During Narendra Modi’s first term as prime minister, and well into his second, the government’s cheerleaders claimed that India was poised to become vishwaguru, Teacher to the World. It was said that our civilisational depth, our rich philosophical traditions and our distinctive spiritual practices had long placed us at the forefront when it came to culture. Now, with India’s economic and technological success, our global leadership was all but assured.

This claim was intensely personalised so that it was not just India but Narendra Modi himself who was said to be leading the world. Hence the morphed photographs of G20 meetings abroad where our prime minister was seen in the front of the frame, striding down the steps of a grand building, with the American president, the French president, the British prime minister and others quietly and obediently (if not reverentially) following behind him.

Such propaganda was not without a certain effect; after India assumed the rotational G20 presidency in 2023, a friend heard someone say on the Delhi Metro: “Aap ko pata hai, ki Modiji sirf hamare desh ke nahin, lekin bees desh ke pradhan mantri hai?” (Do you know that Modiji is not just the prime minister of India but of 20 nations altogether?)

As it happens, at around the same time, a subtle shift in nomenclature began to manifest itself in the ruling party’s propaganda universe. It was now being said that India was vishwamitra, a Friend of All. This was a distinct downgrading of the Modi regime’s ambitions. India was not yet in a position to teach the world, but it was nonetheless uniquely placed to befriend every country in the world.

Precisely why this new self-description of India entered the political discourse must remain a matter of speculation. Was it because, unlike the adoring bhakt on the Delhi Metro, the regime’s spin doctors were aware that India’s G20 presidency was highly temporary and would lapse very soon? Or had our economy not held up to the soaring expectations people had of it? Or had the Chinese incursions along our border, and the prime minister’s reluctance even to speak about them, made our claims of global leadership sound hollow?

Anyway, the fact is that there was a distinct change in discourse. Maybe in the outer reaches of the bhakt universe – the fringes where it is believed that ancient Hindus invented aeroplanes as well as plastic surgery – the idea that India already was, or would soon become, a vishwaguru still held sway. But in the sober, more realistic, and more politically salient sections of the ruling party, the term, vishwamitra, was being used ever more often.

In the wake of the Bangladesh crisis, however, it may be time to drop even this milder, less egregious, conceit. For it appears that the citizens of the countries in our immediate neighbourhood do not regard India as a reliable or trustworthy friend. Many Bangladeshis are suspicious of Indian intentions, largely because of the Modi regime’s enthusiastic endorsement of Sheikh Hasina Wazed’s autocratic ways.

When, this past January, Hasina got re-elected in a blatantly rigged election, the Election Commission of India nonetheless praised the Election Commission of Bangladesh for its allegedly “meticulous planning and arrangements made for the conduct of the election process” .

Neighbourhood watch

The sentiment that India has behaved arrogantly is visibly present in Sri Lanka and Nepal as well. Consider a recent statement jointly issued by some citizens of these three countries which asks that “the Government of India desist from interfering in our respective polities”. The statement notes that “over the decades, intervention by New Delhi’s political, bureaucratic and intelligence operatives in Colombo, Dhaka and Kathmandu, has contributed to the unending political instability in our countries and has empowered autocratic regimes”.

These charges are then given a certain specificity. So, of Bangladesh, these writers remark: “New Delhi actively worked to prop up the autocratic regime of Sheikh Hasina over the last decade and received political and economic concessions in return.” Of Sri Lanka, they comment: “Before and since the time of the IPKF, Sri Lanka has had to repeatedly wrestle with New Delhi’s encroachment in its politics. In addition, lately New Delhi authorities have been actively pushing Indian business conglomerates onto the island.”

And, with regard to Nepal, they note: “While India once intervened in Nepal’s politics through proactive politicians and diplomats, it now does so also through intelligence agencies and Hindutva activists of the RSS… A significant coercive action was the blockade imposed on Nepal in 2015, even as the country was reeling from an earthquake, following the promulgation of the Constitution that was not to New Delhi’s liking.”

These characterisations are largely accurate. I have spent time in Nepal, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka and have friends and professional colleagues in each. That India has acted as an overbearing Big Brother is a sentiment widely held by intellectuals and writers in all these countries, and there is much basis for it. I am reminded here of the 19th-century Mexican president who remarked: “Poor Mexico, so far from God, so close to the United States of America.”

Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and Nepal are all beset with an array of economic and political challenges, which proximity to India has made more difficult to resolve.

That said, the distrust of Indian intentions well precedes our current government. It was Rajiv Gandhi who sent the Indian Peace Keeping Force into Sri Lanka, and it was Rajiv Gandhi, again, who imposed a blockade on Nepal long before Narendra Modi did so. Indeed, it may have been our first prime minister, who was also our first foreign minister, who set the tone in this regard.

The diplomat, Jagat Mehta, who served with Jawaharlal Nehru, once observed that “Nehru did not fully recognise, and the [Foreign] Ministry failed to advise him, that in the twentieth century nothing was as difficult as diplomacy between unequal neighbours.”

The logic of history, and of geography, more or less ensures that India’s relations with China and Pakistan will remain difficult. Communist China has never accepted the McMahon Line, claiming it was signed under duress when their country was subject to Western imperial control. The Chinese invasion of 1962, brief as it was, has left deep scars on the Indian national psyche. That Pakistan has, for decades now, sponsored terrorist actions in many parts of India (not just in Kashmir) makes an honest rapprochement with that country extremely difficult.

Shared histories

However, in the case of our smaller neighbours, such contentious issues do not exist. On the contrary, there are factors working in favour of harmonious relations. India and Nepal have an open border and many cultural similarities. India helped Bangladesh attain its liberation from Pakistan. India and Sri Lanka have a shared colonial history and hence similar constitutional and educational trajectories. If relations between India and these three countries have rarely been smooth, then surely it calls for introspection on the part of the larger and more powerful nation.

In the years 2007-’'08, when our economy was doing exceptionally well, there was much talk about India becoming a ‘superpower’. I thought such claims highly premature and argued at the time that it would be wiser to attend to the social and political fault lines within than to presume to take on the world. In Manmohan Singh’s second term, the talk of India’s imminent rise to global greatness largely subsided. However, in Narendra Modi’s first term, it resurfaced, being rebranded under a suitably swadeshi label. Where we were once told that India was soon to become a superpower, now we are given to understand that Bharat has already become a vishwaguru.

India’s claims to world leadership are foolish fantasies. The problems our country faces, such as institutional decay, growing inequality, corruption and cronyism in governance, and pervasive environmental degradation, should provide a brutal reality check. However, while the idea of India being a vishwaguru is nonsensical, the ideal of India being a vishwamitra may still have some worth.

But if India wishes indeed to be a friend to all the nations of the world, it might do well to start reorienting its attitudes towards our immediate neighbours, and especially with Bangladesh, Nepal, and Sri Lanka. In forging better relations with these countries, we must look to cultivating respect and trust not merely among their leaders but among their citizens too.

Ramachandra Guha’s latest work, The Cooking of Books: A Literary Memoir, has just been released. His email address is ramachandraguha@yahoo.in.

This article first appeared on The Telegraph.