M.D. Nalapat
Tehran, Iran — While Sonia Gandhi prefers
the European Union, Manmohan Singh's favorite country is the United States.
Both as India's finance minister from 1992-96 and from 2004 onwards as prime
minister, Singh has been open in his belief that a Washington-set agenda is in
his country's best interest.
Sadly for him, few share this view, with
the result that his efforts at implementing the Bush team's prescriptions for
India have stalled on opposition within Parliament, even though Sonia Gandhi
has managed thus far to silence dissent within Singh's own Congress Party, and
has backed the prime minister in his U.S.-centered policies.
Largely as a result of the perception that
he is following Tony Blair in the role of White House poodle, several countries
otherwise friendly to India have distanced themselves from the Sonia-led regime
now precariously in office. Russia made Foreign Minister Pranab Mukherjee
undergo the indignity of a body search at Moscow airport recently, while
Vladimir Putin declined to find the time to meet with visiting Indian Defense
Minister A. K. Antony.
Moscow's mood has not been improved by
Manmohan Singh's second rebuff of Russia's efforts to sign a nuclear deal with
India that would enable the country to import four more nuclear reactors from
Moscow. The move would cut into the potential profits being factored in by U.S.
corporations eager to enter the Indian nuclear energy sector on advantageous
terms.
Three years ago Putin had offered India a
nuclear deal on far more lenient terms than that mandated by the U.S. Congress,
but was spurned by Singh in favor of the 2005 understanding with George W.
Bush. This week the Indian prime minister once again refused to agree to the
Russian reactor deal. He prefers to wait for his own Parliament to change its
mind on the U.S. deal, even though that possibility seems remote to all but
political neophytes such as Sonia Gandhi and Singh. And in a visible snub,
Singh spent a mere 28 hours in Moscow this week, as opposed to his weeklong
official visit to the United States and four-day forthcoming trip to Beijing.
However, Moscow ought to consider itself lucky to get a full day and more of
Singh.
Another Indian "strategic
partner," Iran, has been totally cold-shouldered by the Sonia-led ruling
coalition. India even voted with the United States and European Union in favor
of an International Atomic Energy Agency resolution to block Iran's nuclear
program, rather than join other Asian states in abstaining or backing Tehran.
And although there have been numerous statements expressing support for the
Iran-Pakistan-India hydrocarbon pipeline, thus far Singh has refused to allow
Petroleum Minister Murli Deora to join Pakistan and Iran in implementing the
project, which has been in the pipeline for 11 years.
By contrast, India has moved ahead on an
alternative pipeline that would link it to Central Asia via Afghanistan and
parts of Pakistan known to be outside the control of non-jihadist forces. This
alternative pipeline has been backed by the United States, acting through the
same team that negotiated U.S. backing for the Taliban from 1994-96, and has
infuriated both Tehran and Moscow, which now sees the Sonia-led ruling
coalition as joining Kabul and Baghdad in following the U.S. lead in major
policies.
Small wonder that there has been an early
winter chill in relations between India and Iran, despite past cooperation in
Afghanistan and Central Asia, and the provision of a land route for Indian
produce through Iran to Central Asia and Afghanistan, the shorter alternative
having been blocked by U.S. ally Pakistan.
Last year, while more than 25,000 visas
were given to Iranian nationals to visit India, less than 4,500 Indians were
permitted into Iran, most of them pilgrims visiting Shiite religious sites. And
although Iran has three cultural centers in India, in Hyderabad, Mumbai and New
Delhi, the Ahmedinejad government has refused the persistent Indian request to
open at least a single Indian Cultural Center in Tehran.
The mullahcracy has also banned Indian
movies from entering the country, although this prohibition is being flouted
daily by Iranian citizens, who buy VCDs of Indian films by the hundreds of
thousands. So negative is the present regime in Tehran to anything Indian that
they have refused permission to the Indian Embassy to organize an India
Cultural Week in Iran, while pressing for sanction to hold a month-long Iran
Cultural Festival in India.
While more than 9,000 Iranian students now
study in Indian universities, there are fewer than a couple of hundred Indian
students in Iran, most of them in religious institutions of learning. A few
months ago, Iran's only department of Indian studies, in Tehran University, was
shut down by the mullahcracy, who regard the moderate ethos of the world's
biggest democracy with suspicion.
Iranian authorities have even barred the
entry of a film about the Taj Mahal, the monument built by Emperor Shah Jehan
in memory of his wife Mumtaz Mahal, despite the fact that the shah was of
Persian origin. The movie is directed by Akbar Khan, who cannot be accused of
hostility toward Islam.
The ruling elite in Tehran is bracing for a
2008 attack by either the United States, Israel or the European Union, or a
combination of all three. It is taking countermeasures to ensure that all three
will suffer severe punishment for daring to challenge the program of the
Islamic Republic of Iran to develop nuclear technology and materiel. Iranian
networks are active throughout the region, and Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Qatar and
Oman will be the most vulnerable to covert action, apart from the primary
target, Iraq.
Their fear of an Iranian reaction is
motivating the security establishment in New Delhi to demand that Manmohan
Singh restrain his impulse to align India with a future U.S.-EU-Israel attack
on Iran by providing maintenance and re-supply facilities, R & R, naval
surveillance and patrolling of the sensitive waterway between India and the
Middle East. The fear is that a second, Iran-backed front will open up in the
ongoing jihadist war backed by elements within Pakistan and Saudi Arabia. This
would tax severely the Indian security system's capacity to respond.
The increasing frequency and depth of
negative signals from Tehran is impacting the minds of policymakers in New
Delhi, few of whom share Manmohan Singh's enthusiasm for Bush-Cheney global
prescriptions. Now that both Moscow and Tehran have made their displeasure
open, pressure on the Sonia-led United Progressive Alliance coalition to
moderate its tilt toward the United States may grow.
-(Professor M.D. Nalapat is
vice-chair of the Manipal Advanced Research Group, UNESCO Peace Chair, and
professor of geopolitics at Manipal University. ©Copyright M.D. Nalapat.)
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