Cool deliberations, not narrow nationalism is the way: Shyam Saran

Chennai: Apart from keeping the economy healthy and going, Foreign Policy challenges and Statecraft is perhaps the toughest job for any ruler, not just now, but perhaps from the days of Kautilya’s ‘Arthashastra’ (of the fourth century BCE) and an equally scholarly work that consolidated on it, Kamandaki’s ‘Nitisara’, dated to the fourth or fifth CE. For rulers decide the collective destiny of vast multitudes of people born in diverse situations.  

Several centuries may have separated these two classics, but their wisdom was enriched. Underpinned by a philosophically profound cosmology in the backdrop of these two “important Indian treatises on Statecraft’, India’s former Foreign Secretary, Shyam Saran in this unassumingly brilliant and scholarly work, “How India Sees The World – Kautilya To the 21st Century”, places a time-tested conceptual framework of the ‘Jambudvipa Mandala’, from our ancient texts, as being relevant even now in our foreign policy realm.

“Each of the concentric circles in the ‘mandala’ that radiates outwards is superior to the preceding one…India will never have a middle-kingdom complex; it accepts a world in which there are other ‘dvipas’ or islands with their own characteristics and values,” says Shyam Saran, who was also former Prime Minister, Dr Manmohan Singh’s Special Envoy in negotiating the historic 2008 Indo-US Agreement for Civil Nuclear Cooperation, widely known as the ‘123 Agreement’, in this 312-page work.

Contrary to the old Chinese world view for instance, which sees its ‘core’ as the ‘most advanced’, or the modern notion of a self-aggrandising State asserting its dominance on the world stage riding piggy-back on the ‘Westphalian State’ of territorial unity and sovereignty as the basic unit in International relations, for starters, India has been vastly better off in its basic outlook, wherein “our view of the world is not India-centric.”

Shyam Saran rearticulates the relevance of this vision, without mechanistically applying the ancient texts as he emphasizes not once but twice, in a much more complex world today— with the US not so much the only ‘Big Brother’ Donald Trump not withstanding, new power equations emerging on the world stage amid the economic and strategic rise of China, Russia looking both East and West two decades after the collapse of the sharp Cold War polarity, rising intolerance in states amid ethnic cleansing and the new religious revivalism and so on—-. Thus, one also sees in this illuminating book a very fine and aesthetically sensitive philosopher’s mind at work, a la Dr Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan, who was both India’s President and a diplomat for Jawaharlal Nehru abroad.

 If only we halt to turn the searchlight on the myriad problems facing the world today-, societies with vast income differences in the thick of economic globalization, emergence of insular, sectarian ideologies in the name of religion and misplaced culture/ethnic guardianship, energy security, climate change issues, challenges of  religious fundamentalism, terrorism, and the huge impact of technology particularly in satellite and communication technology by which a few tweets on Twitter could even trigger a ‘revolution’, India has to respond to all these issues in the wider global forums.

In the same breath, from the Indian subcontinent point of view, India “by far its largest and most power entity…, the country’s strategic compulsions are still defined by sub-continental concerns that override existing political divisions,” says Shyam Saran. Its historical and cultural contiguity- after all Buddhism went from here to South-East and Central Asian countries and even beyond- with these geographies was tragically interrupted by the partition of India in 1947 and creation of Pakistan. But the experienced diplomat, who has handled very sensitive assignments including China and Mayanmar, underscoring the need for good relations with all our immediate neighbours including Bangladesh and Nepal is one key theme that defines this work.

 Anchoring the cosmology of the ‘Asian subcontinent geography’ in the ‘Jampudvipa’ concept, Shaym Saran describes, overcoming the present ‘fragmentation’, post-Europian colonization and “overlaid” by the peculiar modern nationalism, is both a challenge and a “powerful driver of India’s foreign policy behaviour.” India’s “embrace of pluralism is deeply rooted, almost instinctive and this is an asset in an increasingly globalized world,” the author points out, while stating we need “conceptual clarity on what constitutes foreign policy and also what constitutes diplomatic practice.”

 Tracing a whole range of issues impinging on foreign relations in post-Independent India, Shyam Saran stoutly defends the Nehruvian foreign policy choice of ‘Non-alignment’ which for the late Prime Minister was different from ‘neutrality’. “Leadership of the Non-Aligned Movement also fetched India great political leverage in its relations with the (then) superpowers and their allies, compensating to some extent its lack of significant economic and military capabilities.” The NAM might have lost is relevance with the end of the Cold War, but “Non-alignment as a principle governing India’s foreign policy remains relevant to this day,’ contends Shyam Saran.

 The subsequent chapters including ‘Foreign Policy in the Post-Cole War World’- like bid to normalize relations with Israel without diluting India’s close interactions with the Arab world-, detailed discussions on India’s engagement with our neighbours including Nepal and Pakistan, Shyam Saran has a fund of information and insights as he was then also involved in an ambassadorial role in those countries.

 At least the Siachen and the Sir Creek issue with Pakistan could have been clinched in 2006-07, but for the then National Security Advisor, M K Narayanan, having reservations on the Siachen-resolution proposal. And when the Siachen deal fell through, “Pakistan was no longer interested in a stand-alone Sir Creek agreement,” chronicles the author. Even more exciting and blow-by-blow account is seen in the author’s brilliant narration of the long-drawn out negotiations that led to Dr Singh clinching the Indo-US civil nuclear deal.  

 In conclusion, for Shyam Saran, our foreign policy template should hopefully remain the same. Drawing from Kamandaki that “cool and intelligent deliberation” is any day better than flexing one’s military or financial power, or narrow nationalistic assertions, the ace diplomat’s wise counsel is: “How Indians relate to one another influences how the country handles interstate relations. A shrinking vision at home cannot sustain an expansive vision abroad.” Surely, this lucidly written book is a must-read for one and all.