The Messenger from Riyadh

ON OCTOBER 2, 2022, THE MECCA-BASED Muslim World League (MWL), in a historic first, paid rich tributes to Mahatma Gandhi on his 153rd birth anniversary. Hailing Gandhi as the pioneer of the philosophy of non-violence or Ahimsa, the interna­tional NGO based out of the birthplace of Prophet Muhammad in Saudi Arabia—it also houses the holiest of Islamic shrines, the Kaaba—honoured the visionary freedom fighter in glowing terms. It also urged the promotion worldwide of the philosophy of non-violence as a powerful transformative and uniting tool. The event signalled another landmark in the increas­ing proximity, through the last few years after his ascent, between Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS) and Narendra Modi's India, home to the third-largest Muslim population in the world after Indonesia and Pakistan. It followed MBS' own visit to India in 2019 to showcase a distinct restructured vision for his own country both at home and in its foreign policy, over and beyond a pan-Arab and pan-Islamic identity. Riyadh is now in the thick of calibrating a new definition of Saudi nationalism and emphasis­ing the distinct nationalist interests of the kingdom, which now propagates a patriotism rooted in the 'Saudi First' outlook. Religious conservatism, Arab solidarity, Islamic unity, and a predominantly oil-dependent economy were the kingdom's key markers earlier.

This week marked another defining event in the close ties de­veloping between Riyadh and New Delhi on key fronts, including culture, geopolitics and trade. On his first visit to the Indian capital, former justice minister in MBS' government, Islamic scholar and secretary general of MWL, Mohammad bin Abdulkarim Al-Issa emphasised at an event organised by the Khusro Foundation: "In Islam, coexistence is an obligation." He also urged better commu­nication between cultures to address the negative trends emerg­ing across the world. Hailing India, a Hindu-majority nation, for its secular Constitution, he asserted that it was a great model for coexistence for the entire world. "Indian Muslims are proud of be­ing Indians," he observed, adding that the Muslim component was an important one in the language of coexistence. Contending that diversity within societies both protected the Constitution and pro­moted tolerance and stability, he said that differences among com­munities should be respected and propagated through education from a young age. Al-Issa emphasised that religion could become a role model for cooperation, ending clashes between cultures and civilisations. The language of religious diplomacy and interfaith harmony was a marked departure from much of the world's earlier view of Saudi Arabia as its most patriarchal theocracy, ruled by a feudal despot, and based on conservative, rigid and archaic laws, as well as a nation that funded and promoted radical Islam.

On July 11, Al-Issa, who is here on the invitation of the Indian government, met Prime Minister Narendra Modi to discuss a host of issues, including countering the growth of radicalisation among India's 200 million Muslims. The meet comes ahead of Modi's second visit to an Islamic nation in a month, this time to the UAE for the fifth time, after his return from France. That Modi believes firmly in improving both cultural and economic ties with Arab nations as part of his vision is evident in India's bilateral trade with the UAE, currently at a very strong $85 billion, making the Gulf nation India's third-largest trading partner and fourth-largest overall investor, besides being its second-largest export destina­tion. In September 2022, India, France, and the UAE announced a trilateral cooperation initiative in defence, energy, and health. In June, the three countries carried out their first joint naval exercise in the Gulf of Oman to secure the Indian Ocean against a variety of threats. The scheduled visit to the UAE underscores India's grow­ing engagement with West Asia. Modi also paid a bilateral visit to Egypt while returning from the US last month.

India's relationship with the Arab world did not get here on its own. It took a powerful push from the Modi government. The elec­tion of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) to power and Modi taking office as prime minister in 2014 marked a decisive turn in relations between New Delhi and West Asia, including Saudi Arabia. The result, over more than nine years of Modi's prime ministership dur­ing which he has led from the front, has been dramatic. During his two terms as prime minister, Manmohan Singh by and large stuck with the staid and static policy and unidimensional perspective for West Asia coined by Jawaharlal Nehru. Singh rarely visited the region or took cognisance of its key role in shaping the geopolitical interests of India in the Islamic world, or even its impact on India's Muslims. Among foreign policy experts, Modi's revision of the tra­ditional Congress policy for the region has provoked new discus­sions on India's West Asia perspectives and whether the role of BJP's ideology is facilitating new explanations. BJP and Modi chose to mould a foreign policy driven by the pragmatic rather than the ideological, and broke with the predominantly traditional, anti-imperialist and postcolonial positions taken by Nehru. Instead of the aseptic restriction of relations to only oil trade (Saudi Arabia is the third-largest oil supplier to India today after Russia which moved up the ladder after the Ukraine war began), labour (India provides labour to West Asia and remittances from the region play a significant role in the economy), and religion on account of its significant Muslim population, Modi has deliberately set out to rewrite India's relations with Arab nations.

Apart from gradual diplomatic recognition and a pro-active partnership with Israel, India today has a strong geopolitical footing in the West Asian region to counter Pakistan's designs, in connecting with Arab nations solely by flaunting the common Islamic moorings, and to check China's interests in the region too. India also has high stakes in counter-terrorism and de-radicali­sation and sees itself as a world leader in this.

Defying most projections, Modi has been able to persistently build one-on-one rela­tions with the leaders of individual nations and a dynamic foreign policy instead of a longer-term ideologically static policy. He has successfully managed to have relations with both Iran (despite US disapproval) and Saudi Arabia, and has endorsed India's friend­ship with Israel even as he built personal re­lations with the Arab nations, just as he has balanced relations with both Russia and the US against the backdrop of events in Ukraine. Today, issues like Kashmir (provoked by Islamabad) and the abrogation of Article 370 or the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) are perceived in West Asian nations more as India's internal matters than issues of Islamic concern. Modi's strategy has allowed joint ex­ercises with countries in the region besides being part of the I2U2 (UAE, the US, India and Israel) and groupings similar to the Quad for the region. Happily, for India, its decision to rework its relations comes in the wake of sig­nificant restructuring and redefining of national interests among individual states in West Asia, in consonance with the after-effects of the Arab Spring and the urge among ruling regimes to insulate themselves against the danger of overthrow. The process of more liberal social reform and relaxation of laws used against ordinary people, the discovery of new interests and forging of relations out­side the region with prominent non-Islamic nations, promoting interfaith relations among Muslim societies and de-emphasising aggressive and insular activities related to the tenets of a conserva­tive Islam are all part of this exercise as West Asian nations break with the dominant Arab solidarity and Islamic unity tenets that had defined them earlier.

Modi, astute politician that he is, sensed a huge opportunity in reworking India's own equations with Arab nations, better serving its geopolitical, strategic and trade interests.

Modi's determination to change the narrative has meant that from the UAE and Bahrain onwards, several other Islamic countries and nationalities, such as Afghanistan, the Maldives, Saudi Arabia, the Palestinians, have all honoured Modi with their highest civilian awards, based on his personal diplomatic out­reach. This is historic, given that Modi was the first Indian prime minister to visit some of these nations and certainly the first to be so honoured. Former diplomat G Parthasarathy once described Modi's ability to craft a strong relationship with Islamic states as his best foreign-policy achievement. Significantly, there is a huge domestic component to his political vision since co-opting Mus­lim Indians at home and calming the opposition against issues like CAA, mandatory unveiling in government schools, prayer congregations on private property, the abrogation of Article 370, and the current debate on the Uniform Civil Code (UCC) would all go a long way in cementing relations with Islamic nations and ensuring a sound political footing at home.

Arab states like Saudi Arabia and the UAE have themselves, especially post-2010 and the events of the Arab Spring, chosen to depart from viewing their relations within the region and globally through the Israel prism alone and have begun to restruc­ture themselves on the newly coined principles of nationalism in Arabia (as opposed to Arab nationalism earlier). Modi has grabbed the opportunity with both hands.

MOHAMMAD AL-ISSA'S ADDRESS to religious lead­ers in India is perceived as a plea for the practice of Islam to become more open and modern, less insular and conservative. It comes after widespread protests in recent years against a spate of issues, including CAA and now UCC. Counter-radicalism, promoting religious moderation and peace among communities in a diverse nation are key ingredients of India's foreign policy and New Delhi has sought to connect with such voices in the Islamic world.

An ardent advocate of social reform and a key proponent of moderation in Islamic practice in a modernised Saudi Arabia, Al-Issa is seen to be close to MBS and empowered to use religious diplomacy to unveil Riyadh's reformed profile to the rest of the world. His opinions today impact aspects of predominantly Mus­lim societies, both at home and abroad, from more freedom to women, accepted norms of behaviour in public, relaxing man­datory veiling rules and multiple marriages, to adoption, inheri­tance, and so on. With the rapidly downgraded importance of the ministry of Islamic affairs and its moral police, it is powerful organisations like MWL that have become MBS' most preferred tools to further his country's charm offensive.

In his address at the event on July 11, National Security Advisor (NSA) Ajit Doval hailed Al-Issa as an "authentic voice of moderate Islam admired by millions the world over." The In­dian Muslim population, he pointed out, almost paralleled the combined population of 33 member states of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC). Describing India as a refuge for heterodox ideas with an infinite capacity to absorb dissent, Doval pointed to the "incredibly low" number of recruits from India by radical organisations even when emphasising that the threat of terrorism did not, however, allow for a lowering of the guard.

Over the decades, MWL has exerted expansive influence over Muslims the world over, including Indians, who now account for 14.2 per cent of the country's 19,50,00,000 population. Saudi Ara­bia's global propagation of Wahhabism, as the custodian of Islam's holiest shrines and fuelled by the petro dollar, lent it immense le­gitimacy, with Muslims everywhere holding up Riyadh's version of Islam as the model to follow. Along with other NGOs, the league exercised immense extra-constitutional powers both in Saudi Ara­bia and elsewhere, supporting proselytism (in Islam, da'wah means inviting people to Islam) and funding radical organisations rooting aggressively for political Islam, espoused by both Iran and Turkey.

Saddam Hussein's invasion of Kuwait in 1990 saw the Muslim Brotherhood opposing intervention by the US, deepen­ing differences with the Saudi ruling family. After the liberation of Kuwait in 1991, the Al Saud family saw the first signs of oppo­sition in the form of Al Sahwa, which called for political reforms and the overthrow of the ruling regime. Al Sahwa was allegedly inspired by the Brotherhood. The events of 9/11 came as a second shock, with 15 of the 19 perpetrators identified as Saudi youth who followed the doctrinal activism advocated by the Brother­hood. Then interior minister and crown prince, who died in 2012, Nayef bin Abdul-Aziz, accused the Muslim Brotherhood in 2002 of being the root cause of most problems in the Arab world. The same Saudi royal family that supported the Brotherhood for years is now firmly opposed to it and other groups like it, besides choosing mod­eration in Islam. The existential crisis confronting it has also meant that the House of Saud, in an effort to shore up its own safety and longevity, is also taking on the political Islam of Turkey and Iran.

Along the way came the crumbling of the highly oil-de­pendent economy of Venezuela and the Covid-19 pandemic that brought down oil sales to an all-time low, prompting Mohammed bin Salman to extend the path taken by his father and insulate his country by building a strong economic infra­structure beyond oil trade. These turning points for the West Asian giant have signalled the arrival of a transforming new king­dom that showcases new aspirations and ambitions. This un­leashing of an unprecedented charm offensive by Riyadh prom­ises to be a sound investment for India and Narendra Modi.