India views New Zealand not just as an economic partner but as a diplomatic ally who can help uphold the international rules-based order at a time when it is coming under increased strain, according to experts on India’s foreign policy.
The National-led Government has been trumpeting its free trade agreement with India as a way to bolster New Zealand’s economy and diversify export markets. Prime Minister Christopher Luxon gave his counterpart Narendra Modi a very warm welcome to Auckland last weekend, noting it was the first time in 40 years that an Indian leader had visited New Zealand.
Our economic ties with India have been cemented through a bilateral free trade agreement, and the relationship is now turning into a wider “strategic partnership”, according to an announcement from both sides.
The relationship is also useful for India, says Tanvi Madan, an expert on India’s foreign policy at the Brookings Institution in Washington.
“New Zealand is an actor that plays, and has historically played, a role in maintaining an international order, and especially at a time when India understands that not everybody is invested in maintaining that international order, I think a country like New Zealand is an attractive partner,” she says.
Modi would also be open to stronger defence ties with New Zealand, she says, noting that India and Australia – both members of the “Quad” grouping, which also includes the US and Japan – have been making progress on bilateral security arrangements too. It also wants to play a greater role in the Pacific, Madan says.
“Even though the Pacific Islands are very far away from India, some – like Fiji – do have diaspora connections with India, and India has been trying to be more involved there,” she said.
Modi, who has been India’s prime minister since 2014, is arguably the most consequential Indian leader since Jawaharlal Nehru, who led India until 1964.
He’s taken a more assertive approach to foreign policy. India has long prided itself on being non-aligned, but analysts say Modi is making it “multi-aligned” by forging closer relationships with Russia – with the Trump administration slapping 50 percent tariffs on India as punishment for its purchases of sanctioned Russian oil – and has also been easing long-festering tensions with China.
Modi wants India to become a global power, rather than just a regional one.
“Now, it’s probably somewhere between a regional and a global power,” Madan says. “It aspires to be a leading power, as it has said officially, and I think it does intend to be one of the great powers down the line.”
The relationship with New Zealand plays into that vision.
“I know these days everybody is diversifying, but India has long had this idea of no permanent allies, lots of good friends, for two reasons,” Madan says. “One, they have not wanted to be over-dependent on any one country, and second, they have wanted to maintain some independence of action or autonomy.”
That’s why India is actively pursuing stronger ties on multiple fronts. Modi stopped in Indonesia and Australia before coming to New Zealand, and India is now actively pursuing a free trade agreement with the United States.
But at home, Modi is deeply polarising. His supporters see him as the architect of a more confident and influential India, while his critics say he has weakened institutions and concentrated power, threatening India’s pluralist democratic tradition.
Groups like Freedom House and Reporters Without Borders have accused him of democratic backsliding, particularly when it comes to restrictions on the press and civil society, and the treatment of religious minorities.
Modi, whose Bharatiya Janata Party is based on a Hindu nationalist political ideology, was criticised while chief minister of Gujarat of not doing enough to stop riots in 2002 that led to the deaths of more than 1000 people, mostly Muslims.
Modi’s promotion of the Hindu majority is at odds with India’s secular tradition of recognising equality across all religions and embracing India’s ethnic, linguistic and religious diversity, says Yamini Aiyar, a respected political commentator who served as president of the Centre for Policy Research in New Delhi.
“Hindu nationalism has always been incompatible with the core principles of liberal democracy, simply because the core principles of liberal democracy entrench within them the notion or the concept of minority protections,” Aiyar says.
“Democracy is meant to have checks and balances such that it doesn’t become a brute majoritarian force, while Hindu nationalism – by definition – is about the voice of the majority,” she says.
Modi is sometimes described as having authoritarian or autocratic tendencies, and Aiyar says this is fair criticism.
“We have seen a very deep weaponisation of the coercive powers of the state,” she says, citing anti-sedition and anti-terror laws, laws regulating foreign funding of non-profit organisations and criminalising dissent, and the erosion of the independent judiciary.
“So there’s a whole range of illustrations to show how core democratic processes have been undermined.”
But, Aiyer says, New Zealanders should understand that India, at its core, remains an aspirational economy with enormous potential.
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