The ongoing protests against issues linked to citizenship are serious and the government has to find a way to reassure the protesters. But it is too much of a stretch to say that the demonstrations will hurt India’s foreign policy interests. The international order envisaged in the UN Charter is based on sovereignty, and interfering in the internal affairs of other nations is specifically prohibited.
During the Cold War, human rights issues were used selectively to discredit governments, but even apartheid South Africa was not isolated fully. Similarly, the Non-Aligned Movement was composed of several countries ruled by dictators who oppressed their people. India took pride in siding with them on the plea that internal policies had nothing to do with non-aligned solidarity and fight against imperialism and colonialism.
The only time New Delhi opposed a country from rejoining the Non-Aligned Movement on grounds of repression of its people was in 1991 when the Burmese military regime imprisoned Aung San Suu Kyi after she had won the elections. But the country quickly changed its stand, recognised the regime and began dealing with it to protect its national interests.
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The politics of human rights
Even after the Cold War, countries were singled out for criticism on political grounds. While Cuba, for instance, was dragged over the coals citing human rights violations, China escaped action by resorting to gimmicks like ‘no action motions’.
India generally refrained from condemning individual nations for alleged violations of human rights and, at one stage, even declared that it will not support any resolution against individual countries if it was not a consensus resolution.
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The U.S. agitated once, in 2003, about Libya becoming the chair of the Human Rights Commission and suggested that countries guilty of human rights violations should be expelled from such bodies. It even started a move to prescribe the criteria for membership of such organisations. But Washington found the outcome of the long negotiations so unsatisfactory that it had to vote against its own resolution. Recent protests in democracies like France have not resulted in Paris losing friends abroad. Similarly, no country has abandoned China on account of the unrest in Hong Kong. India has been silent during such protests and has continued its diplomatic engagement with these countries. If absence of internal dissent or existence of democratic institutions are considered the criteria for engagement, Russia and China will not be able to have any strategic partnership. During the golden era of Indo-Soviet relations, India had proclaimed that it was an ideal relationship between countries with different political systems.
Being open to criticism
On the other hand, strategic partnerships and cordial relations with other governments do not preclude criticism of a country’s internal developments. Reporting on the treatment of minorities in different countries is a task assigned to agencies like the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom and these organisations carry out their work even when bilateral ties are at their best. In certain cases, U.S. Congress even moves resolutions to reduce aid to countries. The annual Burton Amendment in Congress was a sword of Damocles hanging over India during the Khalistan movement. India had to invest heavily in lobbying to defeat the Burton Amendment.
Further, even when controversial remarks, like those on religious freedom by President Barack Obama during his India visit in 2015, led to a bad taste in the mouth, India took such criticism in its stride and built bilateral relationship on the basis of mutuality of interests.
Independent nations take action on bilateral and multilateral ties on merits, even if decisions by other governments lead to internal protests. A country’s own Constitution is the only guide and the Supreme Court the prime arbiter on whether or not a particular action is constitutional. Such display of dissent cannot affect a country’s foreign policy as friends in the international sphere are chosen for the contribution they make for the common good or for bilateral benefits. Equally, the absence of protests in a diverse country like India does not guarantee a trouble-free relationship. The old dictum that the success of foreign policy depends on the capacity of the country to help or harm others and not on the absence of internal protests is still valid.
T.P. Sreenivasan is a former diplomat