New Delhi: Acknowledging India as a “geopolitical broker” in the new epoch of multipolarity, Russian professor and political philosopher Alexander Dugin said that many things “depend on Bharat” and that the country plays a crucial balancing role. “India is balancing the ropes of China and the potential of the Islamic pole.”
Dugin, nicknamed ‘Putin’s brain’, was delivering a talk on ‘Bharat as the State-Civilization: Geopolicy and Ideology’ at the Russian Centre of Science and Culture on 19 November. The event was attended by members of the Russian embassy, Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) students, and Dalbir Singh, national secretary of the All India Congress Committee.
According to Dugin, “a new model of international relations is emerging, manifesting, and appearing” with new actors actively shaping, constructing, and influencing the geopolitical world. And this world includes the Indian, Russian, Chinese, African, Latin American, and Islamic regions, acting as “regional centres of power” in addition to the Western pole.
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Modi’s ‘decolonisation’ project
In a lecture that lasted about an hour, Dugin stressed heavily on PM Narendra Modi and his decolonisation project.
According to Dugin, in order for India to reinvent itself as the sovereign civilisation Bharat, the nation needs “what Narendra Modi has called the decolonisation of the Indian mind”.
Dugin, considered far-Right in his views, said that for India to be a full-scale civilisational state, it should be “mentally independent from the West in its self-consciousness, its historical consciousness, culture, science, political structure, art, and technological thinking in Vedic roots”. He called this move a “great rehabilitation of Indian civilisation in its root”.
A neo-Eurasionist, the professor constantly emphasised the importance of tradition, culture and spirituality throughout the lecture. “India was always the keeper of spiritual wisdom…The greater India is, first of all, spiritual, a metaphysical concept because it possesses metaphysical keys, and recognising this would be a restoration of the civilisation dignity, and sovereignty.”
Dugin stressed that the world cannot imagine multipolarity without India: “If we imagine this multipolarity without India, everything would be destroyed.”
Modi, Putin, and Trump
Dugin also alluded to Primakov’s triangle—an alliance of Russia, China, and India — and stated it to be the core of Eurasia. However, he admitted that “leaders were very inspired by this project…but now it is little abandoned”.
But it remains a “very important format, an important system…to serve some very crucial solution…it is sort of drawn inside BRICS,” he added.
Dugin also suggested the possibility of an alternate trilateral alliance, especially at a time when Donald Trump is set to take office as United States President. He went on to add that this could be an alliance of three great traditionalist leaders, ruling three great poles in a multipolar world.
It is known that Russia’s ties with the US have worsened with the ongoing Ukraine war, but their relationship has been troubled historically speaking as well.
Dugin suggested “India here could be a broker” between the US and Russia. “Conservative leader Narendra Modi will find more common points with conservative leader Donald Trump” and “that will mean the end of a unipolar moment, the end of a liberal moment”.
(Edited by Humra Laeeq)