NaMo in NAM

Prime Minister Narendra Modi participatedin a virtual Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) contact group summit on May 4. It wasconvened by the current NAM chairperson Azerbaijan’s President Ilham Aliyev onthe theme ‘United against COVID-19 pandemic”. Modi’s presence in the meetingwas intriguing. Since the first Nam summit in 1961 in Belgrade, apart fromPrime Minister Charan Singh who could not take part in its Havana edition in1979 because of domestic political exigencies Modi is the only Prime Ministerto have deliberately avoided NAM; he did not take part in both summits held inhis time—the 17th in Venezuela in 2016 and the 18th in Azerbaijan last year.

Clearly Modi has signalled that thenon-alignment, as principle, which had become a core anchor of Indian foreignpolicy in the formative years after independence and NAM, as organisation,which was a product of Jawaharlal Nehru’s striving was now an anachronism; ithad outlived its utility as India and the world changed. This position foundlarge acceptance among India’s security and foreign policy experts. Many ofthem had so felt since the end of the Soviet Union and hence of the Cold War in1991. While there is partial merit is this view a look at the origins ofnon-alignment as principle and movement would be useful to assess the present.

   

As India became independent Nehru thoughtfreedom would be of little meaning if India’s external and internal developmentalchoices were circumscribed by a membership of one of the two superpowers ledblocs that emerged after World War 2 –the Western led by the United States andthe Warsaw Pact dominated by the Soviet Union. He decided to keep away fromjoining either but that did not imply maintaining neutrality if India’sinterests demanded going with one of the superpowers on any issue. This wasnon-alignment in principle. Indeed, it became a code word for an independentforeign policy.

Non alignment as a movement was to promotedecolonisation and safeguard the newly independent states from the directinterference of old colonial masters. It was also to try to promote peace at atime when the two superpowers armed with nuclear weapons were endangeringhumanity. Indeed, the statement that emerged from the first summit made clearthe fears of the times. It also articulated the demand for an equitable andjust world order.

All through the next three decades NAMstrove to promote the interests of the developing world amidst the rivalry ofthe two blocs. Its demands found little sympathy in the western world whichbroadly considered it to be too sympathetic to the Soviet Union. This was alsobecause till the 1970s and even in the next decade, though less so, the dominantideology among a large number of influential NAM members was socialism.

The collapse of the Soviet Union led manyto question the rationale of continuing with NAM. The decision to do so wasbased on the need to have an organisation which would pressure the developedworld not to neglect the interests of developing countries and to transferresources and technology to them. However, as new global concerns regardingenvironment and climate change for instance emerged and as socialism wasabandoned in favour of the international market the combative diplomacy whichhad become the hallmark of some non-aligned states began to be considered ascounter-productive in the absence of competitive bidding by two antagonisticblocs as in the past.

From the early 1990s India too changed itsdomestic socio-economic orientation. This partly led to changes in its externalengagements. As India acquired greater heft it came into the peculiar situationof becoming simultaneously part of global management and of trade unions. Ithad to manage the demands of the new situation and could no longer side withthe thinking and articulation of countries that continued to be reflexivelydriven by anti-western sentiments. With the passage of time its participationin different global groups such as G20 and BRICS and dialogue partner statuswith regional groups as the ASEAN acquired salience. NAM was pushed into thebackground as illustrated by Modi’s decisions to ignore NAM summits.

Now comes this participation in the virtualsummit on COVID-19. Has Modi done so specifically only to engage with as manystates as possible to foster global cooperation to meet the challenge of thepandemic? Or is there the beginning of some serious thinking because the worldis entering a period of strong contestation between the US and China?

In his address to the NAM contact groupModi asked the Movement to be inclusive if it wanted to remain the world’smoral voice. Was he cautioning its members against strident criticism of thepositions of any country either explicitly or implicitly in emerging globalequations? If this was the intent, then the summit’s communique’s whole heartedendorsement of the WHO would be troubling. It “expressed full support to theWHO and its leadership…” at a time when President Donald Trump virtuallycalling it China’s puppet and propagandist has withdrawn US funding from theorganisation. The communique also contained references to some NAM’straditional positions that indirectly criticise the US.

Modi also called for a “new template ofglobalisation, based on fairness, equality and humanity” and for the promotionof “human welfare” and not a focus on “economic growth” alone. Ironically thesefine words recall NAM’s founding principles so close to Nehru’s heart at a timewhen dominant sections of Indian society and polity decry him day in and dayout.

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