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Narendra Modi's UAE Trip Highlights India's Shifting Middle East Approach ( Source- The Diplomat / Author- Harsh V. Pant)

Image source- Flickr / MEA India Source- The Diplomat Author- Harsh V. Pant Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit to the United Arab Emirates (UAE) later this week has once again brought to focus India’s changing role in the Middle East. This will be the first visit by an Indian prime minister to the UAE in 34 years. Then-prime minister Indira Gandhi visited the Emirates in 1981. Former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh was to travel to the UAE in March 2013, but the visit was cancelled at the last minute. India’s policy toward the Middle East has often been viewed through the prism of Indian–Iranian relations. The international community, and the West in particular, has been obsessed with New Delhi’s ties to Tehran, while missing India’s much more substantive simultaneous engagement with Arab Gulf states and Israel. India’s engagements with Arab states in the Middle East have gained momentum in the last few years, even as Iran continued to hog the limelight. India

Can India Avoid Iraq’s Sectarian Conflict? ( Copy Right @ The Diplomat)

Image credits- Wikimedia Commons On the  podcast yesterday , Ankit and I briefly discussed how India’s sizeable Muslim population might impact its position on the ongoing sectarian tensions between Shias and Sunnis in Iraq and throughout the Middle East. I noted that India has the second largest Shia population in the world after Iran, and wondered if this might affect how Delhi handles the Iraq crisis and the rest of the Middle East. This would not be wholly unprecedented — although the situation is somewhat different, it’s worth noting that India’s Tamil population  has wielded enormous influence  on how  India handles ties with Sri Lanka . There are now signs that in fact India is being dragged into the sectarian tensions, whatever the position of the central government may be. Specifically, Anjuman-e-Haideri —  a Delhi-based Shia organization  — has begun enlisting India’s Shia population to travel to Baghdad to defend the Iraqi government. According to  the latest statemen