Abstract
Since first coming to power in May 2014, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi has eagerly embraced diplomacy, travelling widely and engaging in regular bilateral and multilateral summitry with other apex leaders. His supporters have acclaimed this energetic personal diplomacy, praising it for restoring pride to India and moving the country closer to being a ‘leading power’ in the world. This chapter sets Modi’s diplomacy in context, noting that both precedent and institutional shortcomings have placed greater emphasis on prime ministerial engagement in international affairs than might be the case in other states. It explores some of the innovations of Modi’s time in office aside from his energetic travel and summitry, including new emphases on religious diplomacy and diaspora engagement. And it analyses his personal diplomacy in India’s bilateral relationships with China and Pakistan. It argues that Modi’s embrace of personal diplomacy is neither wholly new nor entirely positive, since it points to continued institutional weaknesses and has not delivered all that it has promised.
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Notes
- 1.
This chapter draws upon my recent book on Modi’s attempted reinvention of Indian foreign policy (Hall, 2019a). I am grateful to Robert Patman and the organisers of the 2018 Otago Foreign Policy School for their kind invitation to travel to Dunedin.
- 2.
- 3.
See especially Ganguly and Chauthaiwale (2016), Chaulia (2016) and Tremblay and Kapur (2017). For more critical assessments of the direction, success and novelty of the Modi government’s approach, see Hall (2015, 2016), Basrur (2017), Chatterjee Miller and Sullivan de Estrada (2017), and Ganguly (2017).
- 4.
- 5.
On the ideological tradition Nehru established, and the foreign policy of his era more broadly, see Bandyopadhyaya (1979, pp. 69–80 and 286–320).
- 6.
For a critical assessment of the origins of the war and Nehru’s missteps, see Maxwell (2015).
- 7.
- 8.
In rupees, the figure was just over 147 billion. The rupee to US dollar exchange rate had fluctuated since 2014, so this figure is calculated at the 1 January 2014 exchange rate of 62 rupees to the US dollar.
- 9.
This figure is calculated at the 1 January 2019 rate of 69 rupees to the US dollar.
- 10.
Modi managed only one foreign trip—to South Korea—between the start of 2019 and the end of the election campaign, in late May. After his victory at the polls, he quickened the pace of his travels still further, making fifteen visits by the end of December.
- 11.
On Hindu nationalist thinking about international relations and Indian foreign policy, see Hall (2019a, pp. 41–60).
- 12.
See, for example, Zavos (2010) on the work of the Vishva Hindu Parishad in the United Kingdom.
- 13.
The CSDS Lokniti prepoll survey (Lokniti, 2019, pp. 24–25) reported 48.6% of voters thought India’s image had improved under Modi, 17.9% thought it had remained the same and 16.9% thought it had worsened. The remainder did not express a view.
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Hall, I. (2022). Narendra Modi and the Remaking of Indian Diplomacy. In: Patman, R.G., Köllner, P., Kiglics, B. (eds) From Asia-Pacific to Indo-Pacific. Global Political Transitions. Palgrave Macmillan, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-7007-7_7
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