Topic 1 : An Arabian Valentine
Introduction: It is perhaps fitting that one of his last international trips in his second term as Prime Minister takes Narendra Modi to the United Arab Emirates and Qatar. The inauguration of the Bochasanwasi Akshar Purushottam Swaminarayan (BAPS) temple in Abu Dhabi and the release of eight Indian ex-naval personnel held on espionage charges in Doha this week are two different kinds of events.
Why these two events are significant?
- Together, they are a high water mark for Modi’s diplomacy and symbolise the transformation of India’s relations with the Gulf during the last 10 years.
- It was unimaginable that a large Hindu temple would be built in the deeply Islamic and conservative Arabian peninsula with full state support, and the Indian Prime Minister would be there for its inauguration.
- When the eight former naval personnel were handed a death sentence last October, it was considered near impossible to secure their release.
- Much has changed in how India and Arabia deal with each other today.
- The new terms of endearment with the Arabian Gulf constitute one of the most significant gains for Indian diplomacy in recent decades.
Five factors underlie the transformation in India- Middle East Relations
1. The diplomatic factor
- For a long time, the Middle East did not figure in the political priorities of Indian diplomacy.
- During 10 years of his term PM Manmohan Singh visited Middle East only four times (2 times was to attend NAM summits); while PM Modi has travelled 15 times to the Middle East since 2014.
- A key change has also been the quality of engagement.
- Modi recognised that developing a personal connection with the emirs was key to advancing the ties with the region.
- The Gulf monarchs value personal ties at the leadership level and are ready to calibrate their national policies based on mutual trust and political give and take.
2. The Political Factor
- For a long time, there was not much “political” in the Indian engagement with the Gulf beyond Delhi’s public support for “Arab causes”.
- Although Indian support to the big Arab issues was welcome in the Gulf, there was much disappointment in Delhi’s lack of interest in a broader strategic engagement.
- While India focused on declaratory positions — anti-imperialism and anti-Zionism — it seemed to have little interest in Arab political and economic life beyond those issues.
- There is a strong strain of pragmatism in Arabia that India struggled to work with in the past. That has changed.
- The setting up of the I2U2 group in 2022 — with India, Israel, the US and the UAE — and the India-Middle East-Europe Economic Corridor announced on the margins of the G20 summit underline the radical reorientation of India’s geopolitical engagement with the Middle East.
- If Delhi had kept its distance from the US and the West, Israel and the conservative Arabian kingdoms in the past, they have become valuable regional partners today.
India stopped looking Middle East through a religious lens
- India’s past impractical approach was reinforced by the tendency to view the region through a religious lens.
- The country’s partition on religious lines and Pakistan’s outreach to the Middle East seeking Islamic solidarity inevitably complicated independent India’s diplomatic strategy in the Gulf.
- There was an overestimation of the religious factor binding the Gulf and Pakistan, and an underestimation of the depth of goodwill in Arabia for India and the desire for greater cooperation.
- Discarding the Pakistan obsession has been a major factor in boosting India’s ties with the Gulf over the last decade.
- Delhi and Islamabad have traded places in the Gulf.
- As Modi celebrates India’s special relationships with the Gulf, Pakistan struggles to build productive engagement with the region.
- The Swaminarayan temple in Abu Dhabi reflects an important new trend that is not fully appreciated in India.
- The outflow of radical Islamic ideas from Arabia in the last quarter of the 20th century had negatively affected the Subcontinent.
- Today, religious conservatism at home and the export of radicalism abroad in Arabia are yielding place, especially in the UAE and Saudi Arabia, to growing religious tolerance.
- The unfolding social and religious reform in Arabia would hopefully dampen the rise of religious extremism across the Subcontinent and help restore harmony between different religions and sects.
4. The economic Factor
- The last decade has seen the relationship move from purely transactional to strategic in the economic domain.
- The talk in Delhi about the economic rise of India had not been matched by a recognition of the Gulf’s emergence as a major centre of global capitalism.
- The accumulation of hydrocarbon wealth over the decades has generated “Khaleeji capital”— in Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the UAE — with growing influence around the world, from sports to real estate and banking to technology.
- If India’s focus in the past was on oil purchases, labour exports, and hard currency remittances, the potential of the Gulf’s capital to accelerate India’s economic growth has come to the fore today.
- Modi’s visit to the UAE and Qatar this week will continue to focus on leveraging Gulf cooperation in India’s economic modernisation.
- As the Gulf looks beyond oil and broadbases its economy, it invests big in green energy, space, semiconductors, and artificial intelligence.
- This has opened unlimited possibilities for long-term economic partnerships with India.
5. The Security and Defence Factor
- The last decade has seen the expansion of counter-terror collaboration between India on the one hand and Saudi Arabia and the UAE on the other.
- If there is one area that remains well below potential, it is the defence domain.
- Today, the Gulf countries are trying to diversify their defence partnerships amid the shifting regional geopolitics and are looking to India to redeem its claims to being a regional security provider.
- Meanwhile, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the UAE have also emerged, in their own right, as major geopolitical actors in the Western Indian Ocean, the Middle East, and the Mediterranean.
- Although the scale and scope of India’s military exchanges with the Gulf have grown, much more can be done, including the joint development of weapons and military technologies.
Conclusion: In his recent speeches, Modi has talked about doing bolder things in his third term. That new agenda for the Gulf must include deeper cooperation with the region in promoting prosperity and peace in the Western Indian Ocean.
Topic 2 : The Mayotte dilemma
Introduction: French interior minister Gérald Darmanin’s declaration of an “extremely strong, clear, radical measure” to address an immigration crisis in the French Indian Ocean island of Mayotte is an indication of the tightrope that France has been walking on the issue.
What has changed in France?
- In a country that grants citizenship through parentage (“droit du sang”) and birthplace (“droit du sol”), the new plan, announced by the minister and applicable only to Mayotte, scraps birthright citizenship — it “will no longer be possible to become French if you are not the child of a French parent”.
Mayotte Island and France
- Mayotte, which had voted in a 1974 referendum to remain with France and became a French department only in 2011, has been mired in protests against rising levels of crime, poverty and a steady influx of indigent migrants from neighbouring Comoros Island.
- Darmanin’s announcement came in part to assuage the weeks-long unrest in the island and has been taken up by the country’s right wing for implementation in mainland France too.
France’s growing anxiety about immigrants
- The announcement reflects the Macron government’s larger struggle to strike an elusive balance between guaranteeing the rights of immigrants, migrants and asylum seekers and an increasingly restive French society caught in a flailing economy.
- In recent years, France’s immigration policy, once among the most liberal in Europe, has reflected the country’s — and Europe’s — growing anxieties around the unprecedented migrant crisis, especially in a post-Covid economy.
- Last June, the shooting of a 17-year-old French-Algerian youth in Nanterre had seen protests across the country.
- While President Macron has insisted that France will continue to welcome international students and skilled labour in sectors facing shortage, his own weakened stature has seen a greater capitulation to the demands of the right wing, especially when it comes to immigration.
- The Mayotte announcement comes soon after a new immigration legislation that had sparked a rebellion in Macron’s government in December and found favour with the country’s right.
- It stands to, among other things, weaken the right to appeal for asylum seekers, introduce migration quotas that put a cap on residency permits and citizenship and potentially delay access to welfare benefits.
The wave of anti-immigrant policy in Europe
- These policies also show that immigration is a subject whose complexity does not make for easy solutions.
- In December last year, the European Union reached an agreement to overhaul its asylum policies and limit the number of people coming in to protect its interests; the UK’s Supreme Court recently struck down the government’s plan to send asylum seekers to Rwanda.
Benefits of immigrants to Europe
- The birthrate is dropping throughout Europe and there is a lack of working population, which requires Europe to seek immigrants across the world.
- The ageing Europe will need a workforce in the caring sector, which can be immigrants.
- Stopping immigrants and refugees across the world will be detrimental to European values.
- Rather than stand-alone refugee policy, Europe must work with countries across the world to make relevant amendments to Global refugee policy.
Conclusion: France's decision to scrap birthright citizenship on the Indian Ocean island speaks of a larger European anxiety over immigration. In a strife-torn world where resources are limited and the clamour for balance louder than ever before, there are no easy answers to this humanitarian crisis.