Rahul Gandhi and PM Modi’s back-to-back US visits, is this the beginning of a new internationalism?

arun Posted On September 5, 2024

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Congress MP Rahul Gandhi is going to the US next week. He will address the Indian community in Texas and meet many people in Washington. The Congress party is trying to strengthen diaspora and global relations. This visit is taking place before PM Modi’s upcoming US visit.

Curated by Anubhav Shakya

Congress leader Rahul Gandhi is going to the US next week
PM Modi will visit the US after Rahul Gandhi’s visit
Rahul Gandhi’s visit is important amid the growing popularity of Congress

New Delhi: Congress MP and Leader of Opposition in the Lok Sabha Rahul Gandhi is going to the US next week. This is both a big opportunity and a challenge for the Congress party. The Congress party is getting stronger again in India. Along with India, there is growing interest in the personality, economic outlook and global outlook of the Leader of Opposition around the world. Rahul Gandhi will address the Indian community in Texas, USA next week. Apart from this, he will meet many people in Washington. He had also visited the US last year. Along with this, he also went to Britain and Europe. Rahul Gandhi’s frequent foreign trips are an indication that the Congress is trying to strengthen its relations with the NRIs and the world. But some questions are also being raised about Rahul Gandhi’s US visit. Will he criticize PM Modi and the BJP government on foreign soil, as he has been doing in the past. This is also important because two weeks after Rahul’s visit, PM Modi will visit the US.

Will India’s political tone change on foreign soil?

Polarization has increased rapidly in India these days. Meanwhile, both leaders are trying to gain the support of the NRIs. In such a situation, the question arises whether a new perspective of India’s political equations will be seen in the US this month? Or will the Congress and BJP make an informal agreement to keep their domestic political rivalry separate from foreign activities?

India is leaving its mark in every field of the world

Senior journalist C Raja Mohan, in an article written in the Indian Express, said that apart from the NRIs, there is also a big question of reviving India’s internationalism. India has never been as engaged with the world as it is today. But it seems that the political class is not as globally engaged as it should be. India’s trade with the world now accounts for nearly 40 per cent of GDP, about $3.8 trillion. In addition to growing trade, Indian tourists, students and professionals are traveling abroad in greater numbers than ever before. As the world seeks Indian talent, the number of diaspora Indians, which is said to be around thirty-six million, will continue to grow.

The world’s interest in India has grown

As India has become a major economy and military power, the world’s interest in its markets and geopolitics has grown. Government agencies, the corporate sector, academia, the media, think tanks and NGOs have a greater role to play in deeper engagement with the world. But, given the unprecedented changes taking place in the world, it is unfortunate that our political class has limited engagement with its international counterparts. This limited interest is in contrast to India’s expansive internationalism from the late 19th century to the mid-20th century. As India’s awareness of the world grew in the late 19th century, so did all the major global ideas, including nationalism, socialism, communism, Asianism and liberal humanism. Contact and dialogue with political forces around the world laid the foundation for India’s internationalism in the early decades of the 20th century.

India’s engagement with the world is an old story

An important part of this was the engagement with Indian labour and capital that had spread across the vast British Empire since the early 19th century. As the national movement gathered momentum, so did the diaspora’s mobilisation in favour of India’s independence. As the country’s most prominent political force, the Congress was at the forefront of this international engagement. So were the communists and socialists, whose global ideological connections and mass organisations established links with the international left. The weakening of the organisational structure of the Congress Party from the 1960s onwards gradually eroded its capacity to engage with the world. Although Nehru and Indira Gandhi’s personal relations with Western leaders maintained a degree of continuity, the Congress Party’s internal economic orientation and its strategic tilt towards the Soviet Union reduced its extensive contacts in the West. Meanwhile, the fragmentation and marginalisation of Indian communists and socialists weakened the channels of communication with the world’s political parties. It is interesting to remember that the undivided India’s Muslim leadership was sensitive to developments in West Asia and reacted strongly to them. The growing global presence of Islam remains an important source of Muslim internationalism in the subcontinent.

A big task for both BJP and Congress

While a growing Hindu class was eagerly engaging with the world through the revolutionary and secular ideas prevalent in the Eurocentric modern world, orthodox Hindu society remained suspicious of the outside world. Though some of its leaders had begun to look outward and seek ways to address the perceived weaknesses of Indian society, political Hindutva remained a narrowly nationalist phenomenon. It is therefore no surprise that the BJP’s pedigree in terms of internationalism is weak. As its influence grew over the past three decades, the party began to reach out to the world more purposefully. In the past few years, the BJP’s ties with political parties around the world, including in neighbouring countries, have been growing. The Congress and other parties have a lot to do and they are doing so in at least one area: reaching out to the diaspora. Connecting with the Indian community abroad has been a key task for the BJP in the 21st century. In the 1990s, the BJP’s Overseas Friends helped expand the party’s presence around the world, especially in Western democracies, where a large chunk of the Indian diaspora is concentrated. The Congress has reactivated its Indian Overseas Congress, which is organising Rahul Gandhi’s visit next week. Connecting with the diaspora has now become a major activity for regional parties and their chief ministers as well. Tamil Nadu Chief Minister MK Stalin was in the US last week to connect with the Tamil diaspora and garner investments for his state.

What are the problems of connecting with the diaspora?

While reaching out to the diaspora has helped build ties with other countries, it is also creating new problems. Divisions within the nation affect its diaspora and become intertwined with the domestic politics of their adopted countries. As Indian political engagement with the diaspora grows, so does the scrutiny of this activity by the security agencies of the host countries. Indian political outreach to the diaspora, however important, is not a substitute for sustained dialogue with major political groups in major countries. Viewing major nations through the prism of the diaspora can lead to misconceptions about global reality and create a policy bias in Delhi. Direct political dialogue with foreign parties will help the Indian political class avoid the dangers of groupthink of self-selected expert communities and the toxic extremism of social media that distorts reality.

An effort since Nehru’s era

Meanwhile, the BJP has stepped up its efforts to engage with the world. The Congress needs to revive its foreign affairs department and make it an effective instrument of global engagement. In 1936, when he became the President of the Indian National Congress for the second time, Jawaharlal Nehru formed the party’s Foreign Affairs Committee and appointed Ram Manohar Lohia as the secretary. If the great upheaval of the inter-war period convinced Nehru to form the committee, today the rapidly changing global order demands that the country’s oldest party be better equipped to deal with it. It is also hoped that Lohia’s successors in our political class, who are also regaining their grip on the domestic political plane, will soon recognize the virtues of internationalism again.