Modi's visit to Denmark thaws almost 20 years of frost in bilateral relations; green is the watchword

File photo of Prime Minister Narendra Modi

Summit meetings between heads of government usually make incremental progress in relations. Every once in a few decades, some summits lead to big leaps in friendship, such as the meetings between Indian Prime Ministers and US Presidents between 2000 and 2008. They transformed India-US relations.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s just-concluded visit to Denmark is another such exception to the norm. On Modi’s three-nation European tour, genuine progress was made in Copenhagen. Relations between India and Denmark had turned hostile at the dawn of this Millennium for reasons that are weird, to say the least.

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When Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee was in Copenhagen in October 2002, there was the ungainly spectacle of the two sides clashing on record. Denmark’s then Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen gave Vajpayee gratuitous advice on how to deal with Pakistan and on Kashmir during his speech at the India-European Union Political Dialogue.

Vajpayee’s Disinvestment Minister Arun Shourie’s memorable retort that Rasmussen was “giving out the same message to the arsonist (Pakistan) and the fire fighter (India),” promptly put the lid on the incident, which could have turned uglier. “You cannot give the same message to both,” Shourie admonished Rasmussen.

The following day, after some behind-the-curtains toing and froing between the Indians and the Danes by the UK’s Chris Patten, Rasmussen tried to make amends when he and Vajpayee held a joint press conference. But the damage had been done. Rasmussen was then simultaneously Chairman of the European Council and Patten was EU Commissioner for External Relations. Since then, no Indian Prime Minister has visited Denmark: when Manmohan Singh went to Copenhagen in 2009 for a United Nations meeting, he took the maximalist position of not having a bilateral meeting with the Danes.

If anyone thought relations could not get worse, a judgement blocking the extradition of “Purulia arms drop” case accused Kim Davy became a bone of contention between the two sides. A court in Denmark decided that Davy should not be sent to India for trial and the Public Prosecutor declined to appeal. All but the barest of official contacts between India and Denmark were cut off. The mysterious arms drop in West Bengal in December 1995 included hundreds of AK-47 rifles and 16,000 rounds of ammunition.

With Modi’s visit to Copenhagen, relations are firmly back on track. Mette Frederiksen, the present Prime Minister and Modi’s host, and Rasmussen are cut from completely different cloth. According to the World Happiness Report 2022, Denmark is the world’s second happiest country. The outcomes of Modi’s visit reflects a desire to share some of that happiness.

These outcomes are significantly different from the usual cliché-ridden statements about strategic partnerships of various brands – “comprehensive, special” etc. etc. – and instead concentrate on improving the quality of Indian lives. The coming years will, therefore, see Danish contributions in areas where they are at their best: smart water management, green shipping, green hydrogen, green sustainable development solutions and renewables.

Three years of patient work since Modi began his second term as Prime Minister, and especially after Frederiksen took office at the same time, have contributed to the breakthroughs during their summit this week. Davy was a mere blip on the radar during Modi’s visit. It would have been foolish to keep India-Denmark relations hostage to the Purulia arms drop that took place more than a quarter century ago.

In trying to repair relations with India, the Danes adopted the wise saying that “the way to the heart is through the stomach.” In 2018, when India’s former Ambassador to Sweden, Banashri Bose Harrison, launched the Tasting India Symposium as an innovative project, the Danes threw themselves into it, heart and soul. World renowned chef and food television show host Claus Meyer brought the Nordic Food Agenda to India during this symposium: its fundamentals are “eat local and take from nature’s bounty,” which vastly appealed to Meyer’s Indian collaborators.

It was not widely known here until the symposium that Denmark is the first country in the world to label food contents on packets. The Food Safety and Standards Authority of India, known to millions of consumers as the FSSAI, is now collaborating with Denmark for this reason. Meyer came to India to convert Indians to the Nordic Food Agenda but, as this writer discovered during his visit, the open-minded chef got converted to Indian food habits. He is now set on Danish-Indian fusion food, which augurs well for people-to-people relations between India and Denmark.

As the prospect of reviving ties with India brightened, Denmark’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs did something that men with stiff upper lips, who run diplomatic establishments, almost never do. They sent back to India Freddy Svane, who spent five years from 2010 as Ambassador, mostly cooling his heels at their Embassy in New Delhi. During four of those five years – until Modi became Prime Minister – Svane could not get many meetings with official India because of the failed Davy extradition and a hangover of Rasmussen’s insensitivity on Kashmir.

Having been severely restricted on his first posting as Ambassador, Svane now wants to prove himself. He has taken to dressing like Modi, wearing the Prime Minister’s trademark jacket and is not only the most active Nordic Ambassador in India, he is among the most active diplomats in all of Chanakyapuri, the capital’s diplomatic enclave.

“Freddy is ready, is India ready,” is his stock question to local interlocutors. Spreading Denmark’s happiness index message, Svane and his lawyer wife Lise Frederiksen spent Easter last month in a Delhi slum sharing a meal with a family there. Modi’s visit is built on such good atmospherics.