A refined version of New Delhi’s foreign relations under the Modi regime has improved the Indian position in world politics where the leaders of different nations have started developing cooperative relations with India. The combination of economic and strategic ties with India has let the international community to consider New Delhi as an important player in world politics. In reaction to the growing interests of the international community in maintaining cooperative relations with India, New Delhi was always ambitious for establishing collaborative interaction with the economically developed and technologically advanced nations. Through adopting a cooperative foreign policy with the world outside South Asia, Indian leadership tried to acquire a hegemonic status in the nuclearized subcontinent. Thus, the dramatic changes in Indian foreign policy, introduced by Prime Minister Modi, are mainly designed to uphold India’s influential position in global power politics with the help of great powers. To fulfil its objective of cultivating cooperative ties with the world beyond its home region, New Delhi has adopted various media campaigns to serve its geopolitical interests. The Indian security establishment fundamentally designs these campaigns to engage the international community in economically and strategically collaborative relations without letting anyone notice Modi’s aggressive regional policy in South Asia. As a result, the leaders of developed nations are busy exploring various avenues of cooperative bilateralism with New Delhi in the commercial and security domains instead of considering India’s anti-neighbourhood policy. The broader framework of Indian anti-neighbourhood policy has destroyed the vision of peace and stability in South Asia. The book under review discusses this scenario with the help of various rational arguments. It is basically a study of India’s regional policy, which persistently disturbs South Asian politics while considering neighbouring nations as a potential threat. Contrary to cultivating multidimensional cooperative interactions with the states beyond its immediate borders, New Delhi has adopted various approaches of belligerent foreign relations with the territorially adjoining nations, which is the central theme of the book. It is an edited book compiled by Dr. Saif ur Rehman Malik. The author is a retired Army officer possessing high academic skills supported by his doctorate. The combination of his academic and military capabilities allows him to explore avenues of scholarly research on South Asian politics. While having an exceptional insight in global power politics and its impacts on South Asian politics, Malik has proved his academic potential at different national and international forums, and joined a renowned Islamabad-based independent research institute. In 2020, he joined the Institute of Strategic Studies Islamabad (ISSI) as Director India Study Centre after flourishing his academic vision at different positions in the National Defence University (NDU), Islamabad. The book under review reflects the author’s exclusive approach for analysing the Indian regional belligerent policy. It is an attempt to highlight New Delhi’s brutal way of implementing its regional hegemonic ambition under the leadership of Modi. The extremist ideological reorientation of Indian foreign relations under Modi has tarnished the vision of peace and stability in the subcontinent, which is the main argument of the book.
The book is divided into brief twelve chapters consisting of various viewpoints of different authors. Every chapter covers a different dimension of Indian foreign policy and its unprecedented growth under the Hindutva philosophy under Modi. The advanced version of Hindutva ideology under the shadows of Modi’s draconian face has been called ‘Moditwa’ religious ideology (p. 113). In other words, it is Modi’s corollary of Hindutva ideology. The book starts the debate in the first chapter from a Turkish writer, S. Gulden Ayman, who is currently serving at Istanbul University as a professor of International Relations. She touched on the most important part of India’s foreign policy, which is based on an active Afghan policy to keep Kabul against Islamabad. She says New Delhi’s Afghan policy is fundamentally “aimed at isolating and encircling Pakistan”, parallel to damaging Islamabad-Kabul relations (p. 05). The subsequent chapters of the book further explore New Delhi’s confrontational interaction with its neighbours generally and Pakistan and China exclusively. Another aspect of New Delhi’s anti-Pakistani obsession is rooted in its active multifaceted engagement with Dhaka. It has been analysed by four different angles in the second chapter. The third and fourth chapters, co-authored by four writers from the University of Peshawar and COMSATS University, highlighted the changing matrix of South Asian regional politics with the economic rise of China. Both chapters attempt to describe a complex interaction of China-US-India-Pakistan-Afghanistan in South Asia, which can be treated as an unavoidable and unstoppable interconnectedness between international power politics and South Asian regional politics. The Indian quest for acquiring a regional hegemonic status in the nuclearized subcontinent has compelled New Delhi to stretch its strategic muscles beyond the territorial confines of its home region, according to the analysis of chapter Five. Growing India maritime interests have led New Delhi towards Colombo, where Beijing is a potential challenger for the Modi government, as stated by a former Pakistan’s High Commissioner in Sri Lanka in chapter Five. The emerging competition between India and China has been investigated in the Sixth chapter. This chapter has a brief survey of India-China approaches towards neighbours (p. 105-111).
The author presents his position on the current status of Indian Illegally Occupied Jammu and Kashmir (IIOJK) in the Seventh chapter. It is an exclusive account of IIOJK after August 05, 2019, when Modi revoked article 370 and 35A (p. 114). Chapters Eight and Nine provide the recent interpretations of Indian clashes with China and Pakistan, whereas the Tenth chapter emphasised the fifth generation warfare in South Asia in the form of Indian false flag operations against Pakistan. The last two chapters of the book focus on the Indian quest for attaining strategic autonomy through securing American support in global power politics. The reaction to the emerging Sino-Pak economic bilateralism has resulted in Indo-US strategic partnership, and this strategic bilateralism between New Delhi and Washington has started empowering New Delhi’s position in the surrounding maritime affairs. This scenario has started transforming South Asian territorial politics into oceanic politics. In short, every chapter reveals scholarly various dimensions of an unending Indian antipathy towards Pakistan, which reached its zenith with the arrival of Modi in Indian politics. Indirectly, all chapters of the book focus upon New Delhi’s quest for isolating Pakistan in regional and international politics. Modi’s objective to stigmatise Pakistan’s image in the international community is also trying to place Pakistan at a disadvantageous position in the Muslim world.
In this way, this book tries to maintain an updated account of Modi’s India under the shadows of an aggrieve ideology against both its nuclear neighbours, Pakistan and China. Despite having some formatting and typographical errors, the main part of the book contains various convincing arguments supported by the impartial views of different authors. The repetition of arguments in few chapters and the inclusion of some unclear figures slightly weaken the main structure of the book. Apart from these minor deficiencies, the inclusion of analysis scholarly developed by young writers enhances the uniqueness of this book. In short, it is an appropriate study to comprehend the contemporary version of New Delhi’s foreign policy, revised or amended by Narendra Modi. It could be treated as essential reading for students having interest in understanding the changing dimensions of politics and international relations in the South Asian nuclearized subcontinent. Moreover, it could be considered an appropriate study for leading policymakers, academicians, and stakeholders dealing with Indian foreign relations at different levels.
