Rahul Gandhi and PM Modi’s back-to-back US visits, is this the beginning of a new internationalism?

New Delhi: Congress MP and Leader of Opposition in Lok Sabha Rahul Gandhi is going to America next week. This is both a big opportunity and a challenge for the Congress party. The Congress party is getting stronger again in India. Along with India, interest in the personality, economic outlook and global outlook of the Leader of Opposition is also increasing all over the world. Rahul Gandhi will address the Indian community in Texas, America next week. Apart from this, he/she will meet many people in Washington. Last year also he/she visited America. Along with this, he/she also visited Britain and Europe. Rahul Gandhi’s frequent foreign trips are an indication that the Congress is trying to strengthen the NRI and global relations again. But some questions are also being raised about Rahul Gandhi’s visit to America. Will he/she criticize PM Modi and the BJP government on foreign soil, as he/she has been doing earlier. This is also important because two weeks after Rahul’s visit, PM Modi will visit America.

Will India’s political tone change on foreign soil?

These days, polarization has increased rapidly in India. Meanwhile, both the leaders are trying to gain the support of the Indian diaspora. In such a situation, the question arises whether a new perspective of India’s political equations will be seen in America this month? Or will the Congress and BJP make an informal agreement to keep their domestic political rivalry separate from foreign activities?

India is leaving its mark in the world in every field

Beyond the diaspora, there is also the larger question of reviving India’s internationalism, senior journalist C Raja Mohan wrote in an article in the Indian Express. India has never been as engaged with the world as it is today. But it seems that the political class is not as globally active as it should be. India’s trade with the world is now about 40 per cent of GDP, which is about $3.8 trillion. Apart from growing trade, Indian tourists, students and professionals are traveling abroad in greater numbers than ever before. As the world seeks Indian talent, the number of diaspora Indians, which is said to be around thirty-six million, will continue to grow.

The world’s interest in India has increased

As India has become a major economy and military power, global interest in its markets and geopolitics has grown. Government agencies, the corporate sector, academia, the media, think tanks and NGOs have increasingly engaged with the world. But, given the unprecedented changes taking place in the world, it is unfortunate that our political class has shown limited engagement with its international counterparts. This limited interest is in contrast to India’s expansive internationalism from the late 19th to the mid-20th centuries. As India’s awareness of the world grew in the late 19th century, so did all major global ideas, including nationalism, socialism, communism, Asianism and liberal humanism. Contact and dialogue with political powers across the world laid the foundation for India’s internationalism in the early decades of the 20th century.

How is India connected to the world?

An important part of this was the engagement with Indian labour and capital that had spread across the vast British Empire since the early 19th century. As the national movement gathered momentum, so did the diaspora’s mobilisation in favour of India’s independence. As the country’s most prominent political force, the Congress was at the forefront of this international engagement. So were the Communists and Socialists, whose global ideological affiliations and mass organisations established links with the international left. The weakening of the Congress Party’s organisational structure from the 1960s onwards gradually diminished its ability to engage with the world. Although Nehru and Indira Gandhi’s personal ties with Western leaders maintained a degree of continuity, the Congress Party’s internal economic orientation and its strategic tilt towards the Soviet Union reduced its wider contacts in the West. Meanwhile, the fragmentation and marginalisation of Indian Communists and Socialists weakened the channels of communication with the world’s political parties. It is interesting to recall that the Muslim leadership of undivided India was sensitive to developments in West Asia and reacted harshly to them. The growing global presence of Islam remains an important source of Muslim internationalism in the subcontinent.

Big task for both BJP and Congress

While a growing section of Hindus was eagerly engaging with the world through the revolutionary and secular ideas prevalent in the Eurocentric modern world, orthodox Hindu society remained suspicious of the outside world. Though some of its leaders had begun to look outwards and seek ways to address the perceived weaknesses of Indian society, political Hindutva remained a narrowly nationalistic phenomenon. It is therefore not surprising that the BJP’s pedigree in terms of internationalism is weak. As its influence grew over the past three decades, the party began to reach out to the world in a more purposeful way. In the past few years, the BJP’s engagement with political parties around the world, including in neighbouring countries, has been growing. The Congress and other parties have much more to do and they are doing so in at least one area: reaching out to the diaspora. Connecting with the Indian communities abroad has been a key task of the BJP in the 21st century. The BJP’s Overseas Friends in the 1990s has helped expand the party’s presence around the world, especially in Western democracies where a large chunk of the Indian diaspora is concentrated. The Congress has reactivated its Indian Overseas Congress, which is organising Rahul Gandhi’s visit next week. Connecting with the diaspora has now become a major activity for regional parties and their chief ministers as well. Tamil Nadu Chief Minister MK Stalin was in the US last week to connect with the Tamil diaspora and garner investments for his/her state.

What are the problems with connecting with NRIs?

While outreach to the diaspora has helped build ties with other countries, it has also created new problems. Divisions within a nation affect its diaspora and become intertwined with the domestic politics of their adopted countries. As Indian political engagement with the diaspora grows, so does the scrutiny of this activity by the security agencies of the host countries. Indian political outreach to the diaspora, however important, is not a substitute for sustained interaction with major political groups in major countries. Viewing major nations through the prism of the diaspora can lead to misconceptions about global reality and create a policy bias in Delhi. Direct political dialogue with foreign parties will help the Indian political class avoid the dangers of groupthink of self-selected expert communities and the toxic extremism of social media that distorts reality.

Efforts being made since Nehru’s era

Meanwhile, the BJP has stepped up its efforts to engage with the world. The Congress needs to revive its foreign affairs department and make it an effective instrument of global engagement. In 1936, when he/she became president of the Indian National Congress for the second time, Jawaharlal Nehru set up the party’s foreign affairs committee and appointed Ram Manohar Lohia as secretary. If the great upheavals of the interwar period persuaded Nehru to set up the committee, today the rapidly changing global order demands that the country’s oldest party be better equipped to deal with it. It is also hoped that Lohia’s successors in our political class, who are also regaining their grip on the domestic political plane, will soon re-recognise the virtues of internationalism.