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The consensus on India’s national identity has been slowly fragmenting over the last twenty-five years, especially since the emergence of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government in 1998 displacing the Congress Party, India’s dominant political party since independence. After being out of power for a decade, the BJP came back to power with a decisive showing in May 2014 under Narendra Modi. There were varying expectations regarding how the new government would project its worldview onto the international stage, but a prior question for many was what exactly was the new prime minister’s own worldview, left unclear given that he had spent his career in state-level politics.

The best indication came from the self-avowed nationalist image of the BJP. Based on this, it was assumed that under Modi, New Delhi could be expected to focus on building up the country’s hard power, i.e., military capabilities, and fashioning a more assertive defense and security policy. In other words, India’s “great power” ambition would be underwritten by bigger military prowess and stronger security policies.

This article looks at the extent to which these expectations have held up. Admittedly, eighteen months is a relatively short time period for detecting changes in something as deep seated as national/state identity and its impact on security policy. Still, the question may be posed as to whether there are any trends and indicators that foretell changes in India’s foreign and security policy worldview. It should be noted that there is a good deal of churning domestically over India’s internal ethos focusing on whether Indian pluralism is at risk since Modi came to power. There are likely to be interactive dynamics between this internal unsettling and external consequences, and it is not at all clear that these spheres can be kept separate by the government, but that is not the focus of this article.

I begin by laying out the competing foreign policy worldviews in India and how they have fared in relative strength. This is an important exercise because the historical weight of Indian national identity is considerable, especially when measured against the short timeline that Modi has been in power. I then extract what I see as two, long-held normative foreign policy values, which would allow us to more specifically assess any differences in approach under the Modi government. These are: 1) aversion to the use of force or exercise of military power; and 2) attachment to strategic autonomy. Both offer a barometer into whether a more nationalist oriented worldview is taking hold.

Given the central importance of the military variable in most nationalist perspectives, in this article I concentrate on the first value and consider the defense policy trends under the Modi regime to see how far there has been a break with the past. I focus on the aversion to the use of force partly because it is easier to observe change in that context, and partly because of its paramountcy. Is thinking on this value showing signs of a significant shift by observing a lessening distaste for the use of force? Simply put, is the military instrument trumping diplomatic means?

Indian State Identity

State identity refers to the attitudes of officials who occupy positions of state power.¹ This is a restricted understanding of national or state identity to be sure, but in strategic affairs, these are arguably the viewpoints that matter. The identity that India has projected to the world for decades since its independence in 1947 was Nehruvian—based on the principles articulated by its first prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru. Identities tend to be “sticky,” and state identity is no exception. Only from the late 1980s did Nehruvian ideas of nonalignment, moralpolitik, and statist economic ideology begin coming under attack.² Below, I present four schools of foreign policy conceptions based on previous work to capture the various strands of India’s foreign policy discourse: nationalists, great power realists, liberal globalists, and leftists.³ The first group can be further broken down into soft, hard, and standard nationalists.

Indian Foreign Policy Conceptions

To state a caveat—these categories are not exhaustive of opinions, nor are they mutually exclusive. Individuals may be realist or liberal globalist depending on the particular issue, but they represent a spectrum along which we can assess impact on policy formulations.
I have elaborated on the schools elsewhere, but a short overview is in order.⁴ The realist school stresses the importance of self-reliance in what is seen as an anarchic international system where international institutions can offer little protection. Proponents place importance on great powers as actors in the global system and privilege hard power over ideology and economics. Likewise, nationalists emphasize self-strengthening and self-reliance, but they may embrace these goals not only as a means to the end of meeting foreign threats, but also as an end in itself.

In the Indian context, soft nationalists are more inward looking and prioritize domestic consolidation and economic development, whereas hard nationalists are more global and security oriented through military means. A subcategory of hard nationalism called Hindu nationalism needs to be noted. The BJP’s hard Hindu nationalism emphasizes Indian identity in exclusivist, Hindu religious terms. More broadly, the idea of Indian civilizational supremacy forms a significant part of the BJP’s narrative on India’s rise and fall, and the notion of autonomy of action is important, as is the cultivation of a martial spirit. For Hindu nationalists, the domestic socio-cultural environment is of most interest, but Pakistan as a Muslim adversarial neighboring state looms large when fashioning foreign policy, and to a much lesser extent, Bangladesh. The standard-nationalist group, occupies a spot between the soft nationalists and great power realists—a centrist outlook probably best suited to ruling over the huge diversity that comprises India.

Liberal globalist adherents tend to favor international political and/or economic integration, stressing economic means and institutional goals. Globalists are relatively skeptical about military power as a tool of statecraft. Leftists are also skeptical about military means and see defense buildup as a waste of resources for a country like India and want to focus on fighting poverty and inequality instead, but, of course, oppose neo-liberal economic ideology.

Although it is difficult to assign relative weight to these perspectives, my interpretation is that hard nationalists and leftists have been less influential than the other perspectives over time in India. I also see that a pragmatist strain, mostly made up of great power realists and liberal globalists, has gained strength over the last two decades, though it is not yet dominant.⁵ When aligned with standard nationalists, this group occupies a strong middle ground. However, with the arrival of the second BJP government in 2014, we would expect to see a hard nationalist agenda tinged with Hindu nationalism gaining ground.

Elements of this view would include ideas that: India lives in a generally hostile world where relationships with other countries cannot be taken for granted; India has to be more assertive in the military sphere in meeting threats; security comes first and more resources have to be assigned to defense; only its own military power will take India to the level of a global power; the military needs to be elevated in decision making; India should behave with strong purposive action to achieve global power; and finally for some, India’s rise should be seen as exceptional—the restoration of one of the world’s great civilizations to its natural pride of place.

Assessing Change and Continuity

To what extent is a hard nationalist outlook being projected to the world, and how might we assess differences from previous periods, reflecting on the two values long sacrosanct in Indian foreign policy right from the Nehruvian era? While the attachment to the latter value (strategic autonomy) can be traced to a combination of post-colonial nationalism and civilizational entitlement, the source of the former (aversion to the use of force) was based on a soft nationalism that gave primacy to internal politico-economic development against a military or security emphasis. (This has stood in stark contrast to neighboring Pakistan, which has been the epitome of what may be termed a national security state)⁶ Moreover, it fit well with Mahatma Gandhi’s ideas of non-violence and peaceful resistance, which held both domestic and international appeal, with many Indian leaders seeing it as giving India a “moral” edge in diplomacy. Even after the disastrous 1962 India-China war, India showed a surprising level of complacency in national security affairs.⁷ The whole discourse on hard power and military affairs was the exception not the norm, with change in discourse occurring visibly only after the nuclear tests of 1998.

If a hard nationalist orientation is on the rise, then we would expect that strategic autonomy would be even more assiduously protected; and that, at a minimum, the pursuit of defense capabilities and objectives would be privileged over development objectives, if not displacing them. We should also see much greater willingness to resort to force to settle crises or disputes, and the emergence of doctrines and strategic thought in support thereof. In the graph below, I try to distill the positions of the different schools of thought on these two values and plot them in relation to each other. For strategic autonomy (an extremely elastic concept), I have elected to use a proxy variable—sentiment toward the United States. I do this because despite the end of the Cold War, the historic nuclear deal between the United States and India, and the spectacular rise of China next door, the extent of closeness to America remains contested in India. For a variety of reasons, including the belief that the United States cannot abide equal partnerships with other countries, and that it is a fickle partner with multiple agendas (for example relations with Pakistan), there is a strong sense among the nationalist groups that Indian autonomy could be at risk if the country moves too close to the United States.⁸

The graph shows that hard nationalists are quite isolated when it comes to favoring military means over diplomacy, with realists the only other group somewhat in favor of military instruments. Realists might countenance a military option, but as a last rather than a first option. There is no so-called ‘war party’ within the spectrum of foreign policy opinions in India. Hard nationalists come closest to this. With the ascendency of the BJP however, it is useful to point out where Hindu nationalists might fall, although their agenda is much more domestic oriented. Generally speaking, like hard nationalists, they are against what they see as India’s self-imposed military and defense restraint. In a similar vein, the idea of Indian civilizational supremacy forms a significant part of the BJP’s narrative on India’s rise and fall, and the notion of self-strengthening will be even more important. The Party’s 2014 election manifesto stated, “What is needed is to take lessons from history, recognize the vitality and resilience of India, the power of its world-view and utilize its strength, which drove it to glorious heights and analyze its weakness, which led to this abysmal fall.”⁹

Hindu nationalists and hard nationalists are not always of the same mindset. The latter tend to see the biggest threat to India coming from China, whereas Hindu nationalists see the biggest threat coming from Pakistan and are in the forefront of calls for India to respond to Pakistan-sponsored terrorism with force, including with cross-border military strikes. In contrast,, some hard nationalists see a need to establish stable relations with Pakistan so that Indian military resources are not diverted to a small threat from Pakistan from a much bigger threat from China.¹⁰

Three other opinion groups are clustered against the use of military force, with soft nationalists and globalists least in favor, and if realists are added, there seems to be little appetite for a militarized foreign policy. Thus, any change to India’s outlook toward a hard nationalist stance would signify a sharp break.

On views vis a vis the United States, globalists and realists, along with standard nationalists, stand in opposition to nationalists holding very strong views on the need to safeguard India’s political sovereignty and freedom of action, regionally and internationally. The distrust of the United States is greatest among the nationalists, with the exception of standard nationalists who have been modifying their views since the 2002 initiation of the nuclear deal. For example, in 1998, the Vajpayee government conducted nuclear tests contravening the strong US nonproliferation stand (seen by the BJP and Congress alike as hypocritical). In 2008, when the Congress government uncharacteristically moved closer to the United States thanks to the unprecedented nuclear deal, it was only able to get passage of the agreement by adding a highly restrictive nuclear liability law pushed by nationalists, in particular, leading members of the BJP. Both parties since the 1990s have been somewhat inconsistent when in power versus out of power regarding relations with the United States—rather more pro-US when in power and much more critical when out of power, suggesting a bid to appeal to popular nationalism when it suits them.

Having given an overall context of Indian outlooks over time, in the next section, I turn to the foreign and defense trends under the Modi government, specifically examining how one of the values identified above (aversion to military means) is influencing policy outlooks. Is there a discernible shift toward hard nationalist preferences as would be exemplified in the willingness to resort to military means over diplomacy?

Foreign and Defense Trends Under Modi

The first indication of the BJP government’s foreign policy ideas came in its election manifesto, released quite late in the campaign. In the 52-page election manifesto, only a little over one page accounted for foreign policy. Right at the outset, the party harks back to India’s freedom movement and cites several leaders including B.G. Tilak, V. Patel, S.C Bose and Mahatma Gandhi. Conspicuously absent was Jawaharlal Nehru in this group. Indeed, the manifesto complains that India’s post-independence leadership (read Congress Party) discarded India’s vision and instead adopted the British institutional framework, which was “alien to the Indian world-view.” According to the BJP, India’s leadership failed to “rekindle the spirit of India.”¹¹

In more specific terms, the manifesto stated the party’s commitment to “developing indigenous defense technologies and fast tracking of defense purchases” as well as making India “a global production platform for defense hardware manufacturing and software production.” ¹² Another much observed clause was the pledge to “revise and update” India’s nuclear doctrine, something which most commentators thought meant that India would give up its critical “No First Use” doctrine. The manifesto devoted attention to the need for more actively promoting its “soft power” through a Brand India campaign and civilizational values. It harked back to the first BJP government as having made it so India would begin to be “reckoned as an economic superpower.”¹³ Thus, both the image and material power of India were areas the BJP sought to redefine as it came to power.

Defense policy and military means

One signal of the government’s approach is defense spending. Modi’s first budget for 2015-2016 can hardly be described as hard nationalist. While the increase was sizable at 10.96 percent, it was unremarkable given that his Congress predecessor increased defense spending by 17.6 percent and 11.6 percent between 2011-2013.¹⁴ The army received a 5.96 percent increase, the air force 4.80 percent, with the navy getting a significant boost by 10.93 percent,¹⁵ similar to its rising share as under the previous government. As a percentage of GDP, the government continued to hold the line on defense: 1.74 versus 1.76 percent the previous year. In contrast, the Chinese and Pakistani defense budgets were well over 2.3 percent of GDP.

If we take a longer historical view, the Indian defense budget has more than doubled over the past decade. Thus, Modi’s budget seems to be following the same pattern rather than signifying a break. Some military analysts have complained that the “limited” increase, with three-quarters of the budget going to maintain the world’s third largest standing force, means that the military’s list of purchases, including the high profile 126 fighter aircraft selected from Dassault will not materialize any time soon.¹⁶ It was reported that India planned to cut its outlay toward new aircraft and engines for the air force in the coming fiscal year.¹⁷ Even some who view the budget as adequate given the threat environment maintain that “mere adequacy will not satisfy India’s long-term security needs.”¹⁸ The more ambitious military expansion and modernization that could have been expected seems to be held in check—at least during this first year.

The Test of Pakistan

Going beyond mere military capabilities to a more pointed question: what about a greater propensity to use military means or the use of force? The test for Modi on this score is most likely to come if faced with another Mumbai type terrorist attack originating from Pakistan. The election manifesto had promised to “deal with cross border terrorism with a firm hand.”¹⁹ Under such a scenario, the prime minister would come under pressure from his own Hindu nationalist base and other hard nationalists to go beyond political and diplomatic measures such as suspending any ongoing talks or symbolic gestures. While so far such an attack has, fortunately, not come to pass, there have been dangerous spikes in cross-border tension in Kashmir. These may be seen as mini-tests of sorts and we can make some inferences.
In October 2014, less than six months after Modi took power, one of the worst skirmishes in a decade occurred along the Indo-Pakistan border. India took a hard diplomatic position saying that the onus to de-escalate is on Pakistan, calling on it to “end its adventurism.”²⁰ India’s defense minister called Pakistan an “aggressor” and accused it of making unprovoked attacks in Kashmir, warning that it would pay an “unaffordable price” if did not stop shelling. The home minister declared, “We want to assure the nation we will not let it down.”²¹ When in opposition, BJP leaders had criticized Congress for “appeasing” Pakistan.
Following a string of calls to stop the cross-border violations, and warnings of “appropriate action,” if not ended, the Indian military retaliated with artillery fire and, reportedly, did so with an intensity that was a departure from the past. At the same time, India did not widen the scope, which could have been escalatory. Within a week, the cross-border firings subsided. At least one well-known hard nationalism proponent saw a change: “The Modi government, by building a range of options, including to neuter Pakistan’s nuclear blackmail, is indicating that Pakistani aggression will attract increasing costs. Given that the “do nothing” approach allowed India to be continually gored, prudent gradualism has been a long time coming.”²² At the same time, the manner in which the conflict on the ground died down without further provocation or escalation suggests that India refrained from a more offensive, forceful campaign.

Another mini-crisis on the border erupted in July 2015, this time against the background of the Ufa Shanghai Cooperation Organization meeting attended by both Modi and Nawaz Sharif, the Pakistani prime minister. The two had met on the sidelines and agreed to have their respective national security advisors meet to discuss ways to combat terrorism. A spate of firings took place across the Line of Control in Kashmir, with India once again accusing Pakistan of aggression. This time, the clashes were more limited and brought to a halt with less saber rattling and rather more diplomacy. In the immediate aftermath, the main controversy in India had to do with whether the Indian national security advisor’s phone call to Pakistan’s high commissioner as tensions rose on July 15 was an attempt to bypass the Indian foreign minister or not.²³

Despite the frosty relations between India and Pakistan that ensued, within less than two months, the border chiefs from both countries were allowed to meet in New Delhi to specifically find ways to de-escalate tensions along the border in accordance with measures to which the two countries had agreed in July during the crisis. A statement said, “Both have decided not to immediately retaliate against firing from either side and to contact the other side to know the cause of firing.”²⁴ This would suggest a serious attempt at putting preventive diplomacy into place to avert the border skirmishes that are regularly at risk of turning into bigger armed conflicts.

Soon after the crisis with Pakistan ended and a day after signing a historic peace accord with Naga insurgents from India’s northeast, the national security advisor, Ajit Doval, gave a lecture in Mumbai on “State Security, Statecraft and Conflict of Values.” Among his remarks, Doval quoted from the Bhagawad Gita and the Quran, to explain the dilemma one faces between “individual morality” and the “value system of the state,” in which he emphasized that the values of the state have to come above personal values.²⁵ In the same speech, Doval expressed his dissatisfaction with India’s current worldview: “India has a mentality to punch below its weight. We should not punch below our weight or above our weight, but improve our weight and punch proportionately.” Whether this is a hard nationalist call or a realist assertion is hard to tell. Many realists too have been exhorting India to play a greater role in accordance with its rising capabilities on the global stage as a “great power,” especially since the early 2000s.

The Test of China

Within six months of taking power, Modi was militarily “tested” not only on Pakistan, but on China as well. The situation in this case was almost farcical: on the one hand, Xi Jinping was on a much ballyhooed landmark three-day visit to India, accompanied by a large delegation, going out of his way to woo India and Modi. This included celebrating Modi’s birthday in his hometown with a slew of beguiling photo ops, including a memorable scene of the two leaders gently swinging on a traditional elaborately hand carved wooden swing. On the other hand, in the midst of all this, news broke that Chinese forces were intruding over the Indian border in Ladakh. According to the Indian foreign ministry, the Chinese soldiers were seen trying to build a temporary road across the border in Indian territory.²⁶

This set off a heated debate in the Indian print and electronic media about the country’s China policy. In talk shows in particular featuring political and strategic analysts, there were numerous voices calling on Modi to give a strong response, but what came through also was the extent of confusion on the Indian side trying to make sense of the situation. Questions were raised as to whether China was testing the new Indian prime minister; sending a signal; or whether it reflected some kind of power play between the Chinese premier and the People’s Liberation Army and not directed at India as such.

Against this upheaval, Modi and Xi had to hold their bilateral summit, including a joint press conference. Under the circumstances, the two were forced to deal publicly with the knotty border problem, which up to then had been handled behind the scenes and by joint commissions that had been set up earlier. In effect, existing policy was that they “agreed to disagree” without letting it impede progress on other matters.²⁷ The upshot of the border standoff was instructive: both leaders now openly acknowledged their differences of opinion on the border, with the important development that Xi became the first Chinese leader to say that he wanted to resolve the border question “at an early date,” something Modi and every Indian prime minister before had been pushing for.²⁸ Up to that point, the Chinese preference was to put off the border settlement as much as possible. As Xi noted, the Line of Actual Control (LAC) between India and China has many areas not well demarcated, so incidents are bound to happen. This aligned with Modi, who emphasized the need to demarcate the LAC to avert avoidable clashes

This border spat was settled in fairly short order through diplomatic means. Foreign Minister Sushma Swaraj expressed India’s satisfaction with the outcome and told reporters, “I am happy to tell you that both nations have sat down and resolved the [border standoff] issue…The bad phase will end by 30 September, the withdrawal of troops will be completed. I talked about this with the Chinese Foreign Minister. I believe this is a big accomplishment.”²⁹ Noteworthy is that Modi and Xi were able to manage the mini-crisis diplomatically, at a time when Modi was publicly put on the spot and under pressure at home to take strong action. The border standoff underlined the need to come to an early diplomatic resolution of the India-China border dispute.

Just days after the standoff, Modi addressed the annual Combined Commanders Conference and said that an atmosphere of peace and security was essential to enable India to achieve its goals of economic development. For this purpose, he said, his government was focused on creating a favorable external environment and strengthening India’s security. India also sped up plans to enhance roads and infrastructure along its side of the border—signaling that the Modi government is taking the border dispute more seriously and not relying solely on diplomacy.

Conclusion

Contrary to expectations, this article suggests that there is continuity under the Modi government and that hard nationalist visions were tempered when it came to the use of force and reliance on military means. Responses to incursions by Pakistan and China on the borders and the mini-crises that ensued did not go according to the hard nationalist script. For hard nationalists, diplomacy is just a weak appendage to military power, but diplomacy was clearly in the forefront in the border standoff with China, and though to a lesser degree, even with Pakistan. How might we explain this seemingly anomalous outcome?

National identities, like other identities, tend to be sticky. Indian leaders’ historic reluctance, if not aversion, to utilize military means, as I argued above, is a fairly widely held value. It is not something that can be easily displaced. Hard nationalist thinking may be growing, but realist, soft nationalist, and globalist sentiment still seem to hold the center of gravity. Having said that, the Modi government can be portrayed as showing a somewhat sharper realist edge in its face-off with Pakistan than its predecessors. Overall, we see a mix of diplomatic and military measures, with diplomacy in the lead, but some signal that there has been a slight shift toward willingness to use military means.

Finally, it should be added that in the bigger picture, Modi’s worldview seems to be a blended nationalist-globalist outlook. It has to be seen in the context of Modi’s recurrent theme of India achieving developed country status. For all the talk of India as a traditional great power, a close reading of Modi’s policy toward China, Japan, and the United States so far suggests that economic growth and development remain at the top of the agenda.³⁰ Achieving developed country status can of course be a nationalist goal, but only what might be termed a more globalist mindset privileging regional and global economic integration, with a diplomatic approach for settling security conflicts, will get India there. This could explain why Narendra Modi’s security policies do not, and even more importantly at this point at least, cannot fit hard nationalist identity prescriptions.