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After concluding his first state visit to the US, Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced on Saturday evening (24 June) He arrived in Egypt on his two-day visit to the country. Arriving in Cairo for the first time since assuming the top job, Modi will be the first Indian prime minister to embark on an official bilateral visit to the country since 1997.
During his stay, Modi is set to interact with the Indian community in Egypt, meet dignitaries, visit the 11th-century Al-Hakim Mosque, and hold bilateral talks with Egyptian President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi, who visited India earlier this year. The main guest at the Republic Day celebrations.
As the two leaders meet for the second time in six months, their scheduled interaction highlights the growing cooperation between the two countries, especially in recent years. While Delhi seeks to consolidate its position in the Arab world with the help of Cairo, the latter wants India to expand its trade and investments in the country to help deal with its ongoing economic crisis.
How has the relationship between India and Egypt developed over the years?
Delhi established a bilateral relationship with Cairo just three days after it gained independence on August 15, 1947. However, their partnership began to blossom when India’s first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru and Egypt’s second President Gamal Abdel Nasser became close. Friendship is first tested during 1956 Suez Canal Crisis When Nasser nationalized the canal he led Israel, and later France and Britain, to attack Egypt.
Nehru wasted no time in condemning the aggression against Cairo, and according to an article by academic Swapna Kona Nayudu, India Nehru and the Suez Canal Crisis of 1956published by the University of Pennsylvania, “took a number of measures to mediate” between the opposing parties, including asking the United States to intervene in the matter,
She wrote: “The United States-sponsored Uniting for Peace Resolution, passed on November 2, 1956, pushed the fighting forces behind the armistice lines, opening the way for what became known as the Eisenhower-Nehru formula.” Nayudu added that India continued to stress the urgent need for decolonization of Asia and Africa at the United Nations, “which contributes greatly to ending the crisis.”
In the following years, the bond between Nehru and Nasir solidified. The two charismatic leaders, ardent supporters of liberal and decolonization movements, played a pivotal role in founding the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) along with Yugoslav President Josip Broz Tito, Indonesian President Sukarno, and Ghanaian President Kwame Nkrumah. Because of this special relationship, India also stood firmly on the side of Egypt and the Arab world when they clashed with Israel over Palestine—Delhi did not establish full diplomatic relations with Tel Aviv until 1992.
It is worth noting that Delhi and Cairo did not focus on political strategies alone. The two countries seek to strengthen their defense and economic ties as well. For example, according to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, “there was close cooperation between the two countries’ air forces, with efforts to jointly develop combat aircraft in the 1960s.”
But what had previously been the cornerstone of its foreign policy, India brought its partnership with Egypt to the fore in later years, particularly during the 1970s. In a column for The Indian ExpressC. Raja Mohan, Senior Fellow at the Institute of Asian Policy in Delhi writes: “Indian foreign policy rhetoric, with its visceral anti-Western rhetoric and sympathy for the radical Arab states of the 1970s, has been unsympathetic to the concerns and interests of Egypt as it has taken courageous steps to rethink its regional policies.” .
Those years saw India completely ignore not only Egypt but the entire West Asian region. By the end of the Cold War, the region had completely abandoned the Delhi agenda — India only maintained relations on a “commercial basis” with oil-producing countries and those countries to which Indian workers migrated for work, Raja Mohan told the Center for Strategy and International Studies in an interview.
Why did India and Egypt revive their relations with each other?
However, the Modi years saw a turnaround in the situation. Since 2014, India has sought to engage with the countries of West Asia. The reasons, as explained by Raja Mohan in the interview, are quite clear: Delhi wants to withdraw huge sums of capital from the Gulf states, reduce religious extremism by supporting moderate states in the region while encouraging social reforms, and participate in security. area policy.
And in order to do all this, India has realized that Egypt is a key player. The country has remained fairly moderate over the years, has strong ties with the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia (both countries have made huge investments in Egypt), and is located in an important geo-strategic location—12 percent of world trade passes through the Suez Canal. Therefore, bilateral relations between Delhi and Cairo have once again taken center stage.
Meanwhile, Cairo wants India’s help to deal with its battered economy. The outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic coupled with the fallout from the Russia-Ukraine war exacerbated its financial woes. The country’s inflation is at a five-year high of more than 30 percent, and it has approached the International Monetary Fund (IMF) for the fourth time in six years for a bailout.
according to a report By The Indian Express, from Delhi, Egypt has sought “infrastructure investments – metro projects in Cairo and Alexandria, an economic zone for the Suez Canal, a second canal for the Suez Canal, and a new administrative capital in a suburb of Cairo.” More than 50 Indian companies have invested more than 3.15 billion dollars in Egypt.
When Sisi arrived in India earlier this year, the two countries announced that they had decided to elevate their bilateral relationship to a “strategic partnership”. The strategic partnership is supposed to consist of four main elements, including scientific and academic cooperation; Cultural and popular contacts. With Modi’s arrival in Cairo on Saturday, the two leaders are expected to work further on deepening relations between the two countries.
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