In his third term as India’s prime minister, Narendra Modi’s first visit abroad was to Italy, to attend the G7 summit there as a special invitee. But his first external visit for the purpose of a bilateral meeting with another head of government has been to Moscow, to meet Vladimir Putin, who is settling into his fifth term as Russia’s head of state.
The meeting between the two leaders was expected to stoke controversy, given that it coincided with the 75th anniversary of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, celebrated at the military pact’s annual summit in Washington. But the Russians bombed Ukraine’s largest children’s hospital at Kiev on the day the Indian prime minister arrived in Moscow, making Modi’s “tight-rope” act even tougher.
This resulted in predictable outrage in the media, a protest by Ukrainian President Zelenski, and adverse reactions in several quarters.
“We have been quite clear about our concerns about India’s relationship with Russia,” US state department spokesman Mark Miller said. Washington’s outspoken ambassador to India, Eric Garcetti, followed that up with: “I know India likes its strategic autonomy, but in times of conflict there’s no such thing as strategic autonomy.”
But as India’s former Chief of Army Staff General Manoj Narvane tweeted: Whose conflict is it?
Modi has, in the eyes of the western world, joined the ranks of China’s Xi Jinping and North Korea’s Kim Jong-un, who too have met Putin since his fifth presidential term began in May, giving him the legitimacy of international recognition that the West wants to deny him.
Washington’s discomfort is obvious. Yet Modi’s visit does not upset global stability in any way.
Yes, Putin got to demonstrate yet again that he’s not isolated on the world stage. But it’s clear that Modi and India are not out to support Putin’s quest to challenge the post-Cold War order dominated by the US and its allies.
There were never any doubts in the minds of the Nato leaders on this, and Modi ensured that he bluntly criticised the hospital bombing: “Any person who believes in humanity feels pain when people die, and especially when innocent children die,” he said.
India has its own strategic priorities that determine its posture of strategic autonomy, and also serve a very important role in geopolitical balancing and global stability.
A bipolar hegemony of the world, between the US and China, would leave India bereft of strategic autonomy. It is very much in India’s interest for Russia to remain a salient global power, even if not a superpower.
Stripping Russia of its warm-water naval base in Crimea, and land access to that base through eastern Ukraine—which would be the effective result of Ukraine joining Nato—would greatly erode Russia’s ability to project power. India has no interest in such emaciation of Russia. Nor do Brazil or South Africa or any other country of the Global South.
India and China have been buying oil at discounted prices from Russia. Critics say this enables Russia to prosecute its war in Ukraine. However, as India’s external affairs minister, S. Jayashankar, has pointed out repeatedly, by means of such purchase at a time when the West has boycotted Russian hydrocarbons, India and China help keep oil prices low.
If India and China, two of the largest importers of oil, had joined the boycott of Russian oil and sourced some 15 million barrels per day from the same non-Russian sources from whom the boycotters also seek to import oil, the price of oil would have gone through the roof. Popular disaffection against incumbent politicians would have followed suit. Which probably explains why the West has come around to accepting India’s purchases of Russian crude.
New Delhi should, therefore, continue to pursue its strategy, without letting the impolitic statements of relatively minor actors intrude on India’s policy or equanimity.
Even as Garcetti makes a thinly veiled threat over India’s still warm relations with Moscow, the response from Washington has been to express hope that India would be able to persuade Putin to end the war. Modi’s position all along has been to call for diplomatic channels to resolve the conflict. India should continue to articulate its stand with cool-headed clarity.