At a time when it is being forced to reorient its entire foreign policy, the government needs to proactively pursue a regional strategy 

The tragedy of India’s foreign policy is that in its anxiety to project this country as a major global player, it has neglected its duty to first become a regional power. New Delhi displayed the same stunned disbelief and helplessness at this week’s popular revolt ousting the Nepal government as it did when confronted with eerie replicas of similar outbursts of public anger led by youthful mobs that felled regimes in Bangladesh last year and Sri Lanka in 2022. All three are important neighbours of India, but an increasingly insular intelligence and diplomatic apparatus have in recent years repeatedly been overtaken by the cataclysmic events in our neighbourhood over the past few years.

A regional power is one because its dominant population, economy, and military in the region are not just respected but provide leadership to smaller countries in close proximities by land or water. True, there are perennially hostile neighbours like Pakistan and China, itself a global giant, who would not accept this country’s leadership and, at best, offer conditional cooperation. But there are at least seven other countries that share borders and coastlines with India with which it has palpably failed to have substantive diplomatic heft and political engagement, let alone close people-to-people ties.

Primary importance to the neighbourhood was given by India’s first spymasters, BN Malik, who gave teeth to the country’s fledgling foreign intelligence network after Independence, particularly in the aftermath of the 1962 Chinese debacle, and RN Kao, trained by the former, who set up RAW (Research Analyses Wing) that came in useful as Indira Gandhi sought to follow a more aggressive foreign policy than her father.

Significantly, Kao, nearly two years before the 1971 Bangladesh war, had warned her that she should be prepared for East Pakistan to secede. As the Awami League-led Bengali movement gathered momentum, the RAW chief, based on his reports from across the border, doggedly argued for a more interventionist approach by India despite fierce resistance from senior diplomats, foreign secretary TN Kaul and Indian ambassador in Islamabad Srikant Acharya.

India’s image got a huge boost in the neighbourhood after its resounding victory over Pakistan, defying threats from the United States and the hidden menace of China. After helping create a new country, Indira Gandhi further established her dominance in the region by testing the Pokhran nuclear device. Unfortunately, her troubles at home over the next decade considerably shrunk India’s stature as a regional power.

The imposition of Emergency that led Mrs Gandhi to lose power to a motley unstable coalition of opposition parties and, despite a remarkable comeback to power, being overcome by a violent Khalistani movement that ultimately led to her assassination all dented this country’s image of a leader in the neighbourhood.

The rise of her son and successor, Rajiv Gandhi, as a young charismatic leader, riding a spectacular unprecedented electoral victory, did promise a return to India’s prominence but failed to deliver. Soon embroiled in the badly mishandled Bofors corruption scandal, the young prime minister compounded his woes by getting embroiled in a conflict in neighbouring Sri Lanka, triggered by a violent movement by the ethnic Tamil minority for a separate Eelam state.

Unlike in Bangladesh, Rajiv botched things up by first making rash, unfulfilled promises to Eelam separatists, quietly encouraged by New Delhi for several years, and then getting conned by Sri Lanka into sending Indian troops to unsuccessfully combat Tamil militants, which many consider this country’s worst diplomatic and military disaster.

Some equilibrium returned to India’s shaky position in the region after the advent of two foreign policy-astute prime ministers, PV Narasimha Rao and Atal Behari Vajpayee, with their highly competent and all-powerful foreign secretaries, JN Dixit and Brijesh Mishra. Navigating Indian foreign policy through a period of great turmoil and change in the neighbourhood and across the world, including the end of the Cold War, the two almost successive governments not only re-established regional connections but also forged better links with the more difficult neighbours, China and Pakistan, despite the Kargil War.

Sadly, over the past two decades, New Delhi, first under the Dr Manmohan Singh-led UPA government and then under the current Modi regime, has been far too obsessed with the two big powers, the United States and China, and their fight for supremacy to pay attention nearer home. Dr Singh and his key aides, particularly during his second term after the Indo-US nuclear deal, tended to follow Washington’s cue on other countries, including the region whose importance appeared to be underestimated. There was also a steady deterioration in our regional intelligence networks that was underlined by the shocking 26/11 attack on Mumbai by Pakistani terrorists.

With the coronation of the larger-than-life Prime Minister Narendra Modi, there has been a further complicating dimension to the Indian foreign policy. This is the first time that domestic politics has directly intruded on bilateral relations with our neighbours. Nor has any other prime minister sought to use the optics of his personal interactions with major world leaders and, at top international events, as an image-building exercise for the domestic audience as a Vishwaguru.

Not surprisingly, when optics tend to obscure calculated, informed foreign policy decisions, the importance of steadily building regional trust, respect, and support takes a back seat. However much India may be caught in the present vortex created by Donald Trump, buffeting this country between the United States, China, and Russia, it cannot play the role of a hanger-on in the games being played by the great powers.

It is a sobering thought that, leave aside China and Pakistan, India cannot claim it wields serious influence over the other seven neighbouring countries—Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Burma, Maldives, Nepal, Sri Lanka, and even Bhutan—now that the latter has forged close links with China. At a time when it is being forced to reorient its entire foreign policy, the government needs to proactively pursue a regional strategy and not remain a helpless spectator.