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By:

Akhilesh Sinha

25 June 2025 at 2:53:54 pm

India's multi-align diplomacy triumphs

New Delhi: West Asia has transformed into a battlefield rained by fireballs. Seas or land, everywhere echoes the roar of cataclysmic explosions, flickering flames, and swirling smoke clouds. et amid such adversity, Indian ships boldly waving the Tricolour navigate the strait undeterred, entering the Arabian Sea. More remarkably, Iran has sealed its airspace to global flights but opened it for the safe evacuation of Indians.   This scene evokes Prime Minister Narendra Modi's memorable 2014...

India's multi-align diplomacy triumphs

New Delhi: West Asia has transformed into a battlefield rained by fireballs. Seas or land, everywhere echoes the roar of cataclysmic explosions, flickering flames, and swirling smoke clouds. et amid such adversity, Indian ships boldly waving the Tricolour navigate the strait undeterred, entering the Arabian Sea. More remarkably, Iran has sealed its airspace to global flights but opened it for the safe evacuation of Indians.   This scene evokes Prime Minister Narendra Modi's memorable 2014 interview. He stated that "there was a time when we counted waves from the shore; now the time has come to take the helm and plunge into the ocean ourselves."   In a world racing toward conflict, Modi has proven India's foreign policy ranks among the world's finest. Guided by 'Nation First' and prioritising Indian safety and interests, it steadfastly embodies  'Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam' , the world as one family.   Policy Shines Modi's foreign policy shines with such clarity and patience that even as war flames engulf West Asian nations, Indians studying and working there return home safe. In just 13 days, nearly 100,000 were evacuated from Gulf war zones, mostly by air, some via Armenia by road. PM Modi talked with Iran's President Masoud Pezeshkian to secure Iran's airspace for the safe evacuation of Indians, a privilege denied to any other nation. Additionally, clearance was granted for Indian ships carrying crude oil and LPG to pass safely through the Hormuz Strait. No other country's vessels are navigating these waters, except for those of Iran's ally, China. The same strategy worked in the Ukraine-Russia war: talks with both presidents ensured safe corridors, repatriating over 23,000 students and businessmen. Iran, Israel, or America, all know India deems terrorism or war unjustifiable at any cost. PM Modi amplified anti-terror campaigns from UN to global platforms, earning open support from many nations.   Global Powerhouse Bolstered by robust foreign policy and economic foresight, India emerges as a global powerhouse, undeterred by tariff hurdles. Modi's adept diplomacy yields notable successes. Contrast this with Nehru's era: wedded to Non-Aligned Movement, he watched NAM member China seize vast Ladakh territory in war. Today, Modi's government signals clearly, India honors friends, spares no foes. Abandoning non-alignment, it embraces multi-alignment: respecting sovereignties while prioritizing human welfare and progress. The world shifts from unipolar or bipolar to multipolar dynamics.   Modi's policy hallmark is that India seal defense deals like the S-400 and others with Russia yet sustains US friendship. America bestows Legion of Merit; Russia, its highest civilian honor, Order of St. Andrew the Apostle. India nurtures ties with Israel, Palestine, Iran via bilateral talks. Saudi Arabia stands shoulder-to-shoulder across fronts; UAE trade exceeds $80 billion. UN's top environment award, UNEP Champions of the Earth, graces India, unlike past when foreign nations campaigned against us on ecological pretexts.   This policy's triumph roots in economic empowerment. India now ranks the world's fourth-largest economy, poised for third in 1-2 years. The 2000s dubbed it 'fragile'; then-PM economist Dr. Manmohan Singh led. Yet  'Modinomics'  prevailed. As COVID crippled supply chains, recession loomed, inflation soared and growth plunged in developed countries,  Modinomics  made India the 'bright star.' Inflation stayed controlled, growth above 6.2 per cent. IMF Chief Economist Pierre-Olivier Gourinchas praised it, advising the world to learn from India.

Fraying Stitch

West Bengal’s Chief Minister built her rule on minority consolidation. Ahead of a hotly-contested Assembly poll, the seams are coming apart.

West Bengal
West Bengal

For more than a decade Mamata Banerjee has ruled West Bengal by mastering a simple political arithmetic: consolidate Muslim voters, scatter the opposition and frame every election as a ‘civilisational’ stand-off with the Bharatiya Janata Party. That formula delivered landslides in 2016 and 2021 and turned the Trinamool Congress (TMC) into the state’s natural party of power. But ahead of the coming Assembly elections, that arithmetic is beginning to wobble. The emergence of Muslim-led outfits exploring a united front speaks volumes about what Mamata Banerjee has reduced Bengal’s politics to.


Humayun Kabir, a suspended TMC MLA and the man behind the construction of a Babri Masjid replica along a national highway in Murshidabad, has floated a new party, the Janata Unnayan Party, and is openly urging Muslims to break with the TMC. He has found common cause with Naushad Siddiqui’s Indian Secular Front (ISF), rooted in the influential Furfura Sharif shrine, which has called for an alliance against both the TMC and the BJP. Talks are reportedly under way with smaller outfits, including the SDPI, the political wing of the banned Popular Front of India.


For years Mamata Banerjee positioned herself as the sole credible guardian of Muslim interests. Welfare schemes, symbolic gestures and a relentless anti-BJP rhetoric cemented her image as a bulwark against majoritarian politics. Muslims, roughly 27 per cent of Bengal’s population, rewarded her handsomely in districts where they form decisive blocs. In Malda, the TMC’s vote share jumped from single digits in 2011 to a majority a decade later. In Murshidabad, it rose even more dramatically. Together, these districts became pillars of Trinamool dominance.


Yet it is precisely in these belts that the TMC now looks most exposed. Many seats were won in 2021 by margins slim enough to be overturned by a modest 5–7 percentage-point split in the minority vote. A fractured Muslim electorate would not hand power to the BJP overnight, but it could turn comfortable victories into knife-edge contests and complicate Mamata Banerjee’s path to a fourth term.


The deeper story is not electoral mathematics but political exhaustion. The churn among Muslim voters has been fuelled by a growing sense that the TMC’s minority politics has curdled into tokenism. The controversy over the removal and reclassification of OBC groups, amendments to the Waqf law, and the state’s habit of reactive governance have created unease.


Mamata Banerjee’s style of rule has aggravated the problem. Power in Bengal has been personalised to an extreme, dissent criminalised and local strongmen indulged so long as they deliver votes. This has produced a politics where identity entrepreneurs thrive.


Meanwhile the BJP’s leadership has intensified organisational efforts, drafted ‘Prabasi’ leaders from across India and scheduled high-profile visits by national figures. Yet the BJP’s challenge in Bengal remains structural as its appeal still polarises more than it persuades. Mamata Banerjee continues to exploit fears over citizenship laws, migrant detentions and electoral roll revisions to rally minorities behind her.


That is precisely the tragedy of Bengal’s politics. After 14 years of Trinamool rule, the state is poorer in ideas and thinner in institutions. What should have been a decade of renewal after Left Front stagnation has yielded instead a brittle regime dependent on fear. The rise of Muslim-led outfits is not a sign of healthy pluralism but a sign that politics has been reduced to identity bargaining in a vacuum of governance.


Whether or not Banerjee is dethroned this time, she certainly is being challenged in a big way for the first time since 2011 -and that too from within the very constituency that sustained her rise. That alone is an indictment. Bengal, once a crucible of ideas, now offers a narrower spectacle of a ruling party that mistook crude consolidation for consent. It is discovering that loyalty purchased through polarisation rarely endures.

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