The irony is inescapable that India’s Prime Minister is more at home in front of an NRI audience than with fellow citizens in New Delhi or Chennai. In his comfort zone while speaking before those who can understand Hindi, Mr Modi held forth in an impressive fashion speaking on issues he usually skirts in India and which he addressed only when national outrage built up over the beastly rapes of young girls demanding a response from him. In his well-attended Town Hall meeting at a historic venue in London, the PM made a belated attempt to justify his earlier silence in India over the rapes, making the valid point that different governments can’t be compared on the metrics of incidence. Stressing his disadvantaged background and his early days as a tea seller, Mr Modi seemed to bond with a gathering that was eating out of his hand in a lengthy session in which he didn’t say anything new.
It’s a sign of changing times that Mr Modi should be greeted by protesters in London too, including those from minorities like Sikhs and Muslims who brought up their sense of insecurity. Not having shown any inclination to meet the media or the electorate which voted his party into power, Mr Modi fielded questions at Westminster and spoke at length on issues ranging from education for youth, jobs for the young and medicines for the elderly in Modicare, which he said reaches at least half the Indian population. It appears he has cultivated a certain dissonance from hot issues that are being stridently debated across India, except at election meetings where his rhetoric can be sharp, if divisive. He did acknowledge in London, though, that there is criticism against him, out of which he says he makes stairs on which he climbs, metaphorically of course.
There’s no reason to doubt the genuine warmth in ties with the old colonial masters who face post-Brexit challenges and need friends and allies in a setting that has changed dramatically after the referendum. With a billion-dollar Indian investment on the anvil , that may save thousands of UK jobs, Mr Modi was a hit with PM Theresa May. For the first time, India also criticised Russia, albeit indirectly, in a reference to the appalling nerve agent attack in the joint statement with Britain regarding the suspected killing by Russian agents on foreign soil.
That was the one notable thing in an otherwise friendly bilateral that was part of the good optics of Mr Modi’s UK trip. The bonhomie again shows how India’s diplomacy has had a smooth sail away from South Asia in the past four years. Domestic issues in India may not have been addressed as assiduously. India’s market size, as much as China’s, tends to lend it importance abroad, in which Prime Minister Modi revels.
