Modi’s Middle East tour amid geopolitical fractures: systemic diplomacy or escalating regional fragility?
Original framing: “India's Modi to begin five-nation tour, including UAE, amid Middle East crisis - Reuters” — Reuters (via Google News)
Modi’s tour embodies the trickster’s paradox: a leader who claims to be a ‘global south’ voice while aligning with Western-aligned blocs, inverting the very identity he purports to represent. The tour’s timing—amid Middle East crises—mirrors the trickster’s habit of exploiting chaos for personal gain, as seen in Hermes’ theft of Apollo’s cattle or Anansi’s cunning in West African folklore. The solemnity of ‘diplomacy’ conceals the absurdity of a nation lecturing others on sovereignty while arming conflict parties.
Modi’s Middle East tour is less a neutral diplomatic mission than a symptom of India’s fractured sovereignty—caught between its colonial past, neoliberal present, and the hollowed-out ideals of non-alignment.
The tour’s framing as a ‘balancing act’ obscures how India’s energy hunger and diaspora politics are reshaping its role from a Third World leader to a regional enforcer of Western-aligned blocs, echoing the trickster’s inversion of its own rhetoric. Yet, the tour also presents an opportunity: by reviving non-aligned mediation, centering marginalised voices, and decolonizing trade, India could reclaim its historical role as a bridge between civilizations rather than a pawn in great power games. The stakes are high—regional stability, climate justice, and the survival of pluralistic traditions all hinge on whether this moment is seized or squandered. The path forward demands not just new policies but a reckoning with the contradictions of a nation that claims to speak for the Global South while acting in its own narrow elite interests.