Modi looks West? Assessing change and continuity in India’s Middle East policy since 2014

Abstract

Various observers have emphasized a recalibration of India’s stance towards the Middle East under Prime Minister Narendra Modi. These accounts have generally highlighted Modi’s public overtures toward Israel, including an unprecedented 2017 visit, as public signs of a break with India’s traditional pro-Arab and pro-Palestine approach. Others have interpreted Modi’s successive visits to the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Qatar, and Oman as indicators of a new outreach to all relevant actors in the region. However, has this diplomatic balancing among regional stakeholders signalled a substantial foreign policy change? Can this apparent policy shift be attributed to the personal preferences of Modi? Or Can India’s fluctuating Middle-East policy be explained by a wider number of fluid international and regional opportunities and constraints? Alternatively, can factors such as ideological and religious politics at the national and regional levels also help account for changes (or the absence thereof) in India’s Middle-East policy? Building on foreign policy scholarship, this paper offers to derive theoretical understandings and expectations about Modi’s role in (re)shaping this regional policy in order to problematizes the conventional understanding of Modi’s engagement with the Middle East as a sign of substantial foreign policy change.