It has been reported in the media that Prime Minister Narendra Modi will not be attending the Non Aligned Movement (NAM) Summit in Venezuela and some other Minister will represent India.  What does this mean for India’s foreign policy and how does the CPI(M) view this?

G N Ramesh, Hyderabad

THE Non Aligned Movement Summit is scheduled to be held in Venezuela on September 17-18, 2016.  The Venezuelan Foreign Minister, Delcy Rodriguez, was in Delhi recently to handover the formal letter of invitation to the prime minister which was handed over to external affairs minister, Sushma Swaraj. The external affairs ministry sources have been briefing the media that the prime minister is unlikely to attend the NAM Summit.  If this is true, then it will be the first time an Indian prime minister has been absent in a NAM Summit.  The only exception was in 1979 when Charan Singh was the prime minister, but then it was a short-lived government which had become a caretaker government.  

The non-attendance of Prime Minister Modi at the NAM Summit in Venezuela will be a clear signal that the Indian government does not consider NAM to be of any relevance and does not want to accord it importance.  It will be a reversal of the long-held position that India should play a key role in the non-aligned movement which has come to represent the aspirations of the developing countries.  India was one of the founders of the non-aligned movement.

The foreign policy pursued by the Modi government has marked a clear shift towards allying with the United States of America.  In the last two years of the Modi government, the ten-year Defence Framework Agreement has been renewed.  Further, the government is poised to sign the Logistic Support Agreement which will allow US armed forces to utilise Indian military bases. Prime Minister Modi had signed a Joint Vision Statement for the Asia-Pacific  and the Indian Ocean Region with President Obama.

Venezuela has been in the forefront of the movement against US imperialist hegemony.  The US government is openly hostile to Venezuela.  The reluctance of Modi to be at the NAM Summit in Venezuela indicates his unwillingness to go against the US wishes.  There are countries in the NAM who are allied with the United States like Philippines. But Narendra Modi, given the BJP’s hostility to the non-aligned movement from the outset and the pro-US line of government, wants to make a public statement that instead of being “non aligned”, India is now “aligned”.