If there is one overarching foreign policy priority for Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in his second term, it is the long overdue strategic outreach to the Muslim world. A sustained effort to re-engage the major Muslim nations is essential in managing many of India’s internal and external security challenges. They range from the post-Mumbai imperatives of counter-terrorism at home to ending, once and for all, Pakistan’s support to anti-India extremist groups.
New Delhi’s renewed focus on the Muslim world should help stabilise the subcontinent, rejuvenate the “Look East” policy, and lay the foundations for a new “Look West” policy. Above all, it forms the basis for a credible Indian response to the new US strategy in the Great Game territory, the Af-Pak region.
India’s strategic imperatives and opportunities in the Muslim world are underlined by some important recent developments. At home, the CPM’s crude attempts to project the UPA government’s foreign policy as “anti-Muslim” have come a cropper. It is the CPM, in fact, that lost badly needed Muslim support in Bengal.
There is no doubt that during the Bush years, the relations between the United States and the Islamic world touched a new low and complicated New Delhi’s efforts to build partnerships with both Washington and the major Muslim powers.
Bush’s successor, Barack Obama’s determined outreach to the Islamic world now allows India to simultaneously upgrade its engagement with both in pursuit of self-interest and without having to look over its shoulder.
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