India’s debacle at Rabat has given a new edge to the demand for a fresh look at the country’s foreign policy. While Mr Fakhruddin Ali Ahmed, who led the Indian delegation to the Islamic summit, has endorsed this demand, Mr Dinesh Singh has had talks with his Israeli counterpart, the first Indian Foreign Minister to do so. Mr BR Bhagat has meanwhile cancelled his forthcoming visit to Teheran as a mark of New Delhi’s displeasure against the Shah for his support to President Yahya Khan on the question of India’s exclusion from the conference. The Indian Ambassador to Morocco, Mr Gurbachan Singh, has been recalled and may not be sent back to Rabat.
It is doubtful if these moves are part of a carefully worked out plan to reshape the country’s West Asia policy. It is more likely that policy-makers in New Delhi are either indulging in ad hocism or trying to blunt the edge of popular criticism by making it appear that they have not taken the Rabat humiliation lying down. If these fears prove to be justified they will only complicate matters further. The proper course for them is to define India’s long-term and short-term interests in West Asia and then find out whether the present policy is inadequate and how it can best be modified.
Complicated
Most people here are agreed that New Delhi should never have sought an invitation to an avowedly religious conference convened to discuss a specifically religious issue – the burning of the A1 Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem. Nothing that official spokesmen have said publicly or in private has answered the criticism that as a secular country India had no business to seek representation at the Rabat summit. But this is not all.
The matter is far more complicated. To put it in perspective it is necessary to ask the question: what should have been India’s attitude to the conference? Ideally, New Delhi should have opposed it. The reason is simple. This country cannot but view with the gravest misgiving any attempt to harness religion to political purpose and to revive the concept of pan-Islamism in however muted a form.
This point cannot be over-emphasised. It will be naive for anyone to think that the Rabat summit does not represent a serious effort on the part of the organisers to create a permanent Muslim organisation and that the problem of bringing the Indian Muslims into the mainstream of national life will not be vastly complicated if pan-Islamism acquires even a semblance of reality. The aftermath of the Khilafat movement ought to serve as a warning. The pan-Islamic sentiment has been fairly strong among large sections of the Muslim community here.
King Feisal mooted the proposal for an Islamic summit more than three years ago, that is before the Arab-Israeli war in June 1967 when the tide of Arab nationalism was threatening to sweep away his and other medieval and obscurantist regimes. He was in fact fighting for his own survival. But something much more basic was involved in his move – a deep subconscious urge to proclaim the unity of Islam and to reject the principal obstacle to its fulfilment today, the western concept of nationalism.
President Nasser and other leaders of radical Arab nationalism realised the implications of King Feisal’s move and fought it tooth and nail. But they did so in the name of anti-imperialism and thereby confused the issue. They treated what was fundamentally a confrontation between the nationalism of an educated and westernised middle class and universalist Islam as a contest between anti-colonialism and colonialism. This confusion has persisted ever since.
The burning of the A1 Aqsa mosque presented King Feisal with an opportunity to revive his proposal for an Islamic summit and he seized it with alacrity. Despite his extravagant talk of jehad, he is not at all interested in taking an active part in the struggle against Israel. The very fact that the Shah of Iran, who maintains diplomatic relations with Israel, has been his principal ally in this affair, shows that the purpose behind the Islamic summit move had little to do either with the burning of A1 Aqsa mosque and the occupation of Jerusalem by Israel or the Arab desire to liberate occupied territories including their part of the holy city. The main aim was to pave the way for a permanent international Muslim organisation.
If New Delhi had seen the decision to hold a conference of Muslim Heads of State in this light it should have had no difficulty in coming to the conclusion that it was a dangerous move and must be frustrated. But it was not sensitive to this aspect of the issue. Otherwise it would not have asked for an invitation to the summit in the name of the 60 million Muslims of India as soon as the decision to hold it was announced.
Three Factors
The plea that India’s opposition would have achieved little is unconvincing. Several Muslim countries had grave reservations about the move. Among these were the UAR, Syria, Iraq, Algeria, Turkey and Indonesia – that is almost all Muslim nations which are run by modem and modernising elites. An active campaign by India may well have tilted the balance by strengthening the hands of countries which were opposed to the summit. Their absence would have robbed it of much of its significance.
In case New Delhi did not feel bold enough to oppose the conference it should have adopted a posture of indifference. The Arab countries with which it has good relations principally the UAR, would not have misunderstood it in the least. On the contrary, their own position would have been vindicated if India had reaffirmed its support for their cause and stoutly opposed the idea of a religious grouping.
But as it happened New Delhi chose the worst of the three courses open to it. It actively canvassed for an invitation and even a refusal did not dampen its ardour. It lodged protests with the countries concerned through their envoys in New Delhi and redoubled its efforts to get invited. The result is there for everyone to see.
Three factors appear to have been responsible for the disastrous decision – the erroneous view that India needs to compete with Pakistan in displaying enthusiasm for all Arab causes, the misconceived desire to convince the most obscurantist and fanatical section of the Indian Muslim community that New Delhi is sensitive to their susceptibilities and an irrepressible urge to project the country in a great power role. The last factor has of late also found expression in other ill-conceived moves.
Justly Aggrieved
It should be said in support of the present policy-makers that similar considerations have influenced India’s posture in West Asia in the past. But the situation in the Arab world is now quite different from what it was in the ‘fifties. Secular nationalism was then still a weak fledgling. Now it is the dominant force in the region in spite of the humiliation the leader of this movement, the UAR, has suffered at the hands of Israel. The recent revolutions in Sudan and Libya underscore this point. In the new situation a secular India has no good reason to confuse support for a just Arab cause with an endorsement of pan-Islamism.
What makes the whole story all the more bizarre is that New Delhi itself had no illusion that it could in any way influence the outcome of the Islamic summit. The Indian Ambassador in Rabat, who represented this country at the conference before the invitation was withdrawn, in fact committed New Delhi to abide by whatever decisions the summit took. There are few instances of such docility in the history of international relations. Whatever else may be said of Indian diplomacy in the Nehru era, it did not suffer from this kind of spinelessness.
The Government and people of India feel justly aggrieved that friendly countries, specially the UAR, did not stand by them when Pakistan insisted on the exclusion of their delegation from the conference. But some allowance must be made for the fact that Cairo desperately needs Saudi Arabia’s financial assistance and that the UAR representatives were reluctant to break up the conference in view of the pressures to which the Nasser regime is exposed today.
Similarly, it will be wrong to rush to any adverse conclusion either about the Shah of Iran or Tunku Abdul Rehman of Malaysia. The Shah is vitally interested in the maintenance of his country’s ties with Pakistan and Turkey because of his conflict with the Arabs and the Tunku has to pay heed to Malay nationalism with its religious overtones.
Pakistan’s hostility to India cannot be a matter of surprise or anger. What is truly infuriating is the behaviour of Morocco. It went out of its way to insult the Indian delegation and the Indian Ambassador. It is not quite clear why it acted in that fashion.
In a situation like this it is tempting to ask for drastic action against “unfriendly” countries and to look for scapegoats at home. The latter temptation should be resisted. It is not only a few individuals who are to blame. Almost the entire top establishment has been involved in this sorry episode.
(To be concluded)
The Times of India, 8 October 1969