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The Commonwealth Connection: Extending India's Outreach?

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The Commonwealth Connection: Extending India's Outreach? December 2014 23 October 2018 The Commonwealth Connection: Extending India’s Outreach? Dr Auriol Weigold FDI Senior Visiting Fellow Key Points India has been a member of the Commonwealth since 1949. India has had earlier involvement with then-emerging small Pacific Island Commonwealth member states. Today, India’s involvement in Pacific regional bodies and organisations, often overlapping, demonstrates the extent of its outreach. India must now decide, in light of the outreach aims of the 2018 London CHOGM, where its efforts may best be directed. Summary India has been a member of the Commonwealth for almost seventy years, joining when the body was formally constituted under the London Declaration in 1949. India’s membership did not compromise its sovereignty as a republic and the country has had, from decade to decade, both more, and less, involvement in the Commonwealth. A high point of engagement, the Commonwealth Heads of Government Regional Meetings between 1978 and 1982, are not always recalled. India’s present Pacific Islands engagement through the Forum for India-Pacific Islands Co-operation (FIPIC), and other regional bodies, encompasses fellow Commonwealth members. India’s considerable experience and current direction in what is now called the Indo-Pacific region is a focus of this paper, as is a possible future role for it as an active member of the Commonwealth. Analysis India in the Commonwealth The Commonwealth Heads of Government (CHOGM) met in London in April 2018. The Meeting’s Communiqué anticipated that the Commonwealth would contribute to ‘a future which is fairer, more sustainable, more secure and more prosperous’, and be a key player in outreach programmes, suggesting more active and effective regional approaches that include the Indo-Pacific region. Among the leaders attending, and warmly received, was Prime Minister Narendra Modi, making his first appearance at a CHOGM and breaking a now-familiar pattern. No Indian Prime Minister has attended CHOGM since the Trinidad and Tobago meeting in 2009, despite India’s close connection to the Commonwealth during the period 2008-16, when senior Indian diplomat, Kamalesh Sharma, served as Secretary- General. India has been a member of the Commonwealth for almost seventy years. As background, the British Commonwealth of Nations, established by the Balfour Declaration in 1926, then titled the Commonwealth of Nations, was formally constituted by the London Declaration in 1949. This updated the organisation’s early objectives including, importantly, the recognition of new member states as free and equal. India joined that year. The modern Commonwealth’s objectives were outlined in the 1971 Singapore Declaration; its principles on peace and security are similar to today’s “rule of law”. Its outreach commitments appropriate to the period were updated at biennial CHOGMs hosted by member countries. India’s long history of Commonwealth involvement post-independence, without compromising its sovereignty as a republic, became an example for newly-independent states.1 Commonwealth aid to India had grown from the mid-1960s, but India’s foreign policy led to shifts away from it during much of the 1970s and 1980s. During the 1990s, however, the increasing interest of CHOGM in finance, law and trade saw the participation of relevant Indian ministers, rather than Prime Ministers. There were arguments in support of the absences from CHOGM of India’s previous Prime Minister, Manmohan Singh, just as there were arguments, in India’s interest, for Modi to attend in 2018. In line with Modi’s enthusiastic welcome in London, media outlets recognised the shift in regional emphasis and promoted India as a country that could take the lead in revitalising the Commonwealth. India may thus be characterised both as an established Commonwealth participant and a potential leader in its extending region of interest. The breadth of India’s engagement as a long-term member, however, is not always recognised. Its present Pacific Islands engagement with the Forum for India-Pacific Islands Co-operation (FIPIC) encompasses 1 Carnegie India published CSR Murthy’s brief history ‘India and the Commonwealth: The Redirecting of the Relationship’, containing useful accounts of India’s initiatives and investments, on 11 April 2018. https://carnegieindia.org/2018/04/11/india-and-commonwealth-redirecting-relationship-pub- 76054 Page 2 of 6 Commonwealth members, and the considerable early experience among members in what is now termed the Indo-Pacific region is a focus of this paper. Commonwealth Heads of Government Regional Meetings (CHOGRM) The emerging economic dimension of the Commonwealth in the 1970s shortly predated a new initiative proposed to the leaders, supported by India’s then Prime Minister, Morarji Desai, and Australian Prime Minister, Malcolm Fraser, in which both countries volunteered to participate in mentoring economically emerging small island states in the South Pacific. The initiative, titled Commonwealth Heads of Government Regional Meetings (CHOGRM), followed the July 1977 CHOGM held in London when the new endeavour was sanctioned by then Secretary-General, Shridath (Sonny) Ramphal. The purpose of the CHOGRMs was to give the leaders of small island states opportunities to debate the issues that affected their stages of development at regional meetings. CHOGRMs were important for regional stability, and acknowledged that the small island states frequently had little voice in the presence of influential “old” Commonwealth leaders at CHOGMs.2 The initiative moved quickly and the first CHOGRM was held in Sydney in February 1978, the second in New Delhi in September 1980 and the third in Fiji, in October 1982. The Sydney meeting was attended by the Prime Ministers of Fiji, India, Malaysia, New Zealand, Papua New Guinea, Singapore, Tonga and Western Samoa, and the Presidents of Bangladesh, Nauru and Sri Lanka. Discussions were broad and canvassed a range of issues, from the dangers of great power rivalry in the Indian Ocean – something regularly heard today – to regional issues appraised by the leaders present, and agreement to oversee and monitor negotiations on the New International Economic Order proposals, as agreed at the then- recent 32nd UN General Assembly. The subjects addressed in 1978 are familiar today: terrorism, disarmament, trade policy, industrial development, energy, rural development and drug trafficking. Follow-up action saw agreement that a Consultative Group on trade would be co-ordinated by Australia, on energy by India, and Working Groups on drugs and terrorism by Singapore and Malaysia, respectively. Desai looked forward to following up the working group activities ‘in order to make the Delhi meeting in 1980 a worthy successor’. Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, back in power, chaired the second CHOGRM in Delhi in September 1980 attended by the Prime Ministers and Presidents present at the Sydney meeting and four new participants: the Prime Ministers of the Solomon Islands, Tuvalu and Vanuatu, and the President of Kiribati. At the Delhi meeting, threats to regional stability could not be ignored and Mrs Gandhi invited discussion on regional trends that inevitably returned to the escalation of great power presences in the Indian Ocean. Ratu Sir Kamisese 2 Weigold, A., 2013, ‘Australia-India Relations in Insecure Times: Malcolm Fraser’s Engagement’, L. Brennan & A. Weigold (Eds.), Re-thinking India: Perceptions from Australia, Readworthy, New Delhi, pp. 19-24. A version, written with the support of the Australian Prime Ministers Centre, Canberra, is available at http://static.moadoph.gov.au/ophgovau/media/images/apmc/docs/Weigold-Australia- India-relations-Ch-1.pdf. Reports on the CHOGRMs are in files A1838, 625/13/5, Part 4, at the NAA. Page 3 of 6 Mara, Prime Minister of Fiji, hosted the last CHOGRM in October 1982,3 when much of the discussion again focussed on unresolved regional tensions and progress on economic development. Debate continues on a wide range of issues among Commonwealth Island leaders who are now members of the Modi-initiated Forum for India-Pacific Islands Co- operation (FIPIC). India in the Pacific India’s motivation for extending its activity in the Pacific is, on the one hand, China’s increasing presence there, and, on the other, the sense of its encirclement of India in both the maritime and terrestrial spheres. It is also China’s disturbance of India’s regional relations and exacerbation of border tensions, its increasing presence in the Indian Ocean and, as previously noted, its push to gain footholds in the Pacific. Each is motivation for India’s recent initiatives towards the Pacific Islands from both political and strategic viewpoints, and it is establishing a substantial profile there. India’s regional multilateral engagement, however, is already broad, from BRICS to BIMSTEC. ASEAN is central to the regional architecture and shapes India’s Act East policy that primarily engages South-East Asia, although India’s President, Pranab Mukherjee, sees economic linkages and co-operation with Pacific Island states as an extension of that policy. The Forum for India-Pacific Islands Co-operation (FIPIC) encompasses Commonwealth members and met in Suva at Modi’s instigation in November 2014, some six months after his election. It was formed to strengthen and extend India’s relationships with Pacific Island countries and, to some extent, builds on the CHOGRMs. The first summit was held at heads of government level, and regular future meetings were expected to include business leaders, academics, civilians and young people, similar in structure to the Indian Ocean Research Association (IORA), led over recent years by India, Australia and Indonesia, with a membership drawn largely from Indian Ocean Rim states. The second FIPIC Summit, held in Jaipur in August 2015, resolved to co-operate on a number of issues including energy sources, oil and natural gas, Information Technology, health care, fishing, marine research and other aspects of the blue economy, in some replication of the action plans of IORA and of the Pacific Island Forum (PIF), of which India is not a member.
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