New World Order
(Chapter 5)
Prime Minister Narendra Modi reached Netherlands after brief stopover of around two-and-a-half hours in the UAE, where he held talks with UAE President Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan in Abu Dhabi on 15 May 2026. During the visit to Netherlands, PM Modi held talks with PM Jetten and will also meet King Willem-Alexander and Queen Maxima.
Netherlands, sitting at the mouth of Europe’s biggest port in Rotterdam, is the supply chain and logistics hub in the western Europe. In case of any supply chain architecture, it shall play a major role. The “reliable supply chain” phrase PM Modi used in Netherlands was not diplomatic pleasantry but an emphasis of the fact in the logistic capital.
Achievements in Netherlands
India and the Netherlands have finalised 17 wide-ranging agreements during Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit. These include:
- A strategic roadmap for India-Netherlands relations through 2030 covering trade, innovation, defence, renewable energy, mobility, and emerging technologies.
- Semiconductors and critical minerals, including the Tata-ASML deal, Dutch support for the semiconductor fabrication plant at Dholera positioning India as an advanced chip-making hub, and a minerals MoU securing supply chains for batteries, EVs, clean-tech and electronics.
- Green energy and hydrogen, with a joint roadmap and working group on green hydrogen and energy transition projects.
- Water and infrastructure, covering the Kalpasar project and Dutch support for large-scale water management.
- Agriculture and dairy, through centres of excellence on flowers and dairy plus a joint declaration on animal husbandry.
- Health, education, culture and customs, with MoUs on medical research, higher education exchanges, cultural heritage collaboration, and mutual customs assistance to speed up bilateral trade.
- Mobility and migration, through an MoU covering movement of Indian professionals and workers to Netherlands, directly relevant to India’s expanding need for skilled maritime and technical labour for its Arctic route and shipbuilding partnerships.
- Restitution of Chola Copper Plates by Netherlands to India, a significant acknowledgement of sovereign cultural heritage and a dignity statement that no Western nation makes lightly. Netherlands returning stolen antiquities signals that their relationship is now between equals, not as former colonial power and subject.
- A renewable energy institutional framework, through a Joint Working Group under the renewed MoU on Renewable Energy and a separate NITI Aayog-Netherlands collaboration. This energy sector transition projects, gives the green hydrogen road map an operational institutional beyond a declaration.
- Academic and civilisational cooperation, through three distinct agreements. A MoU between Nalanda University and University of Groningen, an MoU between Leiden University Libraries and Archaeological Survey of India. A broader higher education MoU anchoring India’s civilisational presence in European academic institutions, with Nalanda specifically carrying the weight of India’s oldest university tradition re-engaging with European scholarship.
Prime Minister Modi highlighted the importance of these agreements in a post on X in these words:
“These are substantive and important outcomes that will add unparalleled momentum to the friendship between India and the Netherlands. These outcomes cover many sectors and will enhance growth and prosperity for our nations.”
Maritime Agreement
However, beneath all these agreements there is the most important agreement about Green and Digital Sea Corridor to connect Indian ports with the Port of Rotterdam. India and Netherlands have a long standing maritime agreement in this regard. There is no mention about it in this visit.
As per the 2025 Maritime agreement Rotterdam was connected to Indian ports via green hydrogen, ammonia and methanol fuels. Digital port operations connecting both ends. Shipbuilding cooperation with Netherlands’ specialised vessel expertise including military ships. MARIN conducting joint research on green shipping. Port of Rotterdam directly partnered with Kandla Port.
Kandla is in Gujarat and is near the Vadinar where the ship repair cluster with UAE was just signed. Dholera, where the semiconductor fab and UAE’s airport and port are being built, is also in Gujarat. The entire western Gujarat coastline is being quietly assembled into one integrated maritime-industrial complex connecting to Rotterdam at one end and Fujairah at the other.
Semiconductor Technology
ASML is the only company on earth making EUV lithography machines without which no advanced semiconductor can be fabricated anywhere. That is extraordinary today but it may not remain extraordinary in near future.
ASML’s EUV monopoly is real today. But India has demonstrated repeatedly that technology denial is a temporary inconvenience, not a permanent barrier. USA pressured Russia to cancel the contract with ISRO in 1994 under MTCR obligations. India was denied the technology transfer. ISRO spent the next decade developing its own cryogenic engine independently. India is flying it independently from 2014 and now offering cryogenic capability to other space programs.
India has repeated the same pattern everywhere. Nuclear technology denied after Pokhran 1974, yet India conducted Pokhran in 1998. Supercomputer technology denied by USA in 1980s and India built PARAM with parallel processing. Defence electronics are denied repeatedly yet India built its own radar, its own missile guidance systems, its own naval sonar.
The Netherlands decided that it may share the technology with India and reap royalties for it rather than create a rival who is known to turn around technologies with cheaper versions that will hurt the Netherlands commercially. That is pragmatism at its best. But when it comes to politics, leaders can put their foot in mouth in no time.
Foot in Mouth
Europe suffers from foot in mouth disease. Barring a few patents and a few technologies, it has no leverage on India but it still likes to behave as if it is the superior moral (White?) power. Leaders know but the people including journalists do not let it be.
According to Dutch newspaper De Volkskrant, the Dutch PM told reporters at the Hague that “the Dutch government, too, has concerns regarding developments in India…It is not just about press freedom…but also about the rights of minorities, which are under severe pressure there.”
It made PM Modi realise that a trap was set. He simply refused to step into it by refusing the joint platform entirely. Hence, there was no joint press briefing after the agreements were signed.
Minority Rights in India
The minority rights question is not journalism. It is a script. Every Western visit by an Indian PM triggers the same questions like minorities, press freedom, democracy index. These questions require no research, no preparation, no understanding of the subject matter. They are asked not to elicit information but to perform a posture.
Modern political journalism selects for performers, not readers. The minority rights question takes thirty seconds to formulate. The Rotterdam-Kandla-Vadinar-Dholera-Fujairah question takes three hours of preparation and genuine curiosity about how the world actually works. The only possible result was that there was no joint press briefing. But India responded hard. No diplomatic framing. It was a direct attack on the epistemological faculty of Netherlands or perhaps Europe.
India’s Response
Sibi George, Secretary (West) in the Ministry of External Affairs who is a practicing christian and a supposedly minority in India, answered the question by telling the West that it has no clue as to what it is talking about. He said:
“India is a country of 1.4 billion people, the largest populated country in the world. A country of civilization of more than 5000 years old. It’s a diverse country. [There’s]…diversity in terms of culture, diversity in terms of languages, diversity in terms of food, diversity in terms of religion…There is no other country in the world which have four religions have originated. Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism, and Sikhism. These religions originated in India and continue to flourish in India.”
His education to the West continued in these words:
“Jewish religion was in India for more than 2500 years. Continuously coexisted. India is perhaps only one of those very few countries where the Jewish population never faced a persecution…Christianity came to India immediately after the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Continued to flourish in India… Islam came to India during the time of Prophet Muhammad himself and flourished in India,” he added.
Then he told the West to learn arithmetic and appreciate this:
When we became independent, the minority population in India was 11 per cent. Now it is more than 20 per cent. Name a country where the population of minorities has gone up? You won’t find it (anywhere) other than India,”
What was a glorious landmark event for Netherlands was reduced to a crisis management exercise. Everyone who knows the politics of India and the world knows that minority means Muslims. First of all they are second majority in India with population larger than anywhere else in the world. Secondly the Muslims suffer wherever they are. Are they happy in Europe? Why there are riots on streets and cars are burning? Does the Europe know about Modern Jihad being waged on India?
Sweden has taken a step back and realized the Islamophobia is a political construct to protect Islamic clergy and stall debate on Islam and dropped it but rest of Europe has to wake up and smell the coffee.
The media is not covering history being made because it is too busy manufacturing the controversy that fits its existing template. The Jetten corridor comment is the perfect illustration of journalism choosing noise over signal in real time with documentary evidence.
So what is the history being made? It is about global realignment of trade routes which will not be under control of USA, as it used to, for past 80 years. More about this in the concluding part of this series of articles.
From Netherlands, PM Modi visited Sweden. In Sweden, PM Modi and Swedish PM Kristersson jointly addressed the European Round Table for Industry alongside Ursula von der Leyen, They also delivered a joint press statement with the President of the European Commission who reiterated the ‘mother of all deals’ slogan. There may have been bilateral with Ursula von der Leyen exchanging developments in India EU trade deal to iron out the problem if any, but again there is silence. Media asked no questions, as usual.
More about the visit to Sweden in the next chapter 6.
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