• Capt. Praveen Davar

This month, as we celebrate the 81st birth anniversary of our late beloved leader Rajiv Gandhi, it may be appropriate to revisit his spectacular success in the conduct of India’s Foreign Policy. This is all the more apt in today’s circumstances when the country’s foreign policy under the Modi government has virtually collapsed. In fact, Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s biggest failure in his reign of over a decade has been his conduct of foreign affairs. No nation’s foreign policy can be successful unless it is so with its neighbours. Despite PM Modi’s trips to as many as 78 countries, India’s global stature has diminished as never before. The repeated claim (over 33 times) of US President Donald Trump that he was the one who brought the India - Pakistan brief skirmish, during ‘Op Sindoor’, to an end bears testimony to the fact that India’s foreign policy has reached its nadir. This is in sharp contrast to the mature handling and statesmanship displayed by India’s youngest-ever Prime Minister whose contribution in international affairs, as stated by then President R. Venkatraman, ‘lived up to the standards set by Jawaharlal Nehru and Indira Gandhi...the very fact that as many as 63 world leaders joined his funeral procession bore testimony to the stature that Rajiv had acquired among world statesman in the short span of five years during which he was the Prime Minister.’ When the 40-year-old Rajiv Gandhi took over as the country’s Prime Minister he had inherited many problems, some of which were not really within India’s control, like the nuclearisation of Pakistan, the ethnic conflict in Sri Lanka and China’s militant attitude on the border. But Rajiv did not let the constraints take over his policy and made earnest efforts to get over them and succeeded in giving a new direction to India’s relations with these countries. Rajiv’s Pakistan policy was a great success. During the rule of both Zia-ul Haq and Benazir Bhutto, he took many initiatives to improve India-Pakistan ties. With Zia, he concluded an extremely significant agreement whereby both the countries undertook not to attack each other’s nuclear installations. When democracy returned to Pakistan with the election of Benazir Bhutto, Rajiv visited the country, the first Prime Minister after Jawaharlal Nehru to do so in 28 years later. He tried to start a new era in relations with Pakistan which would have happened in his second term that was never to be due to the human bomb that consumed him on the eve of his assured return to power.

When Rajiv Gandhi took over, the situation in Sri Lanka had been deteriorating. State violence against Tamils was on the increase. This was also having an adverse effect on the psyche of people in Tamil Nadu and Tamilians settled in other South Indian states. They wanted the atrocities against Sri Lanka’s Tamils stopped, and launched agitations to pressure New Delhi to take early action. It was under these circumstances that the India-Sri Lanka Accord of August 1987 was signed. Rajiv Gandhi believed it would safeguard the life and property of Tamils and also protect the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Sri Lanka. Though the accord came in for criticism from many quarters, it managed to achieve both its short-term and long-term objectives, even though it took many years for its full realization. But the cost was too high: the precious life of Rajiv Gandhi. As Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat was to say years later: “Had fate spared our martyred friend, the history of modern India would have witnessed one of the greatest giants who ruled India or were destined to rule it.”

Under Rajiv Gandhi’s leadership, ties with China acquired a new momentum. He visited China in December 1988, the first PM after Jawaharlal Nehru to do so in over three decades. The long handshake between Deng Xiaoping and Rajiv Gandhi symbolized the new spirit in the relationship of both countries. Rajiv Gandhi displayed both dynamism and pragmatism in removing tensions between the two neighbours and worked out a new mechanism to deliberate upon the border problem. Rajiv Gandhi held fast to three parameters in relations with China. First, India and China should continue, extend and deepen their dialogue and exchange information and personnel in various fields and improve relations. Second, the border issue was a central issue and must be addressed, but it should not be the only concern of this relationship. Third, India would not ignore acquisition of a certain measure of strength, maintaining the defence preparedness and looking after its interests.

India went to the rescue of the Maldives in 1988 when its sovereignty and territorial integrity was in danger. Rajiv Gandhi gave the highest priority to regional cooperation in South Asia. He believed a number of complex problems of the countries of the region were similar and could be solved with joint efforts. He reiterated that the SAARC countries were linked by age-old ties which could lead them to collective cooperation. At the inauguration of the SAARC summit in Dhaka on December 7, 1985, Rajiv Gandhi said: ‘We of South Asia constitute one-fifth of the world’s population. Cooperation amongst us constitutes cooperation with a vast segment of humanity… All seven of us continue to be confronted with formidable problems of poverty, illiteracy, malnutrition and disease. We have to overcome these problems in a highly adverse external environment. South Asian cooperation points the way to collective self-reliance.’

According to foreign affairs analyst VP Dutt, Rajiv Gandhi concentrated his energies on five areas of foreign policy. Nonaligned Movement (NAM), African Struggle and Apartheid, relations with big powers, Nuclear Disarmament and relations with at least three neighbours - China, Pakistan and Sri Lanka. The Six Nation- Five Continent Summit on Disarmament and Action Plan for Nuclear Disarmament presented at UN were the major initiatives Rajiv Gandhi took for his cherished dream of a world free of nuclear weapons. Dutt adds: ‘He had learnt well the lesson that India got in the last years of Jawaharlal Nehru era that the country needed a measure of both economic and defence strength to meet hostile foreign challenges. Under Rajiv Gandhi a very considerable push was given to raising India’s defence power, particularly with the launching of Agni and Prithvi missiles.’

Unfortunately, today, thanks to the shortsighted foreign policy of the Narendra Modi government, relations between India and its neighbours are in complete disarray. To make matters worse India’s ties with USA and our time-tested friendship with Russia (earlier Soviet Union) have suffered like never before in the last decade, and especially after May 2024 when PM Modi returned to power by using means which are being exposed almost on a daily basis by an ever alert and dynamic Leader of Opposition who seems to have inherited all the sterling and pragmatic qualities of his illustrious father.

(The writer is a former Secretary AICC and Editor, The Secular Saviour)