Satire | Seven pillars of India’s foreign policy: a handy checklist

This is a satire column by G. Sampath. In this edition, he shares the seven pillars of India’s foreign policy, as it is currently practised, in the greater public interest, and for the benefit of all UPSC aspirants (especially those keen on the Indian Foreign Service).

The other day I was at a party hosted by a diplomat of a European country when I again ended up in a situation I have come to dread: explaining India’s foreign policy to foreigners.

I was cornered by exchange students from this country who were convinced I had pearls of wisdom stashed away somewhere. While it is true that my boundless knowledge and incandescent scholarship cannot but help cast its brilliant light upon the murky realms of India’s foreign policy, besides sundry other fields, my extreme modesty prevents me from holding forth publicly on these matters.

Nonetheless, in the greater public interest, and for the benefit of all UPSC aspirants (especially those keen on the IFS), I am sharing the seven pillars of India’s foreign policy, as it is currently practised.

This is the #1 goal of India’s foreign policy and is the metric on which every official in the foreign ministry is evaluated during the annual appraisal: how many foreign trips have you organised for The Boss, and what is the cumulative number of days His Highness has spent on foreign soil as a result of your contributions? The greater the numbers, the more successful India’s foreign policy, and faster your growth in the IFS.

Every time The Boss hugs a powerful world leader, every Indian chest puffs up in pride — if it doesn’t, please get yourself tested at the nearest NIA branch for any anti-national sentiments lurking in your heart. The Hug is a major strategy that has been helping India toward one of its longest-standing foreign policy goals: a permanent seat at the UN Security Council. Also, as Chanakya, the great strategic thinker of ancient India, said, “The fragrance of flowers spreads in the direction of the wind. But the fragrance of your deodorant spreads through the people you hug.”

No foreign trip is complete without a multi-billion dollar contract or two for India’s most patriotic crony capitalists who are working day and night to make India the country with the greatest number of richest billionaires. If a foreign country is dependent on an Indian crony capitalist for developing a coal mine, running a port, or supply of electricity, imagine how much influence India would exercise over that country.

It’s all very well to talk about world peace, etc., but the lynchpin of India’s foreign policy is to have a sustainable enemy to feed domestic audiences and that enemy is Pakistan. While we could traditionally count on Pakistan to do the needful to keep this enmity strong, that may not always happen, which means India has to work that much harder to keep the fires of hostility burning, and in this respect too, our foreign policy has been a glorious success, with chances of normal relations with Pakistan looking as likely as the chances of Indian wrestlers being feted by the government for standing up to officialdom.