Opinion: Saudi Crown Prince's post-G20 summit stay can open new vistas in bilateral ties

The fact that the Crown Prince and Prime Minister of Saudi Arabia, Mohammed bin Salman (MbS), is staying in India on an official bilateral visit after the G20 summit affirms the deep bilateral ties that exist between the two neighbours linked by the Arabian Sea.

The visit offers opportunities for the two leaders to explore new areas for bilateral cooperation in the background of important developments taking place in regional and world affairs.

India’s relations with West Asia go back several millennia: there is archaeological evidence of substantial commercial, religious, philosophical and people-to-people interactions between India and the people in the Gulf and the Arabian Peninsula during the Indus Valley Civilisation (3300-1300 BCE). These close ties have continued uninterrupted to the present day.

These relations were affected by the Cold War – India was closer politically and ideologically to the Arab republics that emerged in different countries after the revolution in Egypt in 1952. The republics projected a strong anti-colonial posture and spoke of nationalism, socialism and had a secular order.

Arab monarchies, on the other hand, were part of the Western alliance and, led by Saudi Arabia, anchored their ideological moorings in Islam. However, though India had limited political interactions with the Gulf monarchies that were then allied with Pakistan politically and militarily, from the 1970s, as oil revenues filled the coffers of the sheikhdoms, Indians steadily came to dominate the regional employment landscape.

Indo-Saudi political ties

As the Cold War ended, India’s high growth rates, its increasing demand for West Asia’s energy resources, and its own economic and technological successes (particularly in Information Technology), along with the resilience of its democratic system and enduring commitment to multiculturalism, made India a model of all-round achievement and an attractive political partner for Gulf nations.

Political ties were initiated in the new era with the visit to Riyadh of External Affairs Minister Jaswant Singh in January 2001. The Saudi foreign minister, Prince Saud Al-Faisal, got rid of the constraints of the “Pakistan factor” in bilateral ties by pointing out that the kingdom would view relations with India as important in themselves, not to be influenced by its ties with any other country. In January 2006, the Saudi ruler King Abdullah bin Abdulaziz visited India as the chief guest at the Republic Day celebrations and established “strategic energy ties” with India.

It took the extremist assault on Mumbai in November 2008 to compel the Gulf leaders to see that this was a jihadi attack, planned and mounted by religious extremists that were nurtured and mobilised by Pakistani institutions and personnel as instruments of state policy directed against India. The attack motivated the Gulf nations into partnering India in counter-terrorism efforts. This became the basis for the till-then largely energy, economy and community-based ties to acquire a “strategic” value.

Saudi Arabia took the lead in pursuing a “strategic partnership” with India on the basis of expansion of ties in political, security, economic and cultural areas, as set out in the “Riyadh Declaration” in February 2010. The immediate achievement was intelligence-sharing in regard to extremist elements. Following this, other GCC countries also deepened bilateral security cooperation with India.

Ties under Modi

From 2015, Prime Minister Narendra Modi out-distanced all his predecessors in the frequency of his personal interactions with GCC leaders and the results he has obtained in imparting to the ties, both variety and substance. Between 2015 and 2022, Modi visited the UAE in 2015, 2018, 2019 and 2022; Saudi Arabia in 2016 and 2019, Qatar in 2016, and Oman in 2018. He also hosted the UAE and Saudi leaders in 2019.

In every regional capital, the Arab leaders conveyed that they saw India as their “strategic partner”, a status that reflected a high degree of shared perceptions and approaches on security issues. Thus, the joint statement with Saudi Arabia spoke of the two countries’ responsibility to promote peace, security and stability in the region. It noted “the close interlinkage of the stability and security of the Gulf region and the Indian sub-continent and the need for maintaining a secure and peaceful environment for the development of the countries of the region”.

The Indo-Saudi joint statement of February 2019 gave substance to the burgeoning “strategic partnership” between the two countries with the bilateral dialogue being institutionalised through a Strategic Partnership Council set up at apex level to monitor progress. The Saudi side noted there are investment opportunities in India worth $ 100 billion.

It is important to note that while the joint statements speak of strategic partnership, both sides have recognised the central importance of economic ties. Saudi Arabia is particularly important in this regard. The kingdom is India’s fourth largest trade partner: two-way trade in 2021-22 was $42.6 billion, while Saudi Arabia provided 18 per cent of India’s oil imports. The joint statement signed between the two countries identified the following as new areas for bilateral cooperation: renewable energy, healthcare, food security, technology, and climate change and the defence industry sector.

Companies from the two countries are presently looking at connecting the Indian and Saudi coastlines with undersea cables to create a green energy grid to address problems due to fluctuations in the supply of solar and wind energy. In the area of healthcare, the two countries are looking at joint medical research, adoption of best practices, and coordination in medical product regulations.

Security and defence cooperation

As noted above, all joint statements signed after high-level India-GCC interactions emphasise the centrality of strategic partnerships that have diverse and substantial security and defence components. India’s relations in these areas have been particularly significant with Saudi Arabia and have included counter-terrorism, joint military exercises, cyber-security cooperation, electronic warfare, artificial intelligence and, more recently, joint defence production.

Following the signing of the “Riyadh Declaration” in February 2010, which had described the state of bilateral relations as a “new era of strategic partnership”, the then Indian defence minister, AK Antony, had visited Riyadh in 2012, after which an MoU on defence cooperation was signed in February 2014. It set up the Joint Committee on Defence Cooperation (JCDC) that has been meeting regularly to promote training and capacity-building exercises, intelligence-sharing and maritime security.

Thus, interactions between the Indian Navy and coast guard with their Saudi counterparts have become a regular feature. In February 2018, the Indian Navy Chief, Admiral Sunil Lanba, visited Saudi Arabia and the Naval Operations Centre, the Naval Fire and Rescue School and the Western Fleet in Jeddah.

In December 2022, the Saudi company, Power for Defence Technologies, signed an MoU with the Indian defence entity, Bharat Electronics, to work together on technologies linked to aerospace, including defence and civilian applications. There are also indications that the Saudi Arabian Military Industries Company might collaborate with India in the area of multiple launch rocket systems.

The principal of the two countries is to actively pursue the realisation of the areas of cooperation that have been identified by their leaders, particularly in energy, infrastructure and the identified frontier areas. At the same time, the moment is propitious for the Indian Prime Minister and the Saudi Crown Prince to explore some new areas to take bilateral ties forward and shape a new regional order.

New challenges, new opportunities

The Crown Prince’s engagement with the Indian Prime Minister will be taking place amidst a complex regional and world order. In the wake of the Ukraine war, the US has put together a solid alliance of western nations to confront Russia in Europe and China globally. Its avowed intention is to retain its hegemony in global affairs by neutralising the threats it perceives from Russia and China in political and economic areas.

Towards this end, it is seeking to mobilise an alliance of other like-minded nations. So far, this effort has been largely unsuccessful: hardly any country in Asia, Africa and Latin America accepts the US notion of a global binary founded on confrontation against “the Other”, a veritable “new Cold War”. These nations are instead committed to asserting strategic autonomy, the right to define and pursue their own interests, without being subordinate to or guided by a major power. These nations are seeking multi-alignments with other countries that share their interests and concerns so that they can flourish collectively in a multipolar world order.

It is important to note that the states that make up the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), led by Saudi Arabia, have shrugged off the American yoke as the regional hegemon and have taken the lead in asserting their strategic autonomy.

From late 2020, generally disenchanted with the US’ pusillanimous role as the regional security guarantor, the kingdom has been pursuing policies of de-escalation and dialogue across West Asia: the blockade of Qatar was lifted in January 2021; a ceasefire in Yemen was put in place that endures to this day; an opening was created to improve ties with Turkey, and a dialogue was commenced with Iran from April 2021.

The latter went through five rounds over a year; it was picked up after a short hiatus when China announced in March this year that an agreement had been reached between Saudi Arabia and Iran to normalise relations.

Above all, as part of its assertion of strategic autonomy, the kingdom has become a dialogue partner of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation and has been invited to join BRICS; both organisations are expressions of non-western states cooperating to obtain their own interests outside western control and influence.

A new regional order

The shared commitment to strategic autonomy and multi-alignment in a multi-polar world order offers opportunities for India and Saudi Arabia to take their ties into new and exciting areas. The most interesting opportunity is to shape regional alignments in the maritime space to provide stability in the geography that is of crucial importance for both India and Saudi Arabia – the western Indian Ocean that encompasses the Gulf, the Gulf of Aden, the Red Sea and the Horn of Africa, including the chokepoints of Hormuz, Bab al-Mandab and the Suez Canal.

The kingdom has long coastlines on both the Gulf and the Red Sea and is the region’s principal energy producer and economic powerhouse, while India has crucial links with the region in the energy, economic, logistical connectivity and security areas. Both countries have close relations with almost all the principal nations in this strategically important geography. This provides the logic for the two major maritime neighbours to shape a regional alignment for regional stability and cooperation.

Over the long term, as the multi-polar order flourishes, there will be opportunities to bring together the nations of the Indian Ocean littoral with those of Eurasia, with India and the kingdom, backed by other major regional powers, taking the lead in this enterprise. Only then will the colonial and imperialist era be truly over.

(Talmiz Ahmad was the Indian ambassador to Saudi Arabia in 2000-2003 and again in 2010-2011.)

(Views expressed in this opinion piece are that of the author)