Opinion | Crystallising The Global South: PM Modi’s Vision For A New World Order |
Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s recently concluded foreign tour, from July 2 to 9, covering two continents and five nations, was the longest such trip undertaken in ten years. The pace was unchanged. It was relentless and focused on realising India’s strategic and national interest goals. Apart from the many gains it made for India and for her global partnerships at many levels, this trip was crucial and symbolic on an important count. It served to reiterate and crystallise the philosophy and vision of the “Global South", consistently articulated by PM Modi over the last five years.
Pursuing India’s strategic and foreign policy goals and articulating a vision for a new global discourse and paradigm went hand in hand during PM Modi’s interactions and addresses on this long tour. The hard interests and dealings were not neglected. In fact, under Modi in the last decade, they have never been given up or jettisoned, while the deeper vision that can effectuate a global shift and change in the emerging new order was also stated through PM Modi’s emphasis on the “Global South" paradigm.
Pandit Deendayal Upadhyaya’s thoughts on India’s foreign policy principles come to mind in this context. In a sharp analysis of the dominant paradigm of India’s foreign policy in the Nehru era, he articulated what could be said to be the driving goal of a nation’s foreign policy: “It must be borne in mind," Upadhyaya wrote, “that foreign policy is always a matter of policy and not one of principle. Protection and promotion of national interests is the principle which determines its formulation. So, when anyone insists on it with a vehemence that implies a secondary place of consideration for national interests, he errs." (Alignment vs Non-alignment, July 18, 1960)
In the last decade, PM Modi has retrieved Indian diplomacy from this mindset which saw national........