Why US needs to know where to draw line in ties with India

Responding to the US threat of sanctions over India signing a ten-year deal to manage the Chabahar Port in Iran, External Affairs Minister (EAM) S Jaishankar said, “It is a question of communicating, convincing, and getting people to understand that this is actually for everyone’s benefit.” In the same vein, he recalled how, in the past, the US was ‘appreciative of the fact that Chabahar has a larger relevance’ and how people should not take a ‘narrow view’ (now).

Possibly, EAM Jaishankar feels confident that New Delhi could convince the US this time, too, as it has done all along when the common threat is China, especially in New Delhi’s backyard. It started with the Gwadar Port in Pakistan but does not end there. On a more recent note, Team Jaishankar came out of it all without hurt or loss when the US seemingly protested India buying cheap oil from Russia since the commencement of the Ukraine War, where Washington and the rest of the West took sides and imposed additional sanctions on Moscow.

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Popular mood

Independent of such geo-political and geo-strategic considerations, the US should also understand that the popular mood influences, and at times pressures, the Indian establishment on issues just as it does in its country. In the US, we are told that human rights concerns in other nations are a talking point, especially at election times as the American presidential poll is due later this year.

In India, too, such wholesale condemnation of the nation and its elected government are talking points, growing as far as to become pressure points, especially under the incumbent government. The influx and consequent influence of social media is one of the reasons, but the nationalist ideological moorings of a substantial majority of this government’s support base are the real cause. Its government cannot be seen as saying one thing and doing another, full-stop.

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Jaishankar and his ministry’s official spokesperson have both continually interjected whenever an American media report of a political condemnation of democracy in India surfaces in that country. It is true of other Western nations, who hold similar ‘values’ steeped in the shared experience of the two Great Wars of the previous century.

They often forget, if at all they knew, that contemporary Indian socio-political values, as outlined in the Constitution at birth, too owe to the same understanding of democracy and liberalism in the post-War world. It was thus that India introduced universal adult franchise, including voting rights for women, and a ban on social segregation, long before many in the West began enjoying those rights and freedoms.

The result of those early initiatives since Independence, in a ’nation of cows, elephants, and snake-charmers’, has to be seen to be believed. The expression of Indian nationalism and the issues that are flagged on such occasions are one and the same. Some wear it all on their sleeves; others don’t. Hence, for any outsider to conclude that there are internal divisions in the country that could be exploited at will is just out of the question.

The nation’s unity stood out through the Bangladesh War, the Kargil War, and the Pokhran-I and II nuclear tests, when, incidentally, ideologically opposite political parties and leaders were in power. It is thus worth recalling how Congress Prime Minister Indira Gandhi chose then Jan Sangh rival Atal Behari Vajpayee to lead the Indian delegation to the UN to demonstrate the national will, power, and unity after her disheartening global tour to convince the West in particular about the Pakistani military atrocities in what was then East Pakistan, now Bangladesh.

Playing second-fiddle?

Though the time may not have come for testing Moscow’s preferences between India and China, the question may arise if and when there is another episode involving the two Asian neighbours. It could be something like a ‘limited operation’ (!) like the crude and cruel Galwan incident or a larger military engagement. Whatever the occasion, not just the Indian government but also individual Indian citizens would automatically expect Russia to side with India, as it had done during past wars with Pakistan.

Many Indians may not remember to recall that the then-Soviet Union and communist China acted as comrades-in-arms during the Chinese aggression of 1962, and it remained so until Beijing began slighting Moscow not long after. Today, in matters geopolitical and geostrategic, Russia can at best play second fiddle to Beijing, as its economic fortunes have reversed.

In short, Russia needs China more today than the other way around, though mainly in political terms. Suffice to point out that Russian President Vladimir Putin undertook a two-day China visit to meet with his counterpart Xi Jinping. Before emphasising this, he said in Moscow that Russia was ready to negotiate an end to the Ukraine war, but as a stakeholder, Moscow’s interests too should be addressed.

Does it also mean that Putin would discuss peace proposals with Xi after the latter had given up on his forgotten initiative in this regard months ago? If so, will Xi get into the thick of things all over again? But then, like the last time around, the US and Western Europe are not going to let Ukraine and President Volodymyr Zelensky settle it all by themselves. Of course, now that Moscow has declared part of the captured Ukrainian territory Russian, it is not going to be easy for Kyiv to do it all by itself.

Of course, these are bridges for each nation to cross when faced with them, but national strategies are built on possibilities and probabilities, where all these equations come into play.

The writer is a Chennai-based Policy Analyst & Political Commentator. Views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely those of the author. They do not necessarily reflect Firstpost’s views.