Modi’s Burning Bridge to the Middle East

foreignaffairs.com/articles/india/2022-06-30/modis-burning-bridge-middle-east

June 30, 2022

Since Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata
Party came to power, in 2014, India has seen a marked uptick in hate speech and
violence directed at its Muslim minority. Western officials, including from the United
States, have urged Modi and his BJP government to reaffirm India’s avowed pluralism,
but they have exerted little pressure on New Delhi; India remains too important an
economic and geopolitical partner in the wider contest with China.

In June, however, the darkening atmosphere of majoritarianism and illiberalism in India

earned its strongest international rebuke so far. It came not from liberal Western
governments but from a slew of Arab countries. In late May, Nupur Sharma, a BJP
spokesperson, made disparaging remarks about the Prophet Muhammad in a television
interview. Another BJP official, Naveen Jindal, soon amplified those comments on Twitter.
They incensed many Indian Muslims, leading to protests and even riots. But they also
upset governments in the Middle East, many of whom lodged formal protests with New
Delhi.

The current fracas threatens to upend nearly a decade of deft diplomacy by Modi that had
led to cordial relations with most Middle Eastern states. Modi is the only prime minister to
have visited Iran, Israel, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) in one
term. Under Modi, India has worked to secure its oil and gas requirements from the
Middle East, which are critical to its energy security, and to ensure the welfare of the
approximately nine million Indians residing in the Gulf states. This more active diplomatic
engagement has also furthered trade, investment, and security ties with the Gulf
Cooperation Council (GCC) states. Saudi Arabia and the UAE, for instance, are
consistently ranked among India’s largest trade partners. These ties are bound to grow
following the recent free trade pact signed between India and the UAE, and the ongoing
negotiations for a broader trade pact with the GCC. In a break with previous Indian
governments, Modi has also promoted cooperation with the Gulf states to address shared
concerns such as terrorism and maritime security in the Indian Ocean region. These
interests have been reciprocal as Saudi Arabia and the UAE have increasingly seen India
as an important emerging market for their energy exports, foreign investments, joint
venture opportunities, and security provisions.

But this unprecedented cooperation has been thrown into jeopardy by the free rein that
the BJP has given to state-sponsored Islamophobia at home. In the past, much of the
Islamic world had expressed misgivings about various adverse developments involving
India’s Muslim minority. On occasion, Muslim countries had publicly upbraided India, even
if that rhetoric did not lead to any concrete change in policy. This episode, however, has a
distinctly different tenor. Caustic remarks about or caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad
generate strong (and sometimes violent) reactions in many Muslim countries. This

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episode, to no particular surprise, has elicited the most vehement reactions in Muslim
states across the world. New Delhi, in an attempt at damage control, has asserted that
the Indian government “accords the highest respect to all religions.” Such anodyne
diplomatic statements may not be enough to prevent India’s troubled domestic politics
from derailing its bid to forge closer relations with the Gulf and the broader Middle East.

UNDER FIRE

Sharma’s remarks led Iran, Kuwait, and Qatar to summon India’s ambassadors, and led
Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, the Gulf Cooperation Council, and the
Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) to issue statements of condemnation.
Chastened, the Modi government was spurred into action. Within 24 hours, the BJP
described Sharma and Jindal as “fringe elements,” suspending Sharma and expelling
Jindal from the party.

The BJP’s quick and resolute reaction was striking for a number of reasons. Modi and
other party leaders have been reluctant to rein in Islamophobic rhetoric from its officials in
the past. In 2019, Home Minister Amit Shah described Bangladeshi Muslims as
“termites.” In 2020, BJP members falsely accused a Muslim religious group of spreading
COVID-19 in India. Just this June, a BJP member of Parliament likened the historical
invasions of India by Muslim forces to the Holocaust. Those comments attracted no
censure. The BJP has also shrugged off criticism from foreign governments about the
majoritarian turn in India. In June, Indian Foreign Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar
dismissed the concerns of his U.S. counterpart, Secretary of State Antony Blinken, about
the deteriorating environment for religious minorities.

But this time the criticism of Middle Eastern Muslim states stung New Delhi. India had
seen many moments of troubling communal violence before Modi rose to power, and
Arab countries and other Islamic states have denounced the policies of the Indian
government and events in India in the past. The difference now, though, is that much
more is at stake.

TOEING A BLOODY LINE

Since its independence, India has always been careful to proclaim its commitment to
secularism in order to reassure its Middle Eastern partners about the well-being of its
Muslim minority. India has long been home to many Muslims; its Muslim population,
numbering some 200 million people, is the third largest of any country in the world,
behind Indonesia and Pakistan. In the 1960s and 1970s, Indian outreach to Muslim
countries was designed mainly to counter Pakistani rhetoric about the treatment of Indian
Muslims, most notably in the context of the Hindu-Muslim riots in Gujarat in 1969. During
this period, the Indian government was concerned about the security of key strategic
maritime chokepoints such as the Strait of Hormuz, in the Persian Gulf, and the Suez
Canal, in Egypt, and about regular access to oil to support its growing industrial sector. It
adjusted its Middle East policy accordingly to preserve and protect these trade and
energy interests. It was in this context that India initially sent a delegation to the first

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meeting of the Organization of the Islamic Conference, the OIC’s predecessor, in Rabat in
1969. Because of Pakistani opposition, however, the Indian delegation was forced to
leave the conference and India never formally joined the organization.

The late 1980s and early 1990s were a period of mounting Hindu-Muslim discord in India,
with the Meerut riots of 1986, the insurgency in Kashmir in 1989, and finally the
demolition by a Hindu mob of the centuries-old Babri Masjid mosque in Ayodhya in 1992.
Middle Eastern states began to express growing concerns about the status of Indian
Muslims. The condemnation of India’s behavior in Kashmir intensified in the early 1990s
and went beyond the routine accusations of violation of human rights. The destruction of
the Babri Masjid incited communal riots across the country and alarmed many
governments of Muslim countries. The OIC meeting in Karachi in 1993 issued a
resolution equating Indianhuman rights violations in Kashmir withatrocities in Bosnia, the
Palestinian territories, and South Africa. The resolution also asked all member states to
push India to permit the Kashmiris to exercise their right to self-determination. The OIC
decided to grant observer status to the All Parties Hurriyat Conference, an alliance of
various political, social, and religious organizations in Kashmir committedto self-
determination. The condemnation at the OIC and the perceived animosity of Arab states
also encouraged India to reassess its relations with Israel, with which it established
diplomatic ties in 1992. The normalization of ties with Israel helped New Delhi to develop
economic and defense ties with Tel Aviv. Over the span of the last two decades, Israel
has emerged as one of India’s key weapons suppliers.

In 2002, bloody riots in Gujarat killed over 700 Muslims when Modi was the state’s chief
minister. India came under scrutiny from Middle Eastern states and Modi endured a good
deal of criticism. At the time, however, Modi was still not a significant figure in the
international arena. Despite the bloodshed, the ambassadors of Gulf states in New Delhi
during that period did not demand a briefing from the Ministry of External Affairs on the
riots. By 2002, India’s economic growth, rising international influence, and new status as
a nuclear weapons state had made it a major destination for exports and a venue for
investments for most Middle Eastern states, which were no longer as vocal in their
condemnation of the treatment of Indian Muslims.

COURTING THE MIDDLE EAST

After becoming prime minister in 2014, Modi sought to boost India’s ties with the Gulf and
the Middle East in multiple realms, a process that had been started under his
predecessor, Manmohan Singh. This outreach to the Gulf and other Arab countries
stemmed from a number of factors: the long-term presence of nearly nine million Indian
workers in Gulf states, who in 2019 contributed about $40 billion to the Indian economy in
remittances—accounting for roughly 65 per cent of India’s annual remittances, or about
three percent of India’s GDP—and the need to ensure a secure flow of commodities,
crude oil imports, and investment from the Gulf. A third of India’s oil imports come from
the GCC, and Qatar is also India’s leading supplier of natural gas. Beyond India’s energy
requirements, bilateral trade with the GCC was estimated at $154 billion in 2021–2022,
accounting for 10.4 percent of India’s total exports and 18 percent of India’s total imports.

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Modi has also sought to work with Gulf countries to crack down on Indian organized crime
groups, as well as Indian and Pakistani terrorist organizations that found safe havens in
the Gulf. Negotiations held during Modi’s numerous visits to Abu Dhabi and Riyadh have
notably led to key agreements ensuring the extradition of Pakistani and Indian terrorists,
as well as limiting money laundering activities from these same groups in Saudi Arabia
and the UAE.

Modi’s persistent diplomatic efforts to engage the Gulf states were also part of an effort to
repair his tattered reputation following the Gujarat pogrom in 2002. Between 2015 and
2019, in an attempt to improve his image, he embarked on a series of high-level
diplomatic visits to Bahrain, Iran, Jordan, Oman, the Palestinian territories, Qatar, and
Saudi Arabia. He also resorted to some symbolic gestures, such as a visit to the Sheikh
Zayed Mosque during his Abu Dhabi trip in 2015, a visit that was perceived both as a
homage to Sheikh Zayed, the founder of the UAE, and as a conciliatory gesture to the
Muslim minority back home. Ironically, in early June, when the present controversy
erupted, Indian Vice President M. Venkaiah Naidu was on a similar visit to Qatar designed
to burnish India’s image in the Gulf.

The growth of Islamophobia in India under the BJP has begun to alarm Gulf states
more and more.

For their part, Gulf leaders were willing to embrace Modi no matter his role in the 2002
violence in Gujarat. Over the past two decades, Saudi Arabia and the UAE had started to
strengthen relations with India, fearing a somewhat disengaged United States and an
unreliable Pakistan. The 2006 visit of Saudi King Abdullah bin Abdulaziz al-Saud to New
Delhi was a watershed moment and quietly laid a strong foundation for bolstering ties.
Over the past decade, Saudi Arabia and the UAE have been investing in India’s national
infrastructure projects, increasingnon-oil trade with India, and expanding crucial imports
from India ranging from vaccines to wheat.

Regional leaders, including Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and the
UAE’s President Mohammed bin Zayed al-Nahyan, saw their relations with India as
essentially transactional; they cared little about the turns of domestic Indian politics.
Additionally, the rapprochement between Israel and the Gulf states under the auspices of
the Abraham Accords further facilitated the Modi government’s engagement with various
regional actors. For decades, India had carefully balanced its ties with Israel and Arab
states in the region. The Abraham Accords enabled the Modi government to openly
promote stronger multifaceted economic and security engagement with Israel and the
Gulf countries simultaneously. Next month, India will also participate in a virtual summit
known as I2U2, involving Israel, the UAE, and the United States.

NO GOING BACK
Out of ruthless pragmatism, Gulf leaders chose to remain mostly silent as the Modi
government pushed forward measures that impinged on the rights of the Muslim minority,
including a series of controversial laws that for the first time defined Indian citizenship on

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the basis of religion, threatening to strip many Indian Muslims of their citizenship. But the
growth of Islamophobia in India under the BJP has begun to alarm Gulf states more and
more. This is evident from the official statements of Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and the OIC
condemning the remarks, and other states’ summoning of Indian ambassadors. Faced
with this intensifying chorus of disapproval, India’s Ministry of External Affairs sought to
emphasize India’s secular credentials. This time, however, the derogatory remarks made
against the Prophet Muhammad, rather than policies or actions targeted specifically at
Indian Muslims, have inflamed both elite and popular opinion across much of the Muslim
world, and not merely the Middle East. The grand mufti of Oman, for instance, termed the
BJP’s “obscene rudeness” toward Islam a form of “war” and called for a boycott of Indian
goods. This call has been echoed through social media hashtags across the GCC and
has put pressure on GCC governments to officially comment on the inflammatory remarks
about the Prophet.

Modi’s deft diplomacy in the Middle East may now have run its course.

The Modi government may hope that it can insulate its bilateral strategic partnerships with
the Gulf states from domestic political issues, but that approach may not be sustainable
over time. Unlike earlier moments of discord when India was less invested in the Middle
East, today it has extensive ties to the region. The growing socioeconomic links through
migration and trade, as well the pace of information (and disinformation) shared through
social media, have made it more difficult for the BJP and Gulf political elites to control
public views of these fraught matters. These latest comments came from party
functionaries rather than civilians, and as such have made Modi and the BJP directly
accountable for the noticeable rise in Islamophobia in India.

Most important, in the wake of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, India is in the throes of a
resource crisis as it grapples with rising food prices, a growing oil import bill, and a foreign
exchange crunch. The welfare of the many members of the Indian diaspora in the Gulf is
in question, as expatriates have expressed concerns about possible hostility and boycotts
because of the derogatory comments. Indiais also wary of growing Chinese influencein
that part of the Middle East, as China has invested in numerous local infrastructural
projects. The Modi government’s insistence that it is committed to secularism is unlikely to
mollify the aggrieved sentiments of many across the Muslim world in general, and
Muslims in the Middle East in particular. Modi’s deft diplomacy in the Middle East, which
had focused on the pursuit of common economic and security interests and sought to
downplay events at home, may now have run its course.

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