The Fable of Free Trade

The BJP regime's foreign policy successes have come unstuck with Trump's announcement of fifty per cent tariffs

- Amir Ali TEACHES AT THE CENTRE FOR POLITICAL STUDIES, JNU, NEW DELHI

THE success of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government on the foreign policy front was something of an unexpected outcome from a regime whose strength was perceived to lie in a strong nationalist appeal at home. The image circulated and reinforced is that Prime Minister Narendra Modi straddles Colossus-like the firmament of global power politics, taking in his stride meetings with powerful leaders like US President Donald Trump and former Presidents Barack Obama and Joe Biden, and Chinese President Xi Jinping. Back in 2015, when Obama was President and visiting India as chief guest at the Republic Day parade, Modi, breaking with diplomatic protocol, kept referring to him with the faux familiarity of his first name 'Barack', while Obama maintained a formal diplomatic and slightly aloof 'Mr Prime Minister' in return.

Unlike many right-wing populist leaders, Modi has been careful with his international statements, taking pains to convey a tone of measured sobriety. For instance, his statement in the year of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, that this was 'not a time for war', was seen as an instance of a calm elder statesman pontificating on the state of the world. This contrasts with more strident pronouncements on the home front when he suggested back in 2019 that those protesting on the streets against the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) could be identified by their clothes, thereby insinuating their religious identity.