India Outside In #4b: Why India-US ties are central to Delhi's expanding West Asia presence
Part 2 of a conversation with Nicolas Blarel, author of 'The Evolution of India’s Israel Policy: Continuity, Change, and Compromise since 1922.'
On the last issue of India Inside Out, we brought you the first part of my conversation with Nicolas Blarel, author of The Evolution of India’s Israel Policy: Continuity, Change, and Compromise since 1922 and Associate Professor of International Relations at the Institute of Political Science, Leiden University.
Blarel’s research covers a wide-range of subjects – India’s ties with Israel, of course, as well as its broader approach to the West Asian region, but also how regional parties and bureaucratic agencies play a role in shaping Indian foreign policy as well as how institutions and networks beyond the Government of India are part of the ‘governance complex’ of the millions of Indian migrants in the Gulf.
Given that our conversation ended up covering all this ground, I split the transcript into two parts. Go check out the first one – which covers things like the India-China rivalry in West Asia and broader Middle East capacity within the Indian policy ecosystem – here:
India Outside In #4a: What does Modi's 'unprecedented' outreach to the Gulf and Israel mean for India?
In this section, we discuss Blarel’s book on South Asian migrants in the Gulf, what role the US plays in India’s growing ties with West Asia, what he makes of the India-Middle East-Europe-Economic corridor, and what misconceptions he finds himself constantly battling.
Don’t forget to check out previous interviews on similar topics, including a conversation with Md. Muddassir Quamar on India-Gulf relations and Guillemette Crouzet on how British India helped invent the Middle East.
To me on the outside of academia, you did something quite unusual in your decision to add to the knowledge on India and the Middle East by co-editing a book on India’s South Asia to Gulf Migrant Governance Complex. As a Gulf kid, I was always annoyed that the idea of NRIs was always the Western one rather than the 8-9 million of us living in the Gulf. Similarly, IR folks rarely talk about the Indian migrants in the Gulf and the impacts of that. Tell me a little bit more about this project.
I was working a lot on India-West Asia relations, and strategic ties between India and the GCC. The question of the 9 million-strong diaspora came up in the discussions. It was always there. You see the governments facilitating this, but not publicising it. It was even seen as a liability or at least not mentioned, because of the humanitarian conditions.
We looked into the migration governance question, whether it was at the Ministry of Overseas Indian Affairs – which was later merged into the Ministry of External Affairs – and what they did to protect emigrants. We also looked at regional structures, in Kerala for example where there are different support mechanisms. I was doing that research with my colleague Crystal Ennis, who is an expert on the GCC and especially labour migration and the political economy of the Gulf States.
We combined our expertise to try and tell a more comprehensive story of these migration patterns, and the support for migrants that sort of escaped the state-centric narrative that most International Relations is unfortunately entrenched in, [which believes that] if it’s not the state, then nothing’s happening. That’s not true. We saw similar patterns in Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and Nepal, where other actors play the role of support to migrants, because this is a bit of an invisible population. The Indian government doesn’t know how many Indian citizens are in the GCC formally. If you don’t know how many there are, how can you govern that population?
We looked at state governments, like Kerala which has been at the forefront of providing institutional support. We looked at family and kin networks. There were families on two sides of the Arabian Sea and connections that provided support or facilitated the moving of others from the village and across the region. These networks are also important to study. And then there are the recruitment agencies – the ‘middle agents’ – who are often seen in a negative way, but they’re also important actors given the lack of state support. They do play a role. Then there are political parties, unions, NGOs which have connections and branches – informal ones – on both sides of the migration corridor.
All of these actors together aggregate, along with states and international organisations, into regulating and governing these migrants. I knew a little bit about it, but I discovered so much. I did most of my field research in Kerala and Delhi, and my colleague did sometime in the GCC, primarily Oman and Dubai. In the field of international relations, we have a lot of work to do to go beyond the state to understand the drivers, sustainability and long-term implications of these migration corridors, especially South-South not just South-North.
These matters are often sequestered, away from the foreign policy and IR space, where migrants are dealt with separately, so it’s useful to do this work that seeks to bring the two together.
Coming back to the question of Modi in the Gulf. You’ve written pieces about the implications of Islamophobia in India, and what it may mean for relations with Arab countries and the Gulf in particular. At the time your pieces suggested it may end up being a major problem for the Indian government, but it hasn’t. Some of it is the fact that these states rely less on public opinion to drive foreign policy, but how do you read this potential issue today?
Clearly the policy elites in the GCC don’t believe there is much cost to having good ties with India and with a Hindu Nationalist government despite some of the issues in the past. You’ve seen a wholesale change from the 1990s to today. Maybe public opinion has not paid sustained attention to South Asia, but also the foreign policy elites in the GCC have not pushed this issue as they did in the 1990s, whether in the OIC or elsewhere. You do not see that same mobilisation or same reaction.
There’s also a Pakistani factor here. Pakistan used to try and mobilise or build coalitions on some of these issues against India, but you see less of that now. India was even invited as a guest to the OIC in 2019, which is a major feat, when you know that India had been at the original session of the OIC in Rabat in 1969, and was kicked out because of Pakistani lobbying.
This was a major development, and I think the elites in most of these countries are clear in wanting to ensure that issues within India should not be an impediment to closer ties with India. There are strong economic ties from the UAE and Saudi Arabia into India. This has happened despite tensions, like the Pulwama crisis between India and Pakistan. The UAE and Saudi Arabia did not take sides in those cases. They even tried to mediate a little bit to de-escalate tensions. These are major developments.
There’s a strong decoupling taking place between what happens at the domestic level – what happens in the UAE, Saudi Arabia and even with Indian migrants in these two countries and then in India with communal issues – and what happens in terms of the bilateral ties between India and these West Asian countries.
You’re right to mention that in both the Foreign Affairs and Foreign Policy articles I wrote, I asked whether these issues would affect relations with India. I said there are potential red lines. One red line I didn’t notice – not to the point of jeopardising ties between India-the UAE-and Saudi Arabia – is that the GCC has mainly reacted strongly when there was a perceived insult to the Prophet. Not on a question of internal discrimination against Muslims, but a broader issue about the Prophet, which led to public opinion from religious actors within the GCC and then the media and political actors reacting.
To be fair, there were clearly concerns that this could play a role, because the Modi government acted very quickly. There was a suspension and expulsion of these two spokespersons, temporary or not. There were also efforts at the diplomatic level to appease the concerns of the GCC. There was concern that this could have led to further diplomatic damage – which it didn’t but it was interesting to see this reaction.
There’s a complex story there about the imagined Muslim public in India, going from the Khilafat movement all the way to its potential influence on India’s stance on Palestine, which you cover in the Israel book.
That brings us to the rapprochement with Israel. There’s one way of looking at India’s big thrust over the last few years, with minilaterals etc, as piggybacking on the American push in the region, but also Israel and Saudi efforts at coming together. Less driven by India than India taking advantage of changes in the region.
But you can also see that Modi has literally turned up a lot more in the region. Can we say India is driving a lot of this? Or, effectively, getting lucky with Pakistan’s stock declining and favourable changes to the status quo in the region? Or something in between?
India has always been careful with its relations with West Asia, because of past fiascos. Being on the wrong side of a particular conflict and damaging its relationship with others. Its good relationship with Egypt and Syria at one point, went at the expense of its relationship with Israel and Saudi Arabia and the GCC states. So India has been careful about not aligning too closely with some actors.
India has focused on ‘multi-alignment.’ I would argue that Modi has tried to have good relations with all of the key actors. It has prioritised some countries in the region, even though there was a careful balancing act to do between Iran, the GCCs and Israel. That’s why India has stayed very silent, not wanting to take major initiatives, reluctant to be seen as aligning or wanting to play a role in mediation or being roped into US initiatives.
That has changed with the Abraham Accords. A little bit with support for the JCPOA before, but really with the Accords and with the I2U2 (India-Israel-US-UAE minilateral) and this new connectivity coalition. This is new. But India is happy because the US is driving this and is permitting India to ride this wave of rapprochement between actors that were previously completely distanced, because of the Palestine issue, domestic politics etc. It’s permitting India, which always had relations with all of these countries, to do it publicly and even to benefit from it because now they can be competing for these major projects, where before it didn’t want to have to take sides on these major fault lines.
The US is helping India manage these relationships better. India was never the driving force. It will say that it has always supported the Abraham Accords. But in the end the US has been driving this and the GCC has been calling for it, and India is happy to be in this role, even as a service provider, because it does have that expertise at home and may be able to export it.
[Note: I spoke with Nicolas Blarel before the G20 Leaders’ Summit, and given the announcement of the India-Middle East-Europe Economic Corridor, decided it was important to drop an email to get his thoughts on the development for this interview, which I have added here].
How do you read the announcement made, on the side-lines of the G20, about the setting up of an IMEC? Do you see it as a genuine counter to China's BRI efforts, an American-led attempt to get its partners to work together, a genuinely sensible approach to speeding up trade in the region, or some combination of these factors?
The IMEC is an interesting development which builds on long-term and immediate developments. The IMEC announcement on the sidelines of the G20 came a bit as a surprise but this looks like a planned statement which built on the opportunity of the presence in Delhi of various EU actors, but also GCC and Middle East actors (some G20 members like Saudi Arabia, others invited like the UAE). The IMEC also looks like the natural outgrowth (and perhaps streamlining or re-framing) of a series of recent initiatives on infrastructure coordination in the Middle-East such as I2U2 and the rail connectivity initiative announced in Riyadh a few months back in the presence of the Saudi, US, Indian and UAE national security advisors.
Interestingly, India is – along with the US – a central actor in all these initiatives, notably to provide the expertise and workforce to build up this connectivity infrastructure. While not stated directly as an counter-initiative to the BRI infrastructural investments in the Middle-East, and the communication here is similar as when the I2U2 or rail project were announced, it is an alternative offer which for local actors like the Saudi Arabia, UAE, or Israel who have grown concerned of becoming too dependent on Chinese investments and companies for its critical infrastructure (ports, railways, etc...).
As of now, India is a willing partner to these initiatives because it has key trade ties with the region (especially Israel and GCC) and has been looking for ways for its companies to get involved in infrastructural projects. It will however frame this as a gradual and natural expansion of its own existing ties to the region, and as an initiative which will improve its own connectivity, and not as siding with a US-led initiative against China. However, the US support for the IMEC and for a pivotal role for India is clearly welcome.
Going past the region, you’ve worked also on more abstract IR questions – thinking through where Indian foreign policy comes from. You’ve written a chapter on India’s strategic culture, written about opening up the black box of Indian foreign policy, and looked at subnational sources of Indian foreign policy. Tell us a little more about your work in this space.
This was the focus of the special issue of India Review I did with Avinash Paliwal, which makes the argument that there are a lot of good theories of India’s approach to international affairs. One approach would be looking at strategic culture, another might be to look at more realist pursuit of interests and a cost-benefit analysis. Some have opted for constructivist approaches, by looking at India’s role in international affairs. Some have looked at status-seeking, like Rohan Mukherjee. People have also looked at the liberal tradition, and focus on multilaterals and democratic values.
These are big ‘isms’ and paradigms that are interesting in themselves but do not really explain particular discrete outcomes or foreign policy decision instances, where it doesn’t exactly follow one of the paradigms. That’s why Avinash and I said we wanted to open up the black box – saying that the Indian state is diverse, federal, multicultural, it has many positions and debates. Foreign policy is not decided by just a couple of elites in New Delhi. It is very contested. Who are the actors and what are the factors shaping these debates?
I was trained –with Sumit Ganguly being my advisor and being himself a neo-classical realist – into initially believing that international structure is what shapes most of Indian foreign policy. But I was also trained as a foreign policy analyst – [an approach where] we look at domestic politics, the role of bureaucracies, regional parties, sub-national parties, which have all played a role in shaping certain foreign policy outcomes.
I’m not saying that regional parties have always played a big role in foreign policy decisions, but you can better explain certain decisions – or the lack of decisions – by looking at the role played by regional actors. The same with some bureaucracies. I’ve written about the lobbying and connections by actors like the DRDO and the equivalent state organisation in Israel, and how these agencies facilitated a rapprochement – which flies under the radar if you look at just state-centred narratives.
I’ve been looking at some of these factors and actors, knowing fully well that I lose some of the parsimonious nature and advantage of these other theories, and isms, where you can use one theory to explain a series of decisions by India over time. I think there is interest in that. There’s obviously an academic and analytical purpose. But I feel you lose a lot of the historical context if you do this. That’s why I’ve tried to use these other approaches, which helps me do this other qualitative research that I like to do – looking at archives, conducting interviews, trying to trace decision-making processes, not relying entirely on one or two variables to try and explain Indian foreign policy.
I’m not disparaging that kind of research. I’ve done it myself. But there are different purposes and different goals.
On to our final questions then. Are there misconceptions about your work that you find yourself having to correct all the time?
Since the beginning of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, there was a lot of misconception and criticism – at least here in the Netherlands – asking about the Indian position. India’s a democracy, India’s stood up for multilateral forums, why isn’t it speaking against Russia, why isn’t it supporting efforts in the UN?
So a lot of misconceptions about Indian foreign policy, its history, Indian decision-making, issues like Non-Alignment, but also lack of awareness of India’s positions on earlier Eastern European crises like what happened in Budapest during the Hungarian crisis in the 1950s. Just a lack of empirical, historical and conceptual knowledge of Indian foreign policy…
You see it now with India and the US. All these articles about why can’t India be an ally to the US or EU. This is a complete misunderstanding of Indian foreign policy and its drivers. It's one of the reasons I liked doing the work on regional parties. Because, arguing that India is a democracy doesn’t mean it will always side with Western democracies or the ‘liberal international order’ which has its own conceptual issues. If India’s a democracy, that means there is a debate. Foreign policy is democratised. The certainty of India’s positions on some issues is not guaranteed, because there will be a debate.
Having a democratic India, does not and will not mean any certainty that India will always align with the US or the EU on many things. Same with democracies in the West – ask me about Trump and Biden foreign policies, there are a lot of differences. Maybe not in the long-term drivers, but at least in style. And that you can expect because of the nature of democratic politics and contestation of foreign policy decisions.
This is one of the misconceptions I notice about India. A lack of understanding of what India’s democratic nature means for its foreign policy decision-making.
What advice would you give to young scholars coming into the space?
It’s always good to develop an early interest in foreign policy of regions that are emerging, or might be small states, and develop an expertise. Reading up secondary literature – yes – but also travelling, developing your own impressions of the foreign policy.
It’s possible to write a lot about Indian foreign policy from a university in the UK or the US, because we have access to so much material. But that isn’t enough. Go get feedback from policy actors, the broader community that shapes foreign policy, practitioners, and get this wide diversity of perspectives once you travel and do field work. Present your work. I found it very useful not just to present in New Delhi but also elsewhere in India. I was very happy to present in Kerala and in Goa.
Keep engaging and keep getting good constructive feedback and criticism from people who are day-to-day interacting with Indian foreign policy. Develop a community. What I like about the community of scholars working on South Asia is that it’s much more collegial and bigger than when I started, and it’s very useful to get formal or informal feedback. People should tap more and more into that, which is really a public service by many of these scholars. Don’t hesitate to get in touch with me, or many others in the field.
One I did start was a South Asia in World Politics section that I along with Rani Mullen, Surupa Gupta and Navnita Behera created within the International Studies Association, which connects most of the IR scholars and professors across the globe annually. We created the first regional based section within ISA mainly to get more South Asian scholars to engage within the wider IR community, and to get them slots on panels and maybe help with visas and scholarships.
I’m no longer involved, I helped create it and was co-chair for a few years, and I found that it was one of the most rewarding things I’ve done since I’ve been in the field – creating a dialogue between the established and emerging scholars in South Asian IR and to get to know a lot of young, early-career scholars and their work, which is exciting and covering things that I hadn’t even considered.
Finally, what three or more works/scholars would you consider as the major influences in your work?
Given my interest in foreign policy analysis, and especially, the domestic drivers of foreign policy-making in India, I was initially influenced by the writings of AP Rana (all his studies on non-alignment, and especially his book The Imperatives of Non- Alignment: A Conceptual Study), and J Bandyopadhyaya's The Making of Indian Foreign Policy.
At the same time, the books and articles of Sumit Ganguly (my PhD supervisor) have also helped me develop and refine my own understanding of India's defence, security, and nuclear policies.
Finally, before India was on many analysts' radars as an emerging power, the books of Stephen Cohen (Emerging India), Raja Mohan (Crossing the Rubicon), and TV Paul and Baldev Raj Nayar (India in the World Order: Searching for Major-Power Status) were also key reads as I started studying India's external relations. Last but not least, I cannot forget to mention my first introduction to Indian politics (in French!) through Christophe Jaffrelot's books l'Inde Contemporaine and La Democratie en Inde.