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BJP promises tough foreign policy

Our Correspondent, New Delhi
India's main opposition Bharatiya Janata Party, considered the favourite to regain power at the parliamentary elections, has come out with a foreign policy statement in its manifesto that appears to be muscular towards its South Asian neighbours and promises to have a re-look at India's nuclear doctrine, including no-first-use of nuclear weapons.
The foreign policy issues figured in the speeches of BJP prime ministerial candidate Narendra Modi at election meetings in Arunachal Pradesh, adjacent to China, and Assam, next door neighbour of Bangladesh.
Modi, in his meeting in Arunachal Pradesh, asked China to shed its "expansionist mindset”, an apparent reference to Beijing's territorial claim over Arunachal Pradesh, part of which was occupied by the Chinese army during the 1962 war. In Assam, Modi spoke about illegal migration, without mentioning Muslims from Bangladesh, but made it clear that those who are victims of religious persecution in that country should be accommodated by India.
In sync with Modi's election speech in Assam, the BJP manifesto reflected its majoritarian bias when it said India will remain a "natural home for persecuted Hindus and they shall be welcome to seek refuge". The significance of the sentence in the manifesto is not lost when one considers it in the light of recent incidents of attacks on Hindus and their properties in Bangladesh early thisyear.
In an apparent reference to the Congress-led UPA's perceived leaning towards the US till 2010, when relations between the two countries began souring, the BJP manifesto said it would not be led by "big power interests" and would instead "engage proactively on our own with countries in the neigh-
bourhood and beyond".
The manifesto comes out tough when it says that if voted to power, a BJP-led government will pursue friendly relations with India's neighbours but will not hesitate to take a strong stand and action when required. Analysts say this is an apparent reference to Pakistan.
The BJP is critical of the UPA, accusing it of having "failed to establish enduring friendly and cooperative relations with India's neighbours". The government of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, which also pledged good neighbourly ties, has drawn flak for being perceived as hobbled by pressures from Congress' coalition partners and letting go of major strategic initiatives with neighbours. This was best exemplified in India's failure to deliver on a Teesta water-sharing deal and the land boundary agreement with Bangladesh.
Whether the LBA can be passed in the Indian parliament remains to be seen in the event of the BJP returning to power. The party had opposed the agreement and the UPA's repeated attempts to introduce a bill to this effect in parliament.
What came out as a tougher posture is the manifesto's intention to “revise and update” India's nuclear doctrine, first formulated by the BJP-led government headed by Atal Bihari Vajpayee way back in 1999, a year after it had startled the world by exploding nuclear devices and inviting hostile reactions and sanctions from Japan, the US and other Western countries.
The BJP appears to have come round to accepting the growing view in Indian strategic circles that India needs to revisit its stand on a no-first-use of nuclear weapons in the light of reports of Pakistan increasing its stockpile of atomic weapons and increasing cooperation between Pakistan and China in the nuclear sector.