March.03 : Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s recent three-day visit to Saudi Arabia marks an important stage in the widening and deepening of this country’s friendship with one of the most important states in the world. The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is not only the world’s largest exporter of oil, it is home to Islam’s two holiest sites (and therefore of primary importance to Muslims everywhere).
It also has investible surpluses that few countries can match. For these reasons, Riyadh should for long have been a significant diplomatic stop for Indian policymaking. However, New Delhi’s meaningful ties with it can be said to be of relatively recent origin, although India’s relations with the Arab world go back in time. From the mid-1950s, the relationship between the two was just normal and correct. It could not breach the confines imposed by the Cold War during which Riyadh was a close ally of the United States. Much has opened up since the end of that era. The September 11, 2001 attacks on America raised questions in both Washington and Riyadh as influential voices in the United States sought a re-evaluation of relations with the Saudis based on the premise that elements in the desert kingdom had bankrolled the jihadi terrorists. A radical overhaul was, of course, unthinkable. In Riyadh too, a degree of rethinking about the world followed, and a search began for the broad-basing of Saudi Arabia’s strategic relations and concerns.
It was hardly a coincidence that King Abdullah bin Abdulaziz visited both Beijing and New Delhi in January 2006 — Asian capitals that represented extremely dynamic economies with which foundations of mutually advantageous terms could be laid — to further its new “Look East” outlook. In India, the then Atal Behari Vajpayee government had been quick to see the value of close ties with Saudi Arabia after the Cold War. Its external affairs minister, Mr Jaswant Singh, made a high-profile trip to the kingdom. Since then, the Manmohan Singh government has firmed up that relationship and imbued it with a strategic dimension. When King Abdullah was the Republic Day chief guest in 2006, he endorsed India’s case for observer status at the Organisation of Islamic Conference (OIC). Oil flows rose dramatically-from only $500 million to $23 billion. Saudi Arabia today accounts for a fourth of this country’s oil imports. India — like China — came to value the Saudi kingdom as a crucial source of energy, and one that had a premium voice in the setting of world oil prices. These are strong enough reasons to have a “strategic” relationship with Riyadh, and the UPA government has moved with alacrity to deepen ties. The Congress-led government also appears poised to tap high-magnitude Saudi investments in India and is likely to devise procedures for “Islamic banking” to aid that enterprise. Indian expertise in oil and gas exploration and information technology could give a new dimension to the Saudi economy, away from the present oil-only basis. The two countries can also make common cause by seeking to attack the roots of jihadist extremism, although Saudi Arabia is the original home of Wahabi and Salafist thought. The basis for growing ties appears sound. But the relationship is bound to be complex as Saudi Arabia has traditionally had strong ties with Pakistan and is building rapidly on its recent friendship with China, countries with which India’s political terms have been relatively difficult. Shashi Tharoor, minister of state for external affairs, was right when he called Riyadh an important “interlocutor” of India. That should be seen as a given.