conclusion 271
To mend relations with Washington, India needed to convince the
world that it was prepared to make a clean break from the past. If its cold-
war worldview was truly obsolete, it had to make a visible foreign- policy
gesture. This came in the form of normalizing full diplomatic relations
with Israel. Besides po liti cal and geostrategic calculations, one cannot
ignore the symbolic nature of the decision. Normalization of relations
was announced literally hours before Prime Minister Rao left for New
York to attend the summit meeting of the UN Security Council.
In making a break from the past, India did not take a U-turn. Such a
move would have been detrimental to its aspirations of infl uence in the
wider world. While normalization marked a new beginning, a zigzag
policy would have been disastrous. Nor did the domestic and co ali tion
situation enable the Congress Party to abandon its past policy regarding
Palestine. This is marked by continued Indian support for the po liti cal
rights of the Palestinians and their rights for statehood.
Normalization of relations with Israel marked a defi nite break from
the past. Rao’s new approach to Israel was followed by mainstream po liti-
cal forces within the country. Despite occasional pressures from some
Muslim and communist groups, India resolved not to revert back to the
old ways of treating Israel as an outcast.
Interestingly, normalization also undermined some of the conventional
wisdom regarding Indian foreign policy. Normalization did not happen
when India was witnessing po liti cal stability, economic growth, or Hindu-
Muslim communal harmony. On the contrary, it happened when all of
them were absent or most unfavorable. Indeed, within months after the
establishment of relations with Israel, religious tensions reached its height
when the controversial Babri Mosque in the sleepy north Indian town of
Ayodhya was destroyed by right- wing Hindu activists, burying secularism
in its rubble.
Likewise, the conventional wisdom argues that in parliamentary de-
mocracies weak governments cannot undertake strong, assertive, and
far- reaching foreign- policy decisions. Po liti cal stability and single- party
domination are often seen essential for a break with the past. The Indian
example, however, exhibited the opposite. Rao indeed did not have a
simple majority when he reversed the four- decade- old policy initiated by
Nehru. Not only Israel but even a larger rapprochement with the West since
the early 1990s was brought about by centrist co ali tion governments. There
has been remarkable continuity in India’s foreign policy since the end of the
cold war. Regardless of the hue of the co ali tion that forms the government
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