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New Delhi: Ever since Narendra Modi became Prime Minister in 2014, there have been urgent whispers about the “saffronisation” of India’s foreign policy establishment.
In 2017, the Ministry of External Affairs released an official publication on Bharatiya Janata Party ideologue Deendayal Upadhyaya titled Integral Humanism. As if this were not strange enough – the ministry never dealt with domestic politics – its content was also unusual: it equated “Indian thought” with “Hindu thought” and spoke of how “Hindu society had begun the work of self-organization”.
Although the evidence of the transformation of India’s external projection from Nehruvian internationalism to Hindutva is all around us, there is an official reluctance to acknowledge the change.
With rare exceptions, even Indian analysts and think tanks avoid the topic and focus more on the officially vaunted successes of Modi’s diplomacy.
Our best sources of information on the change in India’s diplomacy are foreign: mainly international journals and scholarly publications. The March issue of the UK-based International affairs provides valuable details on the impact of Hindu nationalism on Indian diplomacy and how the elite Indian Foreign Service (IFS) responded to the radical transformation.
Written by Kira Huju, a lecturer at Oxford University, the 18-page “project analysis” is largely based on 85 private interviews she conducted with both serving and retired IFS staff, as well as newly inducted “saffrons” ( or Hindutva oriented) officials .
The study covers topics such as the transition from “Nehruvian internationalism to Modi’s Hindutva”, “Hindutva and everyday diplomatic practices”, “adaptation and resistance”, “ideological deviations and social rifts” and “the cosmopolitan elite as the domestic other”.
Also Read: What the Narendra Modi era means for Indian foreign policy
Readers will find that her analysis sometimes goes the extra mile to present the Hindutva version of the saffronization process to discourage accusations of bias.
A slow but visible ebb
As for everyday diplomatic practice, the study mentions the proliferation of Hindu events held in or sponsored by Indian embassies. Many were organized by the “Hindutva paramilitary” Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) or its affiliates.
He quoted a serving officer as saying that such partisan functions had sparked an immediate backlash from the service’s secular Hindus and religious minorities.
The author also quotes Ashis Ray, the BBC’s foreign affairs correspondent, to suggest that such interventions have forced senior diplomats to look over their shoulders for RSS activists appointed to embassies and high commissions. Also, Modi’s local loyalists have started ruling him over “pliable or petrified heads of mission”. However, the author finds it difficult to verify the levels of such outside interference in embassies and high commissions.
The survey speaks to the conscientious effort being made to replace the dominant Anglophone class of diplomats with a new cadre invested in Hinduism and the Hindi language, with a less cosmopolitan sense of nationalistic pride.
Also Read: How Hindutva Hatred Threatens India’s Gulf Ties
In interviews, many diplomats said that they personally felt excluded from this narrative of “authentic” Indianness, marked by an aggressive push in favor of Hindi and the marginalization of English in diplomatic communication. This is sold to foreign audiences as a belated but necessary “decolonization of consciousness.” The new message: Under Modi, India is abandoning the language of its former colonizer.
During the 2019 interviews, International affairs the article said that the first Hindi book on the Indian Council on World Affairs was close to being published, the first foreign policy conference in Hindi was being planned and the Prime Minister’s Heads of Mission Conference was held in Hindi, with even the ambassadors, who are not from northern countries and struggle with hindi should speak the language.
The study cites many changes in diplomatic training that successful IFS candidates undertake before taking up their first post. They are “an offshoot of this government,” as one diplomat sympathetic to the administration put it. Accordingly, they have to follow the mandate of the Ministry of Ayush. Ayurveda, homeopathy and yoga have a central place. While “protocol attachments” usually involve diplomatic interns joining international summits or conferences, in 2019 they were also sent to the Kumbh Mela religious festival.
Hindu nationalism in India, the study notes, emphasizes the spiritual superiority of Hinduism and insists on a narrative of Hindu victimization by Muslims (who are cast in the role of an internal “other”). In its diplomatic garb, Hindutva challenges the need to present India as diverse and secular. “What it offers instead is a political investment in civilizational grandeur, hyper-masculine concepts of international security, and anti-Western ideologies of Hindu revivalism.”
“Slowly,” the study says, “the blurred edges of the ambiguous Indian identity, traditionally more civic than ethnic or religious in nature among India’s ruling elites, are being sharpened: a once almost ethereal conversation about Indian culture is, a Muslim officer argues, turning into a conversation about “blood and soil.”
Thus the soft edge of saffronization overlaps with a seemingly harmless celebration of Indian culture. For example, Modi insists on visits to Hindu and Buddhist temples as part of his itinerary on foreign trips and chooses artifacts such as the Bhagavad Gita — a revered Hindu text — as gifts to political colleagues.
Modi dismisses the importance of cosmopolitanism in diplomacy. The prime minister-elect was quoted as comparing foreign nations to a haughty aunt who never deserved the loyalty of diplomats like Bharat Mata, in an address to diplomatic trainees in 2014.
The author quotes a visibly concerned retired officer as saying that the growing number of RSS sympathizers means a cultural re-education project. An affiliate of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), working as a contractor for the external affairs ministry, expressed confidence in the slow roll-out of promotion patterns, estimating that it would take about 15 years for the change in attitudes to take root, with diplomats from The Neruvis retired and increasingly nationalist-minded colleagues took their place.
During an interview, an elderly Sikh officer broke down in tears as he described the battle to uphold the values of diversity and secularism he had spent his career defending. “One retired Muslim officer offered the comment that ‘five years ago we were all cosmopolitans’, but that ‘in today’s polarized environment narrower identity claims have come to the surface.’ “Not once,” having had to justify his cosmopolitanism or Native American spirit during his nearly 40-year service, “I now own ten books on the subject of culture and identity,” he exclaimed.
Huju says that in Hindutva constructions of self and other, the traditional IFS elites rank with a “powerful foreign ‘other'” in India in the form of a pseudo-secular, neo-colonial and illegitimate powerful establishment that conspires with dangerous minorities, which in turn, have connections with India’s external enemies”. In this narrative, the saffronization of the IFS is justified as an anti-elite move that seeks to protect true pluralism.
“This method of foreign policy promotes neither security nor economic interests”
The wire discussed Huju’s paper with some current and retired IFS officers, most of whom readily acknowledged that many of the trends she describes are very much part of the Indian diplomatic landscape today. “We always pushed for a very national agenda, but it was based more on interests than ideology,” said one former ambassador. “There is no doubt that missions have been reduced to event management companies and there is pressure and competition to profile the person and the message on social media. Another development is the takeover of the ICCR. Indian cultural centers are now staffed by those linked to strong political influence – and there have been clashes with heads of missions, not to mention the content of the projection of Indian culture.”
An old man compared the current movement to the way diplomacy was conducted when the BJP was first in power. “Why is the current nationalism different from NDA 1 when the foreign ministry and missions are not affected? Was (National Security Adviser) Briesh Mishra, who belonged to this now-hated elite, responsible?”.
Another IPS arm said Huju’s survey “doesn’t reflect the fact that quite a few officers don’t like what’s happening – even if they keep quiet for fear of jeopardizing their careers”. They added: “Furthermore, this method of conducting foreign policy neither promotes security or economic interests nor increases our international acceptance as one of the great powers capable of preserving the international system (recall the remarkable nature of the Indo-US nuclear deal). “
P. Raman there is has covered policy for national dailies since 1978. He is the author of Strong Leader Populism: How Modi’s Hybrid Regime Model is Reshaping India’s Political Narrative, Ecosystem and Symbols.
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