April 19, 2019
One of the odder features of Iranian foreign policy is its growing ties to India’s anti-Muslim government. But that may be partly explained by the recent shift of India’s Shii community away from Sunnis toward the ruling Hindu nationalist party.
Muslims are a huge minority in India, accounting in the 2011 census for 14 percent of the population or 172 million people, giving India the third largest Muslim population after Indonesia and Pakistan. But the census didn’t ask Shiis to identify themselves. Published estimates in India range from 10 to 25 percent of the Muslim minority.
A report by Al-Monitor says that India’s Shii community has increasingly decoupled itself from Sunnis and chosen to side with nationalist Hindu movements—which are historically anti-Muslim. The Shii seem to be viewing the party as anti-Sunni.
Iran’s closer relations with India, then, resonate with Iran’s commitment to support Shii communities against adversaries. An example of this growing convergence of Shii and Hindu nationalism against Sunnis is the Lok Sabha (parliamentary) elections of 2014, when many Shii leaders, including Kalbe Jawad, urged their followers to vote for the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) rather than the Congress Party, which has always pledged to support Muslim rights.
Various Shii groups have announced their support of the BJP in the national elections now underway in India, because, according to one of the Shiite leaders, “no other political party except the BJP cared for Shiite Muslims”—in effect saying the Congress Party is supportive of Sunnis, not Muslims.
Al-Monitor says Shii groups side with the BJP rather than Sunni Muslims when it comes to heated issues like the construction of the Hindu temple Ram Mandir on a site now housing a mosque, banning triple talaq (instant oral divorce) and endorsing a ban on cow slaughter.
Two separate terrorist attacks in Iran and India this year have accelerated the ongoing convergence of Tehran and New Delhi, Al-Monitor argues. The first attack took place February 13 in Iran, claiming the lives of 27 Pasdaran. The very next day, in Indian-ruled Kashmir, a suicide car bomb killed 40 members of the Central Reserve Police Forces. The attack in India was attributed to Jaish-e-Mohammed, which is based in Pakistan, and the Iranian attack to Jaish ul-Adl, which often enjoys sanctuary in Pakistan.
Days after the two bombings, Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi met with Indian External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj and both agreed “on close cooperation to combat terrorism in the region,” said Araqchi’s tweet.
A legitimate question is whether Tehran is really considering shifting its foreign policy in the subcontinent to ally with India against Pakistan? And will Iran side with India over Pakistan on the Kashmir issue and wider security issues?
Iran and Pakistan have historically had close relations, but with frequent frictions. While extremist Sunni groups in Pakistan have mistreated, even butchered, Pakistan’s Shii, the Pakistani national government has never supported such bigotry.
Though Islam was understood to be a uniting factor in Iran-Pakistan relations before the revolution, it became a divisive force after 1978 when the government made Pakistan a sanctuary for the Saudi-financed madrassa movement, which was vehemently anti-Shiite and anti-Iran.
When the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan, both countries actively opposed the Russians—but backed rival Afghan groups. After the withdrawal of Soviet forces from Afghanistan, tensions between Iran and Pakistan skyrocketed as the Pakistani-backed Taliban took power and crushed the Hazara, the main Afghan Shii ethnic group.—and then killed a dozen Iranians, including diplomats, in 1998 at Mazar-i-Sharif.
Pakistan—in pursuit of much-needed cash—has chosen to get even closer to Saudi Arabia in the past year. The Saudi oil company, Aramco, has agreed to build a multibillion-dollar refinery in Gwadar. Pakistan has also opened the Reko Diq gold and copper mines, less than 60 miles from the Iranian border, to Saudi investment. Both projects have sounded alarm bells in Tehran, Al-Monitor contends, because Iran is concerned Saudi Arabia might use these projects as bases to destabilize Iran.
All of this makes an alliance with India look more appealing to many in Iran.
On February 27, Hesh-matollah Falahatpisheh, chairman of the Majlis National Security Committee, warned that Pakistan’s inability or unwillingness to crack down on terrorists responsible for the attack on the Pasdaran might prompt Iran to boost security cooperation with India. Gen. Qasem Soleymani, commander of the Qods Force, ascribed the attack to the influence of Saudi money in Pakistan, and promised to get revenge on the terrorists.
Recent statements are in line with Tehran’s gradual change in perceptions on the issue of Kashmir, says Al-Monitor, viewing it more as a Sunni rather than an Islamic issue. Even many Indian Shiites do not support the Kashmir insurgency and prefer to live under the banner of Delhi rather than Islamabad.