Sanjaya Baru | With Friends Like These, Who Needs Enemies?

It is truly shocking that the Indian government did not use its influence to prevent an attack on Iran, knowing full well that it would engulf the entire Gulf region. The issue is not whether India is pro-Israel, pro-Arab or pro-Iran. India had and has a vital stake in preventing any major conflagration in the Gulf. Every time there has been conflict in West Asia, the Indian economy has been negatively impacted.

The reason is simple. The Indian economy has become increasingly dependent on its links with West Asia. It is not just about oil and gas. Over nine million Indians live and work in the region. India has trade agreements with the United Arab Emirates. Dubai and Doha have become major transit halts for millions of Indians travelling to the United States, Europe, Latin America and Africa. Sovereign wealth funds in the Gulf States are investing in India. Many Indian business houses have set up family offices in Dubai. A lot of Indian wealth has moved to the region.

There was a time when the Indian interest in peace and stability in West Asia was largely defined by geopolitics and political considerations ranging from sentiments such as Asian solidarity to preserving communal harmony within India.

The fact that both the Sunni majority Saudi Arabia and the Shia majority Iraq and Iran are home to holy places for the Muslim world was also a consideration.

That was in the distant past. Since the invasion of Kuwait by Saddam Hussein in 1990, two new factors have come to define Indian policy towards the region -- oil and opportunity. An Indian economy that was beginning to grow at a faster rates in the 1980s found that it needed to import more oil from the region. Soon, accessing gas became another consideration.

The 1990 invasion of Kuwait also brought home to India the importance of protecting Indian lives in the region. From the 1970s the number of Indian workers living in the region has steeply gone up. The airlift of Indians from Kuwait to India was perhaps the biggest such operation in civil aviation history.

Then came the 1990s. India’s oil consumption went up and so did the number of Indians living in the Gulf and sending their savings home. The balance of payments crisis of 1990-91 forced India to borrow from the International Monetary Fund. The implosion of the Soviet Union at the end of 1991 meant that an important strategic ally had disappeared. As I have explained in my book, 1991: How P.V. Narasimha Rao Made History (Aleph, 2016), the combination of reaching out to the United States for support in the IMF board and not having the Soviet Union around reduced India’s foreign policy options. At least one consequence was Prime Minister Narasimha Rao’s decision to extend diplomatic recognition to Israel.

By the turn of the century, that is a quarter century ago, it had become clear to Indian strategic planners that stability in the Gulf was vital to India’s development and national security. Instability and conflict would hurt the Indian economy.

Over the past quarter century, the Gulf economies became increasingly important markets for Indian exports, a source of oil, gas and foreign exchange. India chose to establish defence relations with many of them, including Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and Oman. Iran, too, had become an important strategic partner given the fact that it offered India access to Central Asia and beyond and, critically, to Afghanistan.

All this was happening during a period when Israel had also emerged as an important defence partner, exporting armaments to India and offering access to vital intelligence on terrorist activity in the region. Note the fact that some of India’s best diplomats, especially those who had served in sensitive posts including in the Prime Minister’s Office, were posted as ambassadors to Israel.

Given all this it should be obvious to any observer of West Asian affairs that peace and stability in the region is of vital importance to India. Ensuring this and playing a pro-active role in preventing conflict ought to have been a priority for the Indian political leadership. So, the question arises, what role did Prime Minister Narendra Modi play in preventing an escalation of conflict in the region?

Mr Modi left Israel after a visit just a day before Israel and the United States attacked Iran. Did the Indian political leadership imagine, along with Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu, that Iran would collapse in a day and US and Israeli forces would ensure regime change within hours?

That is the kind of hubris that led Russian President Vladimir Putin to attack Ukraine in February 2022. He reportedly told Pakistan’s Imran Khan that within four days Russian troops would be in Kyiv and the Volodymyr Zelenskyy government would collapse.

Hubris has been the undoing of many ill-advised leaders who have taken their countries into war. The list is long and runs, ironically, from Hitler in Germany to Netanyahu in Israel. Did Prime Minister Modi advise caution? Could he? Would he?

The rhetoric of fatherland/motherland that Mr Modi used in describing Israel-India ties, the sporting of a saffron dress by Mr Netanyahu’s wife and a saffron kerchief in Mr Modi’s dress, introduce an ideological dimension into the bilateral relationship. That too on the eve of a war that has already cost India dear.

As energy prices rise, stoking inflation, and uncertainty mounts in the region, India will pay a heavy economic price, as it had done in the past whenever there was any conflict in West Asia.

What steps did India take to prevent this conflict? Did India in fact encourage Israel with all the bonhomie displayed during Mr Modi’s visit?

Did the Indian government imagine that being nice to Mr Netanyahu would please the Jewish lobby in the United States and get President Donald Trump to go soft on India? Any such illusion in New Delhi was completely blown up when a junior US official, a deputy secretary of state in the US state department, told a fawning Delhi seminar audience last week that the US was no longer in the business of promoting India’s rise.

It is India that has a stake in peace and stability in the Gulf. Neither the US nor Israel have that kind of a stake. By attacking Iran, they have deliberately destabilized the region. This will have serious consequences for the Indian economy.

With “friends” like these, who needs enemies?

Sanjaya Baru is a writer and economist. His most recent book is Secession of the Successful: The Flight Out of New India