summoned to the MEA and handed over a demarche registering India’s strong protest: “The Canadian High Commissioner was informed that comments by the Canadian Prime Minister, some Cabinet Ministers and Members of Parliament on issues relating to Indian farmers constitute an unacceptable interference in our internal affairs. Such actions, if continued, would have a seriously damaging impact on ties between India and Canada.” What Trudeau and some of his ministers, UK MPs and the UN said, indeed, constituted gross interference with India’s internal matters. But, in spite of India’s protests, the persistence in policy, especially of Canada, implies something sinister.
It’s an irony that the country’s internal problem has now got mixed up with foreign relations. The BJP led government, under PM Modi’s leadership has, for some time, been gearing the foreign policy to suit domestic electoral politics. Like India’s diaspora politics, Trudeau’s interference also has the fig leaf of Sikhs being the dominant ethnic group in some eight seats of the House of Commons in Canada and a significant minority group in 15 other seats where they can change the polling equation. That way, expressing concern for the well being of relatives of the Sikh populace living in Canada has far greater justification for Trudeau than Modi asking Indians who have renounced India to become US citizens to vote for Trump. That too did not really happen as Indians in America are reported to have en masse voted Democrat.
Experts in foreign relations read very deep into these multiple opinions recently aired. According to them, Canada, UK and the UN would not issue such reckless statements unless they very clearly understood where US President-elect Joe Biden’s Administration was headed. This could indicate an isolated India having to deal not only with China’s veto and Pakistan’s terror but also a US that looks away.