Few Indian Prime Ministers, with the possible exception of Jawaharlal Nehru, have been so identified with the nations foreign policy as Inder Kumar Gujral.
Even though Gujral was Prime Minister for just seven months, foreign policy remained his first love, leading a cynical journalist to once dub him Prime Minister for External Relations. Although critics scoffed at his idealism, there is no doubt that Gujral left his imprint on the nations diplomatic conduct during the whole of 1997.
While Nehru, the nations first Prime Minister, gave India its foreign policy direction, it can be said to Gujrals credit that he was the first head of government whose name actually came to be associated with a foreign policy initiative, known as the Gujral Doctrine. This doctrine remained very much in the news during 1997 and was lauded by the Clinton administration for seeking to bring about an atmosphere of change and cooperation in South Asia.
Gujral first spelt out his foreign policy vision during a visit to Singapore in September 1996 as External Affairs Minister in then Prime Minister H.D. Deve Gowdas government. We are looking at the world in a very different way than we did in the past, in which India will not act as a leader or torchbearer, but as a partner in cooperation, he said in a speech to the Foreign Correspondents Association.
In that speech he unfolded his neighbourhood policy for the first time - which later came to be known as the Gujral Doctrine - saying India will follow an asymmetrical policy towards neighbours whereby India should do more for neighbours than neighbours would do for India. Gujral knew that the 14-party United Front coalition government would not enjoy too long a life span. Therefore he wanted to put his philosophy into practice in the shortest possible time to usher in, as he said, a new era of cooperation in South Asia.
Gujral believed that this region of a billion people had too long remained mired in suspicion, acrimony and conflict with the result that it was left far behind in development and quality of life.
The Gujral Doctrine created ripples in the region and was taken note of in Western capitals. Frank Wisner, US Ambassador to New Delhi at that time, said at a Washington seminar that the doctrine showed a willingness (on Indias part) to lean forward, first with Nepal and Bhutan and now with Bangladesh and hopefully to find some common ground with Pakistan.Indias signing of the Ganga water sharing treaty with Bangladesh, after a two-decade-long dispute, marked a watershed in bilateral ties. In the words of Gujral, the agreement showed that we passed the litmus test of our asymmetrical foreign policy doctrine with neighbours.
During a visit to Dhaka in January with Gowda, to cap the warming ties between hitherto distant neighbours, Gujral said: Indias future depends on what its neighbours think of it. If Indias energies are wasted in fights with neighbours, we will never become a world power.
What was needed in the South Asian region, he added, was a change in mindsets, not to remain a prisoner of the past so that the countries of the region can concentrate on regional cooperation with the same dynamism as other fast-developing economies in Southeast Asia and Europe.
The mood around town, said Wisner, is that it is time for India to move forward on the world stage, and India can only do it if it is strong, well respected and has a good relationship within the region.
While there was no doubt that the year saw a moderating of the sharp confrontationist trends in Indo-Pakistan relations, many in India saw in the Gujral Doctrine unilateral concessions to an adversary who never reciprocated its sentiments.
Many in Pakistan saw in the path-breaking Gujral Doctrine a prospect of the countrys isolation in South Asia. The Gujral Doctrine has successfuly isolated Pakistan in the three Asias (South, Central and East), wrote Moonis Ahmar, international relations expert at Karachi University. He wondered if Pakistans policymakers had a counter to Indias new strategic initiatives.
The beginning of the year saw a clutch of visits by world leaders to India, including those by British Prime Minister John Major and Israeli President Ezer Weizman, the first state visit from that country. Major was so gung-ho about India that he wanted New Delhi to have a place in all international economic summits by virtue of its growing importance in the world order.
After spending 1996 in improving ties with neighbours, Gujral visited Moscow and Tehran in the first half of the year in what were considered ground-breaking visits as well. After a few frosty years, during which a post-Soviet Moscow moved away ideologically from New Delhi, Indo-Russian relations looked set to get back on track. The Russian leadership shrugged off Washingtons attempted arm-twisting to assure the Indian government that it would go ahead with the contracted supply of two nuclear reactors because friendship with India remained a strategic goal for Russian foreign policy.
A confluence of economic and political interests also drew Iran closer to India and a trilateral railroad agreement signed in Tehran with Turkmenistan saw the revival of the ancient Silk Route with far-reaching potential for opening new vistas for Indias commercial links with the energy-rich Central Asian republics.
The string of diplomatic breakthroughs were capped by the resumption of official dialogue with Pakistan after a three-year gap. With the neighbourhood wrapped up as it were and seminal moves made towards Southeast Asia and Central Asia, Gujral made bold to launch into chasm-bridging efforts with Washington by scheduling a meeting with new Secretary of State Madeleine Albright in April.
But then tragedy struck, as far as Indian foreign policy went. The government in New Delhi started tottering following the Congress partys ill-timed lunge for power, affecting immediately the talks with Pakistan. After four days of somewhat ceremonial and ritualistic meetings, the foreign secretaries of the two countries agreed only to continue their dialogue without reporting any kind of breakthrough. Gujral had to put off his visit to Washington and he made no effort to hide his disappointment over domestic politics upsetting his diplomatic agenda.
Although the crisis resulted in the unexpected elevation of Gujral to the Prime Ministers chair, the transition essentially was a setback to Indian diplomacy for the remainder of the year. For the short period that Gujral remained Prime Minister before the Congress party again pulled the rug from under the coalition governments feet, he remained so bogged down in political management that he found little time for foreign policy.
His cancellation of a trip to Kuala Lumpur in August was only the first of a number of such visits he had to cancel later in the year resulting in much embarrassment to the foreign office establishment. The Kuala Lumpur cancellation also meant that a scheduled meeting with Albright had to be put off a second time and sent negative signals to Washington that New Delhi was too preoccupied with itself to play much of a role on the international front.
It goes to Gujrals credit that he overruled hawks in the establishment to respond to an invitation from U.S. President Bill Clinton to meet him in New York during the U.N. General Assembly session. That turned out to be another landmark meeting which can be said to have resulted in Washington enlarging its India focus to the extent that a succession of top administration leaders made a beeline for New Delhi in the next few months.
Senior U.S. officials, in public pronouncements as well as in private dialogue, made it amply clear that India would now matter to the establishment and, in the words of Senator Jesse Helms, one-time India baiter, bilateral ties would move, not remain fixated on one or two issues but take on a wider and multi-dimensional character.
A major diplomatic embarrassment for Gujral was when he had to cancel trips to Germany and France after most of his delegation had boarded the plane. Gujral was so tied down in the sifting sands of politics in New Delhi that he was advised to concentrate on his governments survival at home at the cost of diplomatic forays abroad.
The fall of his government not only put the brakes on further diplomatic pushes in the remainder of the year but put question marks over important state visits early next year. U.S. President Clinton, French President Jacques Chirac and Russian President Boris Yeltsin are some of those expected early next year and there were initial reports that some of these visits might be cancelled. But Clinton has now confirmed he would go ahead with his visit, although he would rather wait till the Indian election is over. Chirac is also likely to keep his date with Indias Republic Day on January 26.
Although the country looked set for a very fractious and acrimonious campaign, it was clear that foreign policy was unlikely to emerge as an issue. This is because there has been a fair measure of political consensus on major foreign policy issues during the year with Gujral himself taking opposition leaders into confidence on important initiatives.
This will also help the outgoing Gujral government carry on with its routine diplomatic duties and keep its international commitments. With economy and business on the top of the diplomatic agenda at the moment, many foreign leaders are not too worried by the political flux in New Delhi and are quite happy to do business with state leaders and corporate chiefs.
Former Foreign Secretary Salman Haider, who was associated with foreign policy implementation for the better part of the year, said the highlight of the year was the resumption of dialogue with Pakistan and improvement of the atmosphere in South Asia, especially for business and trade.
He said the decision to introduce a South Asian Free Trade Area (SAFTA) by 2001 was a positive indicator of the level of confidence among nations in South Asia.
External Affairs Ministry spokesman Pavan Varma, summing up the year, said Indian foreign policy has come to reflect two basic traits - one, the emergence of India as a factor for peace and stability in the region and, two, the recognition internationally of the inherent strengths of India, especially its economy and democracy.
It was this assessment of the potential of the country that has begun to influence other countries views on India and was a singular success of its economic diplomacy, Varma said.
