When the Modi regime on May 16 announced its decision to send all-party delegations abroad to explain India’s position, it surprised many. Mainly because it was a time when the entire establishment was in a triumphalist mood.Amit Shah, the second in the Bharatiya Janata Party government’s hierarchy, hailed Operation Sindoor as a turning point in India’s ‘security doctrine’ and lauded the PM’s ‘decisive leadership’ for the success.India claimed its Air Force had successfully “bypassed and jammed” Pakistan’s China-made air defence systems. Many were in an exuberant mood.Why then, did Team Modi find it necessary to seek the opposition’s cooperation for its image enhancement abroad? What factors forced a strong leader like him to come down, so to speak, and court the opposition’s support for his new anti-terrorism doctrine?In all, 59 MPs belonging to different parties were drafted to visit 32 countries. Some delegations were led by opposition members and others by that of the National Democratic Alliance. They were to meet the respective countries’ parliamentarians, academics, members of think-tanks and journalists to explain the government’s doctrine.Unfortunately, from the very start, the all-party delegation plan was embroiled in controversies. Unlike under earlier PMs, the present regime played politics with the selection of delegation members from opposition parties. It arbitrarily picked its favourites from other parties. Shashi Tharoor, an archetypal post-ideology politician, was chosen from the main opposition Congress, disregarding its own list of nominees.Apparently to avert complications, the Congress, did not make an issue out of it and let Tharoor be in the list. A similar thing happened in the case of TMC. An angry Mamata Banerjee retaliated and boycotted the delegation. But in Banerjee’s case, Modi’s side relented and let her nephew Abhishek Banerjee be a member.When Uddhav Thackeray’s Shiv Sena threatened to boycott, the Modi side once again climbed down and agreed to include its Priyanka Chaturvedi.In the case of Shashi Tharoor, of course, a different script seems to be unfolding. For over a year, Tharoor has been sending confusing signals about his future plans. Now hailing Pinarayi Vijayan, now going out of the way to support the Modi government’s vaccine diplomacy, and now, lauding its outreach programme to Islamic countries. Tharoor’s options, it seems, depends on his own career calculations.Will Tharoor finally make up with the man who once described him as the one with ‘Rs 50-crore girlfriend’? Will the PM forgive Tharoor who had ridiculed his ‘Howdy Modi’ kind of ‘crowd management’. Or will Modi eat crow over Tharoor’s ‘56 inch’ sneer?Modi’s repeated addressing of the crowds as ‘mitron (friends)’ also had been a topic of Tharoor’s brute wisecrack. “Far more dangerous than Omicron is ‘O, Mitron,” the man who now finds virtues in Modi, had earlier said.“I stand with Modi ji,” was also another sneer Shashi Tharoor made at Modi. This was in a derisive reference to India’s nod to create buffer zone in 2020 on China border.Leave aside Tharoor. At stake are really crucial issues. The harsh truth has been that the four-day war in May has exposed our celebrity-driven foreign posturing. Since the Modi takeover in 2014, our foreign policy paradigm underwent a drastic remodelling. Suddenly, we abandoned the time-tested foreign policy which successive governments followed, including Vajpayee’s.Instead, Modi’s cult-centred domestic policy was extended to the conduct of foreign affairs. Foreign policy is being equated with the projection of the Modi’s persona abroad. At the early stage, very available foreign signatory was invited, preferably to Gujarat, and treated to Modi shows.Remember the ‘Namaste Trump’ show at Ahmedabad’s Narendra Modi Stadium and the praise he showered on the Trump family in February 2020? The first to be treated at Ahmedabad was Xi Jinping in September 2014. Modi had then set his own protocol. Then it was the turn of Japanese PM Shinzo Abe.However, subsequent events have bared the limitations of the personality-based foreign policy. Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge says Modi made 151 foreign visits to 72 countries. He made as many as 10 trips to US. No one has so far contradicted Kharge’s figures.How many of these countries have stood by India and endorsed Modi’s new terrorism doctrine? Unfortunately, the comity have safely avoided taking sides on the India-Pakistan war. Instead, as former foreign secretary Nirupama Rao wrote, they have all safely confined themselves to calling for ‘restraint on both sides’ which she says is false equivocation. Thus they treated Pakistan as a ‘co-equal party’.Indian media’s ‘hyper-nationalistic’ coverage marked by exaggeration and triumphalism also created a parallel reality. This widened the perception gap and helped Pakistan frame itself as a victim rather than an exporter of terrorism. Thus it allowed Pakistan to dodge scrutiny, she says. Such triumphalism has made the task of controlling the battle of narratives abroad difficult.Consider the year-long ‘strong leader extravaganza’ in 2023 leading to the G20 summit on September 9 and 10, 2023. The whole government was drafted to showcase Modi’s Amrit Kaal. It was a full blown Modi show. Domestic media had announced the arrival of the Vishwaguru to lead the country. But when India faced a crisis, none of those countries went beyond equivocation between India and Pakistan.Look at India’s neighbours. Not one of them has extended unqualified support to us. India had a much publicised ‘neighbours first’ policy. A early as last year, external affairs S. Jaishankar has talked high of Modi’s neighbourhood first policy. Then we have the SAARC and BIMSTEC, though with different functions. None of these countries came forward to extent unqualified support to India. We need to reflect on this international reality.Rahul Gandhi has asked three pertinent questions to the external affairs minister:Why had India been hyphenated with Pakistan?Why didn’t a single country support India in condemning Pakistan?What was Trump’s role in forcing a ceasefire when the war was moving in India’s favour?Also read: Modi is Maun: How the Sudden Ceasefire Marred the Prime Minister’s PR ScriptThe BJP can, as it routinely does, derided Rahul Gandhi as echoing the ‘voice of Pakistan’ or as a ‘propaganda tool’ of the enemy. This may, at the most, bring kudos from the converted but what we instead need is a convincing response.In a May 17 video, Jaishankar was seen as saying that India had informed Pakistan before attacking terrorist targets. Gandhi had also sought clarification from the minister on alerting them on the impending attacks. It took a full week for Jaishankar to deny that the alert was made not before but after. This was at a consultative panel meeting on May 26.India has has a tradition of unitedly standing up to national challenges right from 1960s. No one in the past had played politics with the selection of MPs to be included in foreign delegations. There has been an unwritten consensus in the polity to jointly tackle natural calamities, external threats and the scourge of terrorism.Every prime minister in the recent past has got full cooperation from the opposition. In earlier days, the Inter-parliamentary Union (IPU) and the Commonwealth Parliamentary Association (CPA) were considered quite influential. It was soon after the India-Pakistan war in 1971. Led by Lok Sabha Speaker G.S. Dhillon, the all-party Indian delegation to the IPU had such leaders as Pranab Mukherjee, Jyotirmoy Basu and Shankar Dayal Sharma. The Indian team had successfully managed to get a resolution highlighting its views.Also read: Too Many ‘Charchas’ Under Modi But No Real DebateBack in the day, several spicy stories were in circulation to illustrate the liberal political culture prevalent among political elites before the Modi takeover in 2014. One of these is a video in which Vajpayee revealed how he has been included in India’s SAARC delegation which enabled him seek better medical treatment abroad.Vajpayee says in the video: “Somehow, Rajiv ji [Gandhi] came to know about my plight. He called me and decided to include me in the delegation to UN. I became a full-fledged member, and all expenses were paid by the government”.In 1994, then prime minister Narasimha Rao sent a bipartisan team to the UN Human Rights Commission at Geneva to thwart the Pakistani-backed resolution on Kashmir. Sheikh Abdullah and Vajpayee were among opposition leaders.Following the 26/11 Mumbai attacks, Manmohan Singh also made a similar diplomatic offensive. The multi-party delegation had delivered irrefutable dossiers on Pakistan’s involvement. Subsequently, Pakistan was put in the Financial Action Task Force’s Grey List.Sitting in Central Hall, insiders of the day like Jaswant Singh, M.L. Fotedar and Sitaram Kesri used to narrate similar stories. Now the Central Hall itself has been deprived of its role as a platform for political interactions.One such Central Hall joke as quoted in an English daily details how Manmohan Singh had invited Vajpayee, L.K. Advani, Jashwant Singh and Brajesh Mishra for Vajpayee’s birthday on December 25. This was in response to Vajpayee’s earlier casual reminder to Singh: ‘Aap kabhi humein khilayiye, pilayiye (wine us, dine us sometime).’ On the table was Vajpayee’s favourite dish – jumbo prawns. Manmohan Singh had also invited the opposition leader to join the delegation to the SAARC summit, which he had readily accepted.The Wire has in these columns earlier narrated how the former BJP PM had also enquired after Sonia Gandhi’s health. Later, he had invited Gandhi to head the Indian to delegation to SAARC 2001. Such were the cordial behaviour among pre-Modi era political leaders and before the advent of vindictive politics.P. Raman is a veteran journalist and political commentator.