Few events have stimulated External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar’s gift of the gab as much as the Ukraine war. Every time he is interviewed on India’s stand on the war, or decisions surrounding it, the global commentariat is set ablaze.
Why do his statements generate such wide-spectrum curiosity? First, yes, India’s voice matters. Second, there is a need to demystify these statements to understand the country’s real strategic positioning in a fast-changing world.
Its many perils aside, the Ukraine war has been an enabler of conversations between the West and the rest of the world. In the case of India and Europe, it has brought to the fore differing perceptions on critical issues of statehood, security, and international law on the one hand and rational choice hedging on the other.
At the heart of it is colonial rancour too, inalienably etched into the psyche of a nation–its riches plundered and territory dismembered as it sought to find footing in a fractured postcolonial South Asia. Entwined therein is the West’s, at times emphatic and other times gentle, indifference to India’s security anxieties. It is often laced with the Western press’ apathy toward India’s commitment to regional stability and global peace.
A lot of it, though, remains a narrative, and they change when national interests deem fit.
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Two years of Jaishankar’s astuteness
When the war had just started and the West expected India to take a “principled” stand with them, Jaishankar reminded the leaders that Europe’s problems are not the world’s problems, especially when vice versa has not been true.
Two years later, speaking in Japan, he again rebutted the West’s selective interpretation of principles of sovereignty, calling it “cherry-picking”.
True to New Delhi’s preferred country agnosticism, these loaded statements hint at Pakistan and China without taking names. At a more fundamental level, this is about legitimate Indian frustration about the West choosing to sidestep India’s territorial vulnerabilities, earlier by courting Pakistan and later by maintaining trade ties with China.
It is discomforting to India that none of its Western partners, including Japan, cartographically acknowledge Kashmir as a part of the country.
While the West has developed a more nuanced approach to the issue, in India it is regarded as fence-sitting. These statements don’t really have an absolutist position. It is also true that part of this response stems from India’s preferred bilateral approach to its territorial issues, which rejects third-party mediation whatsoever.
Therefore, the play of words can be better addressed by increasing the sheer frequency of dialogue and demystifying narratives in the space that has emerged after the debacle in Ukraine.
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Intelligent questions please
Questions with a simplistic interpretation of India’s stand in the war dumb down the larger role the country is playing in the conflict.
A pity that every single time someone as ingenuous as Jaishankar speaks on the war in the West, they land up fielding the same tone-deaf questions lacking in nuance and ignorant to India’s seething experiences with territorial concerns on both sides of its continental expanse. Instead, the West could use these platforms to enhance its understanding of India’s proactive and humanitarian neutrality in the war. High time they do it.
What should be discussed more are the 15 consignments of humanitarian aid already sent to Ukraine, making India one of the most bankable players for post-conflict reconstruction. It would be more useful to note that India has a thriving and agile business community that would be keen to invest in a war-torn country whenever the time is right.
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Demystifying monoliths on both sides
Ukraine war has been demystifying redundant narratives as well.
Instead of worrying about coaching India to join them in criticising Russia, the Western strategic community needs to internalise the very security imperatives and responses thereof that have landed Delhi in such a spot. Moreover, it needs to respect that India acts with strategic autonomy. Its relations with Moscow are built on a different set of historical, geopolitical, and technical factors. And despite these linkages, India intervened with swift action when news of Indian nationals being forced by Russian agents to fight on the frontlines came to notice.
India, for its part, also needs to acknowledge that Europe is no monolith either. Endeavours should be made to distinguish between official positions that are increasingly favourable to New Delhi and the unfavourable perceptions of the press. India needs to better accept that the West takes pride in the culture of dissent and multi-alignment — and it is as valid for other players as it is for India.
Further, think of a vastly important maritime domain such as the Indo-Pacific. The European view, in congruence with India’s, is to bolster multipolarity and a third way forward for countries wary of the escalating great power rivalry between the United States and China—all of it while continuing to engage with India at the forefront.
New Delhi, too, needs to re-assess its growing degree of consilience with Europe’s view of the international order in maritime domains more synergistically.
India’s neutrality has been a global asset
A neutral India is far more useful to the West than an aligned one. It is because of India’s neutrality and acting in its national interest that it decided to buy discounted Russian oil, thereby allowing the G7 price cap to work. Lest it is forgotten, one of the objectives of the price cap was to ensure the flow of Russian oil to other parts of the world, so that dangerous spikes in oil prices don’t wreak havoc in an already wrecked world.
Had it not been for India’s consistent buying of Russian oil, no way could the global re-routing be made possible. This also explains why, after initial condescending statements from US officials, no US or European official ever asked India to stop buying Russian oil. Again, the press did and Jaishankar responded with alacrity, saying Europe buys in one afternoon what India buys in one year. A tone-deaf question elicited a similar response. What got missed in the process yet again was the value of India’s neutrality.
Epistemic resistance against Eurocentrism is fair
Finally, India is invested in reclaiming and rethinking the part of history that is its own. The right to take relevant conversations forward in today’s geopolitics should be accorded to the agency itself, not dropped like Newton’s apple as apriori.
Colonised India saw its soldiers fight and die alongside the allies’ armies in the two world wars and yet bore the brunt of cartographic blunders, faced sanctions from the West, except France, in 1974 and 1998.
Geopolitics has fundamentally changed ever since. States’ behaviour is not fixated but is now a functional response to these geopolitical forces and therefore liable to change.
Timing is key
West and India’s relationship has been riding the high tide despite the difference in worldviews and experiential distillates that often translate into a colloquial expression of ‘mistrust’.
The reality is more nuanced, though. From diversified weapon platforms, trade, investments, AI, technology, innovation, remittances, diaspora—India’s relations with the West are thriving. So is New Delhi’s rising diplomatic profile in regions untouched in the European continent. India’s outreach to the Baltics and Mediterranean Europe, its rising presence in the Caucuses, reinvigorated defence diplomacy in central Europe, and fresh engagement with the Balkans—all of these speak a different story.
Similarly, Europe’s outreach to the Indo-Pacific, renewed political will at maximising the growing economic heft of India through difficult but persistent trade negotiations, and appointing a defence attaché in New Delhi – are engagements that were unthinkable until a few years ago. These prove that common and long-term interests are critical in creating and sustaining frameworks of cooperation.
India’s commitment to neutrality demands a better understanding because it stems from its position of enhanced global traction. More importantly, there is genuine merit in a collaborative framework of partnering that is based on commitments to commons and not a zero-sum framework of alliances.
Foreign policy imperatives are never alike. Maximising convergences while co-opting divergences is key to shaping relevant conversations between India and its partners.
The writer is an Associate Fellow, Europe and Eurasia Center, at the Manohar Parrikar Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses. She tweets @swasrao. Views are personal.
(Edited by Humra Laeeq)