The picturesque Riddarfjärden bay of Lake Mälaren was the backdrop for Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s meetings with his Swedish counterpart Stefan Löfven and 40 CEOs of top Swedish companies. Given how the Swedish ethos for global policy engagement, built on the values of peaceful non-alignment in a multi-polar world, dovetails neatly with India’s desire to entice investments back to its shores, one would imagine that this summit would be a single-dimensional success, delivering nothing but good news on the economic front.
Yet that narrative does not fully capture the complex dynamics at play. For starters, the Swedish media did not exactly take kindly to the arrival of the Indian PM on their shores. Several articles criticised Mr. Modi’s policies, for example, for failing to protect the rights and welfare of women. In Aftonbladet , Eva Franchell argued that in the light of the rapes of minors in Kathua, Unnao and elsewhere, “We can only hope that the conversation between Narendra Modi and Stefan Löfven is also about the women and girls in India.’”
Similarly, in the Dagen , Lotta Sjöström Becker cited findings by human rights organisations that “religious minorities are demonised by Hindu nationalists and some government officials”. The idea that there might be a clash of value systems between the Scandinavian liberal paradigm and the majoritarian conservatism of the BJP was most aptly summed up by Swedish-Indian academic Ashok Swain of Uppsala University. “Against the backdrop of rising nationalism in his country and in the region — fuelled by propaganda against Islam and Muslims — Löfven must be hoping the ‘Hindu nationalism’ of his visitor does not in any way strengthen the political credibility of the Swedish right,” he wrote.
Deeper game
However, there was little doubt that hope was afloat for the blossoming bonhomie between the two leaders to clear the path for the Saab Group’s Gripen fighter jet to be shortlisted in India’s search for a reliable supplier of single-engine combat aircraft. While the Saab CEO, in comments to The Hindu , expressed hope that Gripen’s technical features, such as stealth aircraft detection and electronic warfare capability, would put its bid ahead of competitors, India may be playing a deeper game here. As one analyst said, the Swedes would ultimately realise that by engaging in protracted talks, Mr. Modi was effectively getting Mr. Löfven’s government to “go slow” on potential fighter deal discussions between Saab and India’s rivals in Islamabad or Beijing.
With no big bang announcement coming out of the summit meeting, what then was the greatest takeaway for India? The answer may lie not in the economic domain at all, but in the realm of politics: Mr. Modi’s practised diaspora outreach formula was deployed with surgical precision at Stockholm University, bringing 1,100 members of the Indian community to their feet as they chanted feverishly for their beloved leader.
This tightly-choreographed exercise might have been the greatest, if subtlest, accomplishment of South Block in this faraway land. It was driven by the quiet genius of BJP overseas events organiser Vijay Chauthaiwale, as were past community events in New York, Toronto and London. At each of these events, as in Stockholm, Mr. Modi succeeded in underscoring the political importance of the diaspora in their home country as well as the strength of his government’s connection with a cohort that has invariably emerged as a powerful fount of financial and moral support for his party.
Narayan Lakshman works with The Hindu and was recently in Stockholm
