Book Review: INDIA FIRST
'Why Bharat Matters' by S. Jaishankar
Say you have just returned to Israel after your second visit to India, and you are left with more questions than answers. One place to turn for resolution – though he focuses mainly on international relations and foreign policy – is the new book by S. Jaishankar, India’s Minister of External Affairs and a protege of the country’s charismatic 74-year-old dynamo Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
I try to see India plain, yet I still find it enchanting. The squalor in India is unsettling. However, it is far from everywhere. India struck me as an unfinished country with a plethora of uncompleted buildings and a dearth of sidewalks. To this Westerner’s sensibilities, disarray permeates – an untidiness characterized by refuse scattered helter-skelter, ubiquitous lethargic street cows, wired monkeys, and sleeping dogs. There is whiffy air pollution; something is always smoldering – wood, leaves, trash, incense.
On a train trip from Himachal Pradesh approaching Delhi, I observed wretched scenes of people living in tents or hovels amidst debris and filth. I appreciate that one might see something similar in New York City, Los Angeles, or San Francisco, where vagrancy and homelessness are rampant. However, in those US cities, one does at least see garbage trucks.
Beyond these traveler scenes, though, India is a vast, manifold subcontinent and an economic powerhouse whose people are keen to advance through hard work. I did not make it to Bangalore, the Silicon Valley of India. Still, big tech and modernity – alongside cleanliness and comparative orderliness – are on display in cities such as Jaipur and Delhi. In a country of some 1.4 billion souls, there is no shortage of workers who strive to differentiate themselves from their colleagues. Some of the people I encountered seemed overqualified for the work they did.
Population and tradition
India is the world’s fifth-largest economy behind Japan, Germany, China, and the United States. There is, of course, an inequality in the distribution of wealth. India is burdened with a Gini Index of 32.8. But register this: the higher the Gini value, the higher the inequality. The figure for Israel is 37.9, and for the US, 41.3. So, arguably, India, where the cost of living is comparatively low, is more egalitarian than either Israel or the US. However, balance that notion with the median monthly salary in India, which is the equivalent of NIS 1,150 or $314. In Israel, where the cost of living can feel Manhattan-like, the average monthly salary is roughly $3,400.
Demographics had been a drag on India: an earlier population explosion and allegiance to caste, religion, and clan all hindered upward mobility. Now, though, the fertility rate has dropped to around the replacement level. The move from rural areas to big cities seems to be declining. And even caste and religion appear more permeable.
India is overwhelming Hindu (79.8%). That said, its Muslim minority (14.2%) comprises 10% of the global Muslim population. There are 211 million Muslims in India. Put another way, Egypt and Iran together do not have as many Muslim faithful as India. Add in Christians (2.3%), Sikhs (1.7%), some 8.5 million Buddhists, and a minuscule 4 million Jains, and you’ve got a fascinating population brew. Let me not forget that it is also home to a sizeable Tibetan diaspora led by the 14th Dalai Lama.
Under India’s federal system, there are 28 states and eight territories. India is a tad more than one-third the size of the continental US. It is heterogeneous and multilingual, with English serving as the de facto common tongue. As a legacy of British colonial boundary drawing, there are regions with autonomist leanings, among them Kashmir and Punjab in the north.
Also, India is situated in a not-great neighborhood. It has land borders with expansionist China, the Buddhist kingdom of Bhutan, mainly Hindu Nepal, the failed Islamist state of Pakistan, the former East Pakistan aka Bangladesh (one of the ‘least developed countries’ in the world), and Buddhist Myanmar (the former Burma now led by a military junta). India’s stockpile of nuclear weapons gives it a deterrent capability against China and Pakistan. It spends about 1.89% of its GDP ($78 billion) on defense.
India on the world stage
What role does India see for itself in the international arena? According to Jaishankar, India is a central player in the G-20. It acknowledges a globalized, multipolar world in which US power and influence are waning.
India has moved beyond its former role as leader of the so-called non-aligned bloc or the Third World (supposedly neither pro-American nor pro-Soviet). In its earlier incarnation, India saw itself as altruistically taking second place to Mao’s China. But Beijing did not appreciate India’s self-abnegation.
Jaishankar argues that while India’s policy is still not selfish, it puts itself first nowadays. Under today’s “nationalist diplomacy,” there is no looking the other way in the face of acts of belligerence by China or Pakistan.
What India wants is to be recognized as a regional power and emerging global power – deserving of a seat in the UN Security Council. It wants stability and reliability in the global supply chain. It also wants the international community to appreciate the threat posed by an expansionist China and an intransigent Pakistan.
Outsiders need to realize that Hindu civilization defines the country’s identity. India may have been held back from modernity by religion and caste. Still, it draws immense strength and resilience from its ancient civilizational values – a bit like Israel and our Jewish civilization.
In his book, Jaishankar seeks to reinforce Bharat as a concept that encompasses pride in India, its history, and the resurgence of its civilization. Think Eretz India and Hadar India – the land of India and pride in India —its beauty, majesty, and honor. Hinduism provides today’s India with its ethos and serves as a roadmap for policy at home and abroad. Its scriptures, “midrash,” and folktales serve as a wellspring for political values. Jaishankar quotes them extensively in his book.
India’s government wants Indians to have economic opportunities abroad. It also wants to tap into the Indian Diaspora as a source of influence. And I think it wants them to think of India as the national homeland of the Hindus (though Jaishankar does not say this explicitly). The difficulty is that Muslims outnumber Hindu ex-pats and their offspring in the UK, US, and EU.
India and Israel
Jaishankar mentions Israel only in passing. From where India sits, the “Middle East” is “West Asia,” and India is profoundly interested in what happens in our region. India became independent in August 1947 and Israel in May 1948. Millions died or were killed in the partition that gave birth to Hindu-led India and Muslim-ruled Pakistan.
Under the social democratic Soviet-leaning Congress Party and the country’s first prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, India saw itself as a leader of the non-aligned bloc and Israel as part of the wicked West.
Notwithstanding its conflict with Muslim Pakistan, New Delhi sought to establish itself on good terms with the Arab and Islamic world. To that end, it wholeheartedly adopted the Arab line at the UN and mapped out a third-world strategy with Egypt’s Gamal Nasser. In 1974, India was the first non-Arab state to recognize the Palestine Liberation Organization.
When it came to Jewish history and Zionist aspirations, India’s founding elites labored under profound misapprehensions. In late 1938, in the shadow of Kristallnacht, Mohandas Gandhi wrote that he had no sympathy for the idea of a Jewish return to Zion. His advice to desperate and despairing European Jews was to face the Nazis with passivity; to the Jews in Palestine, he counseled: try to make friends with the Mufti and his followers.
India recognized Israel in 1950, allowing Jerusalem to maintain a consular presence in Mumbai (then Bombay). However, it was not until 1992 that full diplomatic relations were established. By then, the Soviet empire had collapsed; Pakistan’s A.Q. Khan was working feverishly on an Islamic bomb, and Egypt had long since made its cold peace with Israel.
Nowadays, under Modi’s conservative and religious-oriented Bharatiya Janata Party, India no longer takes a knee-jerk anti-Israel stance.
Referring to the Hamas attack of October 7, 2023, Jaishankar said: “Number one – we must be clear that what happened on October 7 was terrorism; no caveats, no justification, no explanation. It was terrorism. Number two, as Israel responds, it is important that Israel should have been very mindful of civilian casualties. It has an international obligation to observe humanitarian law.”
In contrast, the opposition Congress Party remains wholly unsympathetic to the Zionist idea. Though, even under the BJP, I can’t imagine India would ever vote with Israel in the UN General Assembly. It explicitly opposes Palestinian Arab terrorism. However, like every other country, it chooses to buy into the delusional idea that all the Palestinian Arab polity wants is a state of its own alongside Israel.
Beyond ideological sensibilities, India is the third largest global importer of petroleum. After Russia, most of the country’s crude petroleum comes from Iraq, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates. So, India will never want to antagonize the Arabs. In fact, India has held observer status in the Arab League since 2007.
Jaishankar as Kissinger
In writing this readable book, Jaishankar takes a page from Henry Kissinger and offers students of international relations pointers on diplomacy, negotiation, and the exercise of power. He teaches that the human factor is key; diplomacy hinges on chemistry and credibility. Yes, countries act on their interests, but he sees Indian policy as going beyond transactionalism. India wants to work its foreign policy to the advantage of its people and domestic economy.
In the end, Prime Minister Narendra Modi sets the tone – his work style, personality, and Hindu religiosity govern. Modi is no Donald Trump. He is sophisticated, ascetic, of humble origins, and plainly wants to be seen as empathetic. He espouses internationalism abroad and nationalism at home. His message, amplified by Foreign Minister Jaishankar, is that you can have pride in your own culture, history, and faith system without denigrating other nations as parasites, fraudulent, or “shithole countries.”
Postscript. I have gotten feedback on this piece. In particular, I have been criticized for going too easy on Modi. So I sat through a long, fawning interview that Modi gave to Lex Fridman. Modi is boastful, but given what he has achieved, I imagine he sees false modesty as pointless. And Lex was so uninhibited in his brownnosing that maybe Modi could not contain himself. What is clear is that Modi is Hindu-haredi-Leumi – that is, an ultra-Orthodox, hyper-nationalist. A cultural divide may skew my assessment, but it feels like he thinks he knows the Truth, and I do find that off-putting.
And a further follow-up from the WSJ
“India Erases Islamic and Colonial History”
https://www.wsj.com/opinion/india-erases-islamic-and-colonial-history-cancel-culture-sectarians-df19974b?mod=hp_opin_pos_4#cxrecs_s
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