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15-04-2024
Bureau Report + Agencies
NEW DELHI: In a campaign video clip, India’s ruling party credits Prime Minister Narendra Modi for halting the Russia-Ukraine war two years ago so the government could rescue and repatriate nearly 20,000 stranded Indian students.
In the video, a young woman rushes to her middle-aged parents waiting outside an airport building, hugs them and says between sobs, “I had told you, no matter what the situation, Modi ji will bring us home. He stopped the war, Papa, and got us out.”
Modi shared the video on his YouTube page on March 10 this year, under the caption: “Safety & security of all Indians assured as they are Modi’s Family”. It has since gathered nearly 650,000 views.
At the time, Indian officials dismissed suggestions that New Delhi had prevailed on Moscow to delay the assault to allow evacuation of its citizens.
India votes in a general election starting on April 19 and Modi, who polls project will convincingly win a rare third term in office, has made the country’s global standing and foreign policy an unusual electoral plank.
Indian elections are fought usually on domestic issues like prices, caste equations and allegations of corruption. Foreign policy is almost never a part of campaign rhetoric except for conflicts or tensions in the neighborhood.
But this February, in a poll published by the India Today group, 19% of the 35,000 respondents said Modi will be most remembered for “raising India’s global stature”.
It was the second-most popular response, after 42% claimed Modi’s top achievement was building a temple to the Hindu deity Ram at a contested site, which he had inaugurated less than a month earlier.
In recent years, India has hosted the G20 summit of world leaders, forged deeper defence, strategic and technology ties with the US, become the fifth-largest economy in the world and landed a spacecraft on the unexplored south pole of the moon.
In the election campaign, the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is painting New Delhi’s rising world stature and more assertive foreign policy as major achievements of the Modi administration, alongside its Hindu nationalist agenda and rapid economic growth.
“We are playing our cards adroitly,” BJP’s national executive member Vinay Sahasrabuddhe told Reuters. “Keeping the political arithmetic and political geography also in our mind is a smart strategy. What is wrong in that?”
Analysts say New Delhi has never been meek in its foreign policy, but it has become more robust in the 10 years under Modi.
“It’s more a change in style and rhetoric rather than substance, on which there is continuity in Indian foreign policy,” said Ashok Kantha, a retired diplomat.
Still, Canadian accusations of Indian agents being involved in a murder near Vancouver resulted in New Delhi expelling more than 40 of its diplomats.
Despite Western criticism and pressure, India bought record levels of Russian oil since the beginning of the war in Ukraine, and has maintained close ties with Moscow.
While India has denied any role in killing of wanted militants overseas, Modi and his defence minister have said in a campaign speech that the new India will not hesitate to cross borders to kill terrorists.
Modi said at a campaign rally this month that India was “considered a weak and poor country” under the previous Congress party administration.
“Today the world is witnessing how much India’s reputation and status have grown in just ten years,” he said.
He asked the crowd, “Who did this?” “Modi did it,” they chanted in reply. To which he said: “Modi has not done it, you have done it. Your vote has done it.”
Challenging this narrative, the Congress in its manifesto has promised to “work to repair India’s international image that has been damaged by the present government’s intolerance of dissent and suppression of human rights”.
