Why India is silent over the bloodbath and political turmoil in Egypt…? by Rajeev Sharma Aug 16, 2013 To come to the brass tacks upfront, India’s silence over the ongoing violence and political turmoil in Egypt – which has left over 500 people dead in past few days – is at once mystifying and galling. The Indian silence thus far on the ongoing bloodbath in Egypt can have two connotations. One, the Indian diplomatic establishment is in a wait-and-watch mode and is no hurry to take a position as the military government and the Muslim Brotherhood continue to play the bloody game of one-upmanship against one another. This is a serious dereliction of diplomatic duty on part of India. Two, it is so because India is too bogged down with its own domestic politics and more pressing foreign policy imperatives. This is even more serious as it connotes a policy paralysis that the UPA 2 government has constantly been accused of. Whichever way you look at it, the Indian silence on the political game being played out in Egypt is galling. The significance of the Egyptian situation can be gauged by the fact that the United States President Barack Obama has canceled the joint US-Egypt military exercises “Bright Star”, saying that Washington’s traditional cooperation with Egypt “cannot continue as usual” in the face of ongoing bloodbath in that country. If India has to ever become a superpower, its foreign policy establishment will have to keep pace with important developments across the globe. India’s foreign policy czars will have to think ahead of times and the least they are expected to do is to react to global upheavals. But the movers and shakers of the Indian foreign policy have left much to be desired in this context. Egypt is a case in point. Egypt is burning. And Egypt is not of peripheral significance to India – diplomatically and strategically. Egypt, the most populated country of Africa, is a transcontinental country spanning the northeast corner of Africa and southwest corner of Asia through a land bridge . It is a country that has been continuously inhabited since ten thousand years ago Before Christ (BC). India has been in touch with this ancient country for millennia as India and Egypt are two of the world’s oldest civilizations. In more recent times, Egypt and India have been the co-founders of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM. The India-Egypt bilateral trade in the last financial year (2012-13) was to the tune of $ 5.48 billion which is double the India-Pakistan official trade. There are about 3000 Indian nationals in Egypt and fifty Indian companies are presently doing business in Egypt. The last time when India’s Ministry of External Affairs had made a statement on Egypt was on 4 July, 2013. Apart from saying the usual stuff like “”We are closely monitoring the evolving situation in Egypt,” the MEA had then urged “all political forces to abjure violence, exercise restraint, respect democratic principles and the rule of law and engage in a conciliatory dialogue to address the present situation.” Since then the MEA continues to watch the situation in Egypt without commenting on the worst phase of Egyptian politics since President Hosni Mubarak was ousted in January 2011, the first major victim of the Arab Spring. What is happening in Egypt today can be summed up in one sentence. Egypt is being torn asunder by a bloody fight for supremacy between the military and the main opposition force, the Muslim Brotherhood, as the country is supposedly going through a democratic transition. The Egyptian military has become far more ambitious since the 3 July military coup when President Mohamed Morsi was ousted. The Muslim Brotherhood, Egypt’s most organized political force with a support base of over 600,000 supporters, has since then taken up cudgels on behalf of President Mohamad Morsi since his ouster. Egypt is back to square one and is in fact much worse off today than it ever was during Mubarak’s reign. The relationship between the Egyptian government under Mubarak and the Muslim Brotherhood was never so bad, and in fact inimical, as it is today. Then the Muslim Brotherhood was given enough elbow room politically and allowed to contest elections. But today, the current military government seems hell bent on wiping out the Muslim Brotherhood as a political force. This leaves us with the question: was Mubarak that bad? And if indeed he was, how has Egypt fared as a nation since he was ousted? While the MEA is well within its right to issue a statement on Egypt as per its own time frame, it will do well to let the world know where it stands on the current Egyptian political divide. Merely stating that India is closely watching the situation and appealing all to abjure violence will be hackneyed diplomacy which won’t be suitable for a country aspiring to be a major world power, leave alone a superpower.
Posted on: Fri, 16 Aug 2013 05:46:50 +0000
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