Can India afford an ethical foreign policy?
By Shashi Tharoor
Weekly Column "Shashi on Sunday" in "The Times of India"
October 14, 2007

The tragedy of Myanmar is receding from the headlines; the junta in NyaPyidaw has revealed, not for the first time, a highly effective capacity to stifle dissent. But the recent developments in our eastern neighbour, and our own government's temporising response, have raised an uncomfortable question we all need to face: can India afford an ethical foreign policy?

For many years after Independence, the answer to that question seemed an obvious one: we couldn't afford a foreign policy that was anything else. Having fought for our freedom against colonial oppression, Pandit Nehru and his colleagues saw themselves as voices for democracy, justice and fairness in the world, and they did not hesitate to express an Indian view of world affairs steeped in these values. Nehru and Krishna Menon, in particular, relished doing so: on issues like Indo-China, South African apartheid and Suez, they saw themselves as giving a voice to the voiceless and the marginalised of the developing world, often against the great-power hegemons of the day. Indian foreign policy pronouncements were regularly couched in the language of transcendent moral principle. Nehruvian New Delhi spoke often, and our government, for decades, seemed to take greater satisfaction in being right than in being diplomatic.

Few challenged India's right to do so: the land of Ashoka, Akbar and Mahatma Gandhi seemed, to many, to have earned the authority to speak from an elevated ethical podium. But even in those early years there were those who wondered whether it was wise to transform the conduct of international relations into a kind of moralistic running-commentary on world affairs. Our moral superiority began to grate on many otherwise well-disposed foreigners even when our positions were unexceptionable; but when we strayed from our own professions of virtue at home, such as over Kashmir or Goa, our critics found it easy to dismiss our foreign policy as posturing humbug.

As time began to tarnish the glow of our independence struggle and the hard realities of national interest became the principal yardstick for both the conduct and the expression of our foreign policy, we quietly abandoned many of our ethical formulations. The gap between profession and practice was in any case becoming more and more glaring. Silence, or at least discretion, was clearly preferable to moralising - at least in a world in which the inventors of non-alignment had signed a treaty with the Soviet Union, the advocates of democracy had suspended it in a state of Emergency, the vocal opponents of international capitalism had gained the most from globalisation, and the leading advocate of disarmament had become a nuclear power. We were now less ethical in our pronouncements, but we were also less hypocritical.

But it has always been difficult for a pluralist democracy to entirely overcome its own instincts in favour of democratic pluralism. So, in Nepal we worked to democratise the monarchy, and facilitated the country's transition from a state of rebellion to one of constitutionalism under UN auspices. In Bangladesh we spoke up for democratically-elected civilian rulers, even when they pursued policies that were inimical to us (and we have done so again when they are in jail). And in Myanmar, when the generals suppressed the popular uprising of 1988, overturned the results of a free election, shot students and arrested democratically-elected leaders, our government initially reacted as most Indians would have wanted it to. India gave asylum to fleeing students, allowed them to operate their resistance movement on our side of the border (with some financial help from New Delhi), and supported a newspaper and a radio station that propagated the democratic voice. For many years, we were on the side of democracy, freedom and human rights in Myanmar.

And then reality intruded. China and Pakistan began to cultivate the generals. Major economic and geopolitical concessions were offered to both suitors; the Chinese even began developing a port on the Burmese coast, far closer to Calcutta than to Canton. And the generals of Myanmar, well aware of the utility of what comes out of the barrel of a gun, began providing safe havens and arms to a motley assortment of anti-Indian rebel movements that would wreak havoc in the north-east and retreat to sanctuaries in Myanmar. This was troubling enough, but the clincher came when large deposits of natural gas were found in Myanmar, which it was clear would not be available to an India deemed hostile to the junta. Our rivals were gaining ground in our backyard and we were losing out: the price of pursuing a moral foreign policy simply became too high.

So, New Delhi turned 180 degrees. When General Musharraf travelled to Myanmar, Jaswant Singh followed. The increasingly forlorn resistance operations from Indian soil were shut down. And New Delhi sweetened the generals' tea for them by providing both military assistance and intelligence support to their regime in their never-ending battles against their own rebels. From standing up for democracy, we went to aiding and enabling an unsavoury military regime. When monks were being mown down on the streets of Yangon, our government called for negotiations, muttered banalities about national reconciliation, and opposed sanctions. We also sent our Oil minister to negotiate an energy deal, making it clear where our real priorities lie.

All of this, I should stress, is perfectly understandable. I also agree that New Delhi needs no ethical lessons from a Washington or London that has long coddled military dictators in our neighbourhood, notably in Islamabad. Our government cannot be blamed for deciding that peace with Pakistan is more important than standing up for democracy there, and that in Myanmar the general's junta is more useful to us than the general janata. But what are we doing to ourselves as a civilisation? If Nehru hadn't been cremated, he'd be turning in his grave. Our policy may be governed by the head rather than the heart, but in the process we're losing a little bit of our soul.