Grand Strategy | Geopolitical pressures trump Delhi’s minority concerns in the neighbourhood

One factor that has traditionally influenced India’s policy toward its neighbours is how they treat their Hindu populations or those ethnically or linguistically linked to India, as seen in the cases of Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Afghanistan, and Nepal. This traditional consideration is undergoing a major change.

The recently concluded visit of Sri Lanka’s President Anura Kumara Dissanayake (AKD) shows, for instance, that in the end, geopolitical calculations will shape Delhi’s relationship with its neighbours rather than how well they treat their minority populations. India’s domestic politics will no doubt be influenced by minority questions in the neighbourhood, but it is geopolitics that will ultimately determine the country’s national interests unless of course minority question is the national interest.

Let’s examine the Sri Lanka case a bit more. During AKD’s visit to India, two key issues stood out prominently. One, there was a clear assurance from the Sri Lankan president that “I have given an assurance to the Prime Minister…that we will not have our land…used in…a manner that is detrimental to the interest of India”. This assurance also found place in the joint statement the two sides issued: “President Dissanayake reiterated Sri Lanka’s stated position of not permitting its territory to be used in any manner inimical to the security of India as well as towards regional stability.” This was an unambiguous political undertaking by Colombo, which New Delhi can view with some satisfaction, especially given its concerns about the presence of Chinese spy ships in Sri Lanka’s ports, uncomfortably close to Indian borders.

The second issue that stood out was the absence of any reference to the Tamil minority issue during AKD’s visit; it found no place in the joint statement. In contrast, two months ago, in early October, when the external affairs minister, S Jaishankar visited Sri Lanka, he had “reiterated India’s support for the aspirations of all communities, including Tamils, for equality, justice, dignity, peace while maintaining the unity, territorial integrity and sovereignty of Sri Lanka. The full and effective implementation of the 13th Amendment of its Constitution and the early holding of Provincial Council elections will facilitate these objectives.”

Clearly, this means that New Delhi now believes that it is better to raise the Tamil question through backchannels, at best, rather than make it a huge issue in the bilateral conversations at the highest level. This could be attributed to two factors: One, it makes little sense, Delhi realises, to embarrass a visiting president by lecturing him on how to manage his domestic politics; and two, there are larger geopolitical considerations at play. We will come to those in a bit.

In fact, this does not seem to be a new realization; this line of thinking has been growing in Delhi for some time. Consider the following. New Delhi no longer takes up the issue of religious minorities in Taliban-ruled Afghanistan (not that its urgings would have an impact on the Taliban) like it used to earlier. Its argument about the state of the Hindu minority in Bangladesh appears to have been overtaken by the compulsions of realpolitik. Not that Delhi has completely dropped the issue of minorities being persecuted in Bangladesh, but that is no longer the only item on the agenda. Given that the Yunus government is unlikely to go away anytime soon and the ongoing chaos in the country is likely to persist, it makes more sense for Delhi to engage with the imperfect situation in Bangladesh rather than wait for conditions to become more favourable before dealing with the country. It appears that a certain fatalistic form of realism about Bangladesh has emerged in Delhi.

A question of interests

For sure, New Delhi is concerned about the minority issues in the neighbourhood either because they pose a spillover challenge for India or because they have domestic political consequences in India. Apart from these two, New Delhi has traditionally been less motivated by the objective issue of how its neighbours treat their minorities. However, even when minority issues have direct implications for it, New Delhi, as I argued above, is likely to subordinate it to larger geopolitical considerations.

Put differently, in the ultimate analysis, what matters more for India is the larger geopolitical balance in the region and outcomes of its bilateral relationships with its neighbours, not the well-being of the citizens, of its neighbours who happen to be religiously or ethnically linked to India

New Delhi’s decision to give primacy to geopolitical considerations is a product of at least three factors. One is the complete absence of coalition pressures on the Modi government to act in a particular way towards the domestic situation in a neighbouring country. Consider, for instance, during the mid-2000s, DMK, UPA’s coalition partner from Tamil Nadu put immense pressure on the Manmohan Singh government to act in a particular way towards the Tamil issue in Sri Lanka. This no longer happens.

Secondly, today New Delhi is prepared to engage in a reciprocal conversation with its neighbours on interests and compromises (i.e., “not permitting Sri Lankan territory to be used in any manner inimical to the security of India” in return for India soft-peddling the Tamil issue in Sri Lanka) than say two decades ago when India was pretty much the most consequential actor in the region. Thirdly, China has undeniably transformed India’s behaviour in the region, leading contemporary India to consider the China factor—either directly or indirectly—when engaging with its neighbours. Neighbour’s neighbour is India’s chief concern in South Asia today.

Happymon Jacob teaches India’s foreign policy at JNU and is the founder of the Council for Strategic and Defence Research. The views expressed are personal