They are back. Eight magnificent naval men, who had been condemned to life in purgatory by Qatar. When news broke last year that these eight men had been sentenced to hang for espionage by a Qatar “kangaroo” court, a billion Indian hearts collectively sank.
Qatar, a blingy “Islamic sandpit”, is no friend of human rights. Just how contemptuously it regards them was amply documented by do-gooding liberals when the desert emirate hosted the football World Cup in 2022. And just in case you don’t think that “do-gooding liberals” can be trusted, then here’s another example that will clinch the argument. As the football world cup progressed, Doha reportedly and laughably enlisted Zakir Naik to preach Islamic values. To put it mildly, that was a giant self-goal, because Naik (wanted in India and elsewhere for hate speech) extolled the late fatwa-spewing straggly-haired Bactrian Osama Bin Laden and expressed the view that “every Muslim should be a terrorist”.
Given Qatar’s deficiency in the kindliness sweepstakes, many thought it would require a miracle to secure the release of the eight Indians. And they weren’t wrong. Doha began by striking the wrong note from the very start when it didn’t even have the decency to supply Delhi with case papers so desperately needed to even frame the most rudimentary defence.
But, like Houdini, the ministry of external affairs has informed us, Modi has unshackled eight Indians from the Qatari-made legal manacles. And the rescued souls obviously can’t stop singing their benefactor’s praises. Apparently, the Prime Minister gently impressed upon Qatar’s Emir the need to do the right thing at the December 1 meeting on the sidelines of the COP28 in the UAE. He also personally followed up the case with the Emir to secure India its little big miracle.
All this must make Modi’s domestic detractors a little choleric. Remember how several of them had chided him for having to eat humble pie in his “second home” Doha? The Congress had even gone on to claim that Modi had kept quiet about the naval men because he didn’t want to ruffle the Emir’s feathers who was obliging Modi by pumping billions into the Adani industry coffers. That’s right, the Congress had literally accused Modi of pawning off the lives of eight Indians in exchange for securing investment from Qatar for his alleged business crony Gautam Adani’s energy project in Mumbai.
Today, some of the Prime minister’s accosters are looking foolish and the BJP’s media managers are looking like the proverbial Cheshire Cat that got to lick the cream.
Of late, India has lived a charmed life diplomatically. Thanks to the NDA’s diplomatic dexterity, we have been able to buy Russian oil without upsetting our Western friends who had imposed sanctions on Vladimir Putin’s regime for pursuing the invasion of Ukraine.
The NDA has been able to get away by rightly declaring the October 7 attack on Israel as a grievous terror assault, depriving Hamas of its “victim card” and its Gulf nation sponsors of a “fig leaf”. In fact, ties with West Asia couldn’t be better as Modi has demonstrated by getting Qatar to do Delhi’s bidding. On February 13, he’s even going to the UAE to inaugurate the largest-ever Hindu temple to be built in the Gulf.
Modi has even been able to play Paris onside despite India becoming a member of Indo-Pacific groupings like the AUKUS and QUAD that effectively bundle France out of the region.
The Europeans have been defanged as they solicitously posed questions about India’s allegedly “patchy human rights record” in Manipur and their favourite hobby horse Kashmir. Over in the Far East and along the LAC, Chinese tactical adventures, or should one say misadventures, are appearing spectacularly disjointed as Beijing reels from some unexpectedly bruising encounters with India – both on the battlefield and in diplomatic fora.
There are of course many more little diplomatic victories and the odd daringly executed tightrope walk to list here and this writer would have gladly obliged had space permitted.
Nonetheless, all this Indian diplomatic derring-do can be chalked down to a phenomenon called “diplomatic exceptionalism”. That, simply put, is when one country repeatedly gives the benefit of the doubt to another because it has a lot to lose if it doesn’t.
This has come about not only because of a factor of geography — India is seen by the Chinese-obsessed West as an irreplaceable pivot to the Indo-Pacific — but also because of its immense economic muscle that is only growing.
India’s attractiveness as an on-shoring and friend-shoring investment destination and the lure of its market means that it can now frame its ties with global heavyweights on its own terms.
Modi guaranteed he would turn India’s fortunes around if voters gave him a majority, and on the back of evidence it is becoming increasingly difficult to deny this.
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