Saudi Arabia & India: The Perfect Marriage but BJP’s Love Affair.

The kingdom of Saudi Arabia & the Republic of India established diplomatic relations in the year 1947 following the Indian Independence. Though King Saud & Pandit Nehru visited the other’s abode in 1955 and 1956 respectively but it was the visit of King Abdullah in 2006 that enforced the relation scathed by Pakistan and may be limited by the US influence on the kingdom’s foreign policy. While PM Modi has successfully pulled Saudi Arabia into India’s orbit where the two countries are more aligned than ever, but it was Dr. Manmohan Singh’s visit to Saudi Arabia in 2010 where the Riyadh Declaration signed by both countries raised the Level of bilateral relations to Strategic Partnership.
Though plagued by the Influence of OIC and the constant Kashmir rhetoric thanks to our neighbors the partnership is only now beginning to evolve in diversified areas of common Interest which are not just limited to trade but also the optics by which each country seeks to be known. Saudi & India partnership will secure each other’s energy requirements by marrying the power grids with under water cables, which can be seen as win for Indian initiative and alliance of One sun, one world, one grid. Saudi seeks to own the crude oil market supply to the world’s 2nd largest importer. The Indians flex their Geo-political muscle while the Arabs make the economic gains. It is to minimize this disparity we have seen Indian leadership is courting Saudis to Invest $100 bn in India announced in the state visit of the crown prince in 2019. Succeeding which we have seen various monies flow into Indian companies like Reliance & Daawat foods.
India & Saudi Arabia seem to have found the wavelength where each benefit from the peaks and the troughs are not so visible, but it is the BJP that will gain the most out of it. The optics of the PM Modi’s outreach to Middle East and close ties with the Islamic nations distil his western and left constructed image as a right-wing Hindu nationalist leader. While one may debate on the merits of arguments, this love affair will surely help cleanse the propagated Image and navigate the BJP into the world of wider mass appeal from different communities.