The Indian Middle East: a new history
By Avinash Paliwal
Hurst, 2024
The sudden collapse of Sheikh Hasina’s government in Bangladesh on August 5 aroused mixed emotions of surprise, anger and concern in India. However, what is missing from the speech is a sense of introspection on India’s neighborhood policy, particularly on its troubled eastern flank. This is where Avinash Paliwal’s latest book, The Indian Middle Eastfills the gap by exploring the contours of Indian policy in the Middle East in terms of protecting its territorial integrity, protecting Hindu minorities and managing ethnic conflicts in its periphery, which are precisely the same issues that preoccupied the intelligentsia Indian and the establishment at the post. -Hassina era. Thus, the book gives the reader an insight into India’s trials and tribulations in the Middle East over seven decades, in a descriptive rather than a prescriptive manner.
The book is divided into three parts and ten chapters, each chronologically covering India’s particular approach towards its Middle East, i.e. solidarity, security and connectivity. The section on solidarity covers the period 1947-1970 and describes how India faced the consequences of partition and the outbreak of ethnic insurgencies in the Middle East. The security part focuses on the period 1971-1990. It covers the Bangladesh Liberation War, the assassination of leaders like Sheikh Mujib and Jia Ur Rahman, and India’s support for pro-democracy elements in Myanmar. The final part, i.e. connectivity, covers the period 1990-2024 and describes how India has calibrated its Middle East policy to adapt to the new realities of economic liberalization and collapse of the Soviet Union.
The book’s greatest strength lies in its ability to support the author’s central argument that India’s diplomacy in its Middle East state vis-à-vis East Pakistan, Bangladesh and of Myanmar is closely linked to its state project in the northeast as a state. common thread connecting the whole text. Therefore, the reader can extrapolate from contemporary events like India’s ambiguity in its engagement against the military junta after the 2021 coup or Delhi’s tightrope walk with Bangladesh regarding the adoption of the Citizenship Amendment Act. The book’s historical analytical framework allows readers to analyze controversial issues such as the xenophobic trend in Myanmar towards Rohingya Muslims or India’s continued use of repressive measures such as AFSPA (Armed Forces Special Power Act) in the northeast.
Through meticulous use of archival sources and interviews with key protagonists, the author is able to uncover interesting incidents like the coordination between the Indian Intelligence Bureau (IB) and the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI ) Pakistani to contain communism in Burma or India’s desire to intervene militarily. in Bangladesh in 2009 to save the life of Sheikh Hassina following the Bangladesh Rifles (BDR) mutiny in 2009. The author also demolishes many ideas prevalent through his research, such as Nehru dealing unsentimentally with issues of secessionism. After Nei Win came to power in Burma, India accepted Ne Win’s coup against U Nu and India’s mass exodus from Burma to ensure Burmese cooperation in ongoing operations against the Naga activists. He also identified many gaps in the research, such as India’s unusual response to the 1954 elections in East Pakistan. This election in Pakistan took place against the backdrop of Bengali agitation by the United Front. The United Front’s landslide electoral victory was seen as a positive development by Nehru, who believed that a Pakistan ruled by a non-Punjabi elite could lead to the resolution of a pending dispute between India and Pakistan. Thus, the author is able to establish a hitherto unexplored link between India’s possible intervention in 1971 and its perception of Pakistan’s ruling elite in ethnic terms in the 1950s, a critical aspect that requires further investigation.
The book also addresses the much-talked-about “two and a half fronts” security dilemma, the resolution of which has been a key driver of India’s Middle East policy. India’s relations with Pakistan and China are in a “deep freeze” following India’s abrogation of Article 370 and the Galwan standoff with China in 2020, which reignited the India’s security dilemma, and the author’s attempt to historicize this phenomenon is very relevant.
Yet, despite the above-mentioned features, the contemporary relevance of the book lies in its ability to shed light on the conundrum of India’s neighborhood. India’s inability to adopt a coherent and continuous posture towards its eastern neighbors is a historical truth. It provides an informative guide to all South Asian scholars on New Delhi’s dilemma vis-à-vis its smaller counterparts. India’s vacillation between realism and liberalism in its relations with South Asian states stems from its insecurity about its periphery and the role of external powers like China and the United States.
However, the very contemporary relevance of these books has also exposed their weaknesses since the author, in his attempt to use an “outside-in” perspective, neglects the role of the community policies of his neighbors, particularly from Pakistan, in determining India’s response. Communalism or ethnic nationalism in South Asia has a historical context and is reinforced through a vicious cycle of action-reaction; therefore, the analysis of the response of an asymmetric power like India cannot be complete without adequately considering the role of the colonial powers and its neighbors. Furthermore, in the latter part of the book, for example, while explaining India’s connectivity push to the Middle East, the author has adopted a very monocausal approach of focusing on regional dynamics and neglecting the radical change in the global balance of power in the post-war period. The Cold War era.
India’s Middle East is a much neglected region in Indian academia, as our policymakers and academics have traditionally had a Western-oriented view due to the size and importance of Pakistan in our imagination . This scientific poverty is the main reason why popular discourse in India fails to appreciate the behavior of its eastern neighbor, such as the toppling of the statue of Mujib Ur Rahman by student protesters following the events of August 5. in the multiple narratives prevalent in the highly diverse ethnic landscape of the Indian Near East constitutes his greatest contribution to existing studies of South Asia in general and the Indian Near East in particular.
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