Abhinav Pandya
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During the early phase of the Russia-Ukraine conflict, India faced tremendous pressure from the West, particularly the US, to align with the US-led Western bloc and condemn Russia in unequivocal terms.
However, India maintained its principled stand of strategic neutrality, calling both sides for the ‘immediate cessation of hostilities’, ‘end to the violence,’ and to ‘return to the path of diplomacy and dialogue’. India’s position discomforts many Western capitals, particularly Washington.
In today’s polarised geopolitical discourse, India’s hallmark diplomatic behaviour on various global conflicts, which turns out to be a tightrope balancing between the rival power blocs and nations, does not sit well with the Western International Relations theoreticians and foreign ministries.
The discomfort and unease in bilateral relations can be witnessed in the India-US relationship.
Despite an array of technological and strategic agreements like BECA, LEMOA, and COMCASA, and the common consensus on the emerging challenge of Chinese revisionism, one finds that there is an acute sense of misunderstanding and lack of trust between New Delhi and Washington.
These frictions are visible in several instances, be it the US sermonising India on so-called democratic backsliding, press freedom, minority issues, and human rights; or the recent diplomatic stand-off between Canada and India over the killing of Khalistani terrorist Hardeep Singh Nijjhar with alleged Indian involvement; or US accusations of the Indian agencies conspiring to kill Khalistani extremist Gurupatwant Singh Pannun.
The ambitious dreams of the grand US-India strategic partnership and bonhomie always get punctured by Washington’s discomfort with New Delhi’s stance on issues of critical geopolitical importance to the US.
Today, when Chinese revisionism presents a common challenge to both the US and India, both countries do not see eye to eye on many issues, and one hardly finds any steam in the India-US partnership besides purely transactional technology, defence, and intelligence sharing agreements.
On closer scrutiny of the facts, it seems that the US is not able to understand the nature and roots of India’s diplomatic behaviour. This lack of understanding comes from the fundamental difference in the geopolitical thought of India and the Western world.
The expert voices in the Indian establishment feel that due to this lack of understanding on the part of the US, the US is not able to accept India’s geopolitical posturing. At the same time, when the US government is in crosshairs with India on issues of democracy, human rights, minorities, and the recent Canada-India row, it is perceived as a bully in Indian popular perception.
The US needs to understand that India’s stance on the Ukraine issue is not a novelty; instead, in essence, it has always been there, after the emergence of India as a sovereign nation.
During the Cold War, India adopted a non-alignment policy, refusing to align with the Western and Soviet power blocs. However, by the 1970s, India came closer to the USSR because of the overt American support to Pakistan over the Bangladesh issue and the resultant India-Pakistan war. Also, with Russia, India shared socialist sentiments and a rich civilisational connect.
Despite this tilt towards the Soviets, India reasonably maintained its strategic autonomy. Deeper analysis of India’s history and civilisational ethos suggests that in the Indian world view on statecraft, foreign policy, diplomacy, and war, there is hardly any place for seeing the world in terms of the binaries.
India’s historical and civilisational experience has not witnessed the division of the world into alliances and blocs based on ideological differences.
The concepts of ‘isms’ and ‘us’ versus ‘them’ were not entirely absent; however, they were never the dominant vectors.
Likewise, the hegemon exercising an overarching influence over the weaker states based on sheer and brute power is also not a characteristic feature of Indian strategic thought.
Indian thought places a high premium on multipolarity in global affairs, where the states retain strategic autonomy and the freedom to pursue independent foreign policy based on their geography, core national interests, and values.
In such a set-up, the powerful states, or so-called hegemon in Western parlance, do exist, but one rarely comes across the hegemon exercising overriding powers over the weaker states, conquering them by force, blatantly interfering in their internal affairs, forcing humiliating treaties and alliances upon them, and dictating values and beliefs on them.
Not that such aggressive hegemons have not existed and conquered territories in ancient Indian history, but such behaviour was not accepted as the standard and mainstream behaviour of a powerful state.
The best example of India’s multipolar international relations set-up comes from the 16 Mahajanapadas of the Vedic era. The 16 Mahajanapadas were 16 sovereign states sprawling from Afghanistan to today’s Bengal. Among them were powerful kingdoms like Kurus, Panchalas, and Magadhas; however, the powerful ones did not gobble up the smaller kingdoms as a standard practice. Even when the smaller states were defeated in wars and subjugated, it was mostly symbolic.
In the rarest of the rare cases, the conquerors deposed the ruler and occupied the territory to rule. In fact, the wars were also for specific reasons, and importance was given to Dharma Yuddha (the righteous war), i.e., the war that was fought for the restoration of moral order, not for economic motives and territorial aggrandisement. For example, when Lord Ram defeated Ravana to rescue his wife Sita, whom the demon king of Lanka had abducted, he did not occupy his territory. He handed it over to Ravana’s brother, Vibhishana.
Likewise, in Mahabharata , when Lord Krishna deposed Jarasandha, the demon king who oppressed people and attacked smaller states, he did not assimilate his kingdom into his empire. Instead, he made Jarasandha’s son the new ruler of Magadha.
Also, in this set-up of 16 Mahajanapadas, bilateral diplomacy was the most preferred and effective tool for conducting foreign policy instead of overarching and divisive military alliances.
On the other hand, in the West, the alliance system has been a fundamental part of international relations. In Western historical experiences such as the European geopolitics of the 18th century, the First World War, the Second World War, and the Cold War, military alliances always took centre stage in diplomacy.
Delving deeper into the history of diplomacy, war, and statecraft in the West and India is not the key focus of this piece. However, suffice it to say that some of the fundamental tenets of India’s foreign policy, particularly the primacy of strategic autonomy, aversion to military alliances, strong displeasure and resilience against the pressure tactics of global powers, and preference for bilateral diplomacy and multipolarity in the world order, emanate from its strategic subconscious rooted in its collective civilisational-historical experience and ethos.
Today, it can be seen that India has successfully bypassed the pressure from the West. While fearlessly guarding its strategic autonomy, it has maintained an independent foreign policy based on its national interests, values, history, and geography. Be it the Russia-Ukraine conflict, the China-US rivalry, or the Israel-Hamas war, India has taken a principled stand of neutrality, not siding with any one side.
However, at the same time, India’s posture is not the pessimism of the fence-sitters. This approach to diplomacy can be defined as fearlessly taking reasoned, realistic, pragmatic, and value-based judgements on various global conflicts, listening to one’s moral conscience and rationality amidst the dominant scenario of the majority of the states buckling under the pressure of the hegemons to take sides, resulting in polarisation and widening of the rift between the power blocs.
India’s activism in global affairs based on enlightened self-interest is evident in its stance on various global issues. For example, in the Ukraine-Russia case, as mentioned above, India called both parties to immediately end violence and return to diplomacy and dialogue. PM Modi categorically stated that this is not the era of war.
Also, India has found an effective way of navigating the polarised geopolitical landscape through its successful bilateral diplomacy. Over the last two years, India has developed robust bilateral strategic, defence, and economic ties with Greece and Armenia . India also enjoys strong bilateral relations with Germany, France, and Italy.
Recently, amidst the plummeting India-US ties, when the US president declined to attend India’s Republic Day ceremony as a chief guest, the French president replaced him.
With Russia, India enjoys excellent relationships based on trust and mutual respect. Even with China, its arch rival, despite the recent military standoffs in Galwan and eastern Ladakh, India has not closed the bilateral channels. India-China trade ties continue to grow stronger, and on boundary issues New Delhi continues to engage China in negotiations to resolve long-standing disputes amicably.
Though India and the US are on the same page vis-à-vis China’s revisionist ambitions of world dominance and both countries do subscribe to the idea of a strong India-US strategic partnership to counter China, India carefully maintains a guarded distance from the US and abstains from tilting the balance completely in the favour of the US.
In another interesting example, India maintains strong bilateral ties with both Iran and Israel, the arch-rivals. In West Asia, PM Modi has built an excellent economic and strategic relationship with Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Oman, and Bahrain.
Most recently, India’s successful bilateral diplomacy resulted in Qatar releasing eight Indian nationals facing death- sentences on the charges of espionage. Giving heft to this clever bilateral diplomacy is PM Modi’s personal chemistry with many nation heads. Five Arab states have given their highest civilian awards to PM Modi, and the UAE has given land for the construction of a Hindu temple, which PM Modi recently inaugurated.
For a Hindu constituency, convincing a monarch of a Muslim state to allow the building of a Hindu temple is a terrific achievement.
Last but not least, India is taking its successful bilateral diplomacy experiment to the next level by investing in mini-laterals in West Asia and the Indo-Pacific. It can be argued that in the 21st century, India’s non-alignment has transformed into multi-alignment exercised through bilateralism and mini-lateralism.
Apparently, most of the above-mentioned countries have accepted India’s independent foreign policy and come to respect it. In many of my informal conversations with the members of Delhi’s diplomatic community, they have suggested that they have a high regard for India’s strategic autonomy.
Further, they said that India is a powerful nation that can afford to guard its independent foreign policy. Also, it enjoys a unique position to do so because of its history of taking a principled and non-aligned stand on global issues.
However, the US also needs to be a little more perceptive and understand India’s approach to international relations. Also, such an approach is an effective way to prevent the world community from falling into rival military alliances, thereby weakening the deterrence factor and enhancing the chances of a small localised conflict escalating into a world war with nuclear catastrophe.
Bilateralism and mini-lateralism help create an in-built system of checks and balances and prevent a small localised conflict’s escalation into a global and regional war involving multiple actors.
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