By John Elliott

Could India and Britain jointly revive the Commonwealth, not only to boost their own co-operation, but to form a significant international alliance of English-speaking democracies that span religious and ethnic boundaries? If they did this and brought the organisation’s other 51 member countries into an active association, could the Commonwealth emerge as a new influence in a world that will be increasingly dominated by China and sternly Islamic nations?

Mohan has little time for the Commonwealth as it is now, saying it has been a “political bully that was incompetent at its best, impotent at its worst, and increasingly irrelevant on the economic front”. But he suggests that India should take over some of the leadership role from London because, as a rising power, it can influence the Commonwealth’s economic prospects, offering technical, economic and security aid to the smallest states.

“If Delhi and London don’t act together and decisively, they will soon find that China, whose commercial and strategic presence across different regions of the organisation has grown, will turn the Commonwealth into an historical footnote,” he says.

The book, *Reconnecting Britain and India , was launched last month at a reception in London’s Downing Street. It has been edited by Jo Johnson, a former Financial Times India-based correspondent and now a Conservative MP, together with Rajiv Kumar, secretary general of FICCI, a leading Indian business federation.

It marks the first anniversary of a heavyweight ministerial visit to India led by David Cameron. That visit achieved little in real terms, and Cameron has complained in recent months (with little effect) to India’s prime minister, Manmohan Singh, about British business problems in India, notably Vodafone’s mobile phone tax liabilities and Cairn Energy’s delayed sale of gas assets.

The book lists more points that are currently wrong with India than it does about faults in Indo-British relations. This is not surprising at a time when India’s reputation for relatively good top political leadership and governance, together with gradual economic reforms and sustained economic growth, has taken a beating under the dual leadership of Sonia Gandhi, who heads the current governing coalition, and the reticent Manmohan Singh.

India foreign policy

Jo Johnson and Rajiv Kumar, in a joint introductory chapter, argue that India’s government should shed its complacency about the benefits of its young “demographic dividend” and that the private sector can thrive “despite the government”. They touch on the foreign policy theme that lies behind Mohan’s Commonwealth idea when they say that India will have to shed its “historically evolved self-perception of being a member of the ‘have-nots’ and allocate sufficient resources to the design and execution of a foreign policy commensurate with its newly acquired status”.

Manmohan Singh writes, somewhat grumpily, about “there always being room for improvement” in bilateral relations, calling for closer attention (implicitly by the UK) to areas such as fighting terrorism, and British investment in India.

More has been said about Indio-UK relations at other events in London over the past week that have included a visit by S.M.Krishan, India’s foreign minister, and Nirupama  Rao, the foreign secretary. Unsurprisingly, Rao did not even mention the Commonwealth during a speech on India’s foreign policy at London’s International Institute for Strategic Studies.

The last time that the role of the Commonwealth was debated in India was late last year when there was a row about whether Prince Charles, representing the Queen as the head of the Commonwealth, or India’s president, should perform the formal opening of the at the Commonwealth Games in Delhi – ultimately a compromise solution involved both people, but not before the future role of Britain’s monarch at the head of the Commonwealth was questioned.

I have found few supporter’s for Raja Mohan’s Commonwealth idea, but he is regarded as a serious down-to-earth policy analyst who would not idly fly kites, so I asked him (right) to expand what he had written. He acknowledges that the idea “is indeed new and does not have much currency at the moment” but says that, having studied foreign policy during the years of British rule, he sees it in the context of “the power calculus of a rising India”.