GTBT - India Wants Autonomy.

: Hubert Walas; Created: 14 December 2023

In bed with Russia?

India is on its way to becoming a major player on the world stage, alongside the US and China. Such a statement is becoming less controversial by each day. The country's economic and strategic status is growing, and with it, the potential available to decision-makers in Delhi. But in doing so, they must adopt a strategy that they believe will take India to its rightful place in the global hierarchy. And that is no easy task. Why is India romancing Russia, the de facto junior partner to China - Delhi's main rival? How does this translate into relations with the US and the West, of which some believe India, as the world's largest democracy, should be a part of? And finally, what is the biggest threat to the Earth’s most populous country?

The Indian Age

There are strong indications that India's growth will be largely responsible for global growth in the coming decades. Chetan Ahya, chief Asia economist at Morgan Stanley, predicts that India's economy will account for a fifth of global growth over the next decade. We discussed this in more detail in our April material and encourage you to check it out.

The likelihood of India's significant rise on the international stage is high. The country is set to become the world's third-largest economy within a few years and has the potential to close the gap with China and the US in the coming decades. This is reason enough to talk more about India and to follow Delhi's politics. All the more so because, as is usually the case with such a large and heterogeneous country, it is a unique case.

The impact of India's size has long been substantial, but it is only recently that the resources it generates have allowed Delhi's leaders to act more boldly on the international stage. Before that, the demographic potential simply did not match the economic one. Delhi had to focus its resources and attention inward. While this is still largely the case, it is slowly changing.

Several factors, mostly internal, are behind India's rise. Millions of people are gradually being lifted out of extreme poverty. In the last six years, their number has fallen by more than 100 million. It is now less than 1% of the population. These people are naturally becoming more productive, facilitated by increasingly easy access to the internet. The process of connecting the population to the internet is happening very quickly as well. 800 million people now have access to low-cost internet, up from 60 million 13 years ago. An administrative and financial environment known as the India Stack, unique worldwide, is the foundation of this groundbreaking change.

Delhi's position is also affected by the changing international architecture. The rise of China and Beijing's assertiveness in the Indo-Pacific naturally prompts Americans to seek help in suppressing Chinese attempts. And India is a natural partner for this - a large, strategically located country with growing capabilities that by the way, shares Washington's concerns about China. This convergence of interests resulted in the formation of the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue pact, or QUAD for short, in 2008, which included Japan and Australia in addition to the US and India.

But if anyone thought that the India-US partnership would be similar to those with Australia and Japan, they may have been greatly disappointed. India is not with the US, but neither is it against it.

Opposition to China is an important aspect of Delhi's foreign policy, but not one that fully defines it. In other circumstances, India can be found in one basket, with China, while the US sits in the other.

Diplomatic acrobatics

India's leaders are inevitably aware of the country's potential, and this realisation, coupled with expressions of growing domestic nationalism, is leading Delhi to advocate a multipolar world order as opposed to a unipolar one in which the United States is the sole hegemon. A multipolar future is being promoted by Russia, Turkey and, in particular, the People's Republic of China.

Delhi is therefore trying to reconcile the need to maintain good relations with the Americans with an attempt to undermine Washington's pre-eminence in a way not to alienate the Americans completely. Nevertheless, for the Indians, undermining the American order is not an end in itself but the result of an attempt to build their own agency to create a separate and independent centre of power on the Indian subcontinent.

As a result, India's strategy of non-alignment or multi-alignment results in its presence in both Western structures, such as QUAD, and those that could be considered anti-Western, such as the BRICS group or the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation.

Politicians in Washington, accustomed to acting from a position of strength, may find this irritating, but the balance of advantages and dependencies on both sides compels restraint. Economically, India is heavily dependent on the US. America is India's largest trading partner and by far its largest export market, accounting for nearly 18% of its exports, mainly due to its extensive services sector. The US is also one of the largest investors in the country.

Yet this economic dependence works both ways. Many US companies rely on cheap and specialised labour in India. Moreover, in building a coalition to contain China in the Indo-Pacific, Washington cannot afford to lose India. On the other hand it is certainly not in Delhi's interest to see its will imposed, for example, by the Chinese navy, which dominates the Indian Ocean. And so we come full circle. The two centres need each other. This gives India room for manoeuvre, for which Washington will not punish Delhi with sanctions, as is the case with, for example, Turkey.

With this in mind, Indians, led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, are once again thinking about improving their own status in the world and building independence.

This is a good time to welcome Russia to this episode.

Indeed Moscow was, and some will argue still is, the ideal partner for Delhi in this struggle. The Russians have been a great source of cheap, and in theory not bad, military hardware. The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute has calculated that between 2012 and 2017, as much as 69% of India's arms imports came from the Russian Federation. This relationship goes back many decades when India was a silent ally of the USSR during the Cold War.

Moreover, both societies - Indian and Russian - essentially share the narrative of an 'exploitative West'. Moscow and Delhi, in one way or another, speak of rejecting the neo-colonial order. However here, it should be noted that this narrative is an instrumental attempt to deceive Indian society. While Delhi, given its history with the British, has legitimate grounds for such an interpretation, Moscow itself was and still is an oppressive empire vis-à-vis the nations it has conquered in the last few hundred years. In the context of the ongoing war, it is Moscow which is the new London and Kyiv, which is the New Delhi.

As a result, when the Russian-Ukrainian war broke out, the prism through which Indians viewed it was defined by negative historical experiences with the West and a desire to use the situation to their own advantage. Of course, we are not talking about the society as a whole, but pro-Russian sentiments were and are widespread in India.

“A majority of Indians surveyed in a July poll refused to describe the Russian invasion of Ukraine as wrong. A September 2022 survey of over 1,000 Indian adults found that Indians blame the Russian invasion of Ukraine as much on the West as on Russia, and most do not believe that Russian victory would make the world more dangerous.” - that’s an observation made by Sameer Lalwani and Happymon Jacob for Foreign Affairs.

So, with the Kremlin economically isolated and desperate for markets to sell its oil, India did not think twice and started importing it from Russia in large quantities and at huge discounts, which of course, did not please the Europeans and Americans, which criticised Indians. But they had their hands somewhat tied for the reasons already mentioned.

Indian diplomat Amitabh Kant responded strongly to Western criticism of India's behaviour. Speaking to reporters, Kant said: "Europe cannot bring development, the fight against poverty, global debt, in other words, all development issues around the world to a standstill. Can this one war bring the whole world to a standstill?" The Indian official urged the global community to "move forward" and Europe to "find solutions to its challenges". These unusually strong remarks follow similar comments by India's foreign minister, Subrahmanyam Jaishankar, who said that Europe must get rid of the illusion that its problems are the world's problems and that the issues plaguing the international community are of no interest to Europeans.

Leader of the Global South

While the narrative of the Indian senior officials is logical, its addressee is conveniently misguided. It is not Europe, but the Russian Federation, that has the means and the capacity to end and close the issue of war for the world. However, it is easier for the Indian narrative to describe this as a problem that Europe is projecting onto the world. While such a message was received with a smile by Sergey Lavrov, who was present at the meeting, such statements are not necessarily indicative of the future of Russia-India relations. More than as support for Russia, these words could be interpreted as an expression of India's ambition to be the leader of the so-called 'Global South', i.e. the majority of countries in South America, Africa or East Asia that often share the problems caused by rising food or energy prices. Delhi wants to be the main advocate of this group and an alternative to China's instrumental approach, which would ultimately also secure India a seat in the UN Security Council. In this context, Kant's statement makes much more sense.

The problem for Russian-Indian relations is that there are fewer and fewer points of convergence between the two centres. The main glue between the two used to be the issue of armaments. But while Russia remains India's main arms supplier, the share of Russian weapons in India's arsenal has halved over the past decade. As part of the Atmanirbhar Bharat project, the Indians want to build up their own arms industry, and the biggest losers in this process are the Russians.

Moreover, the war exposed many truths about Russian equipment, of which the Indians have bundles in their arsenals. The war also blocked Moscow's export capabilities, a concerning process Delhi watches.

In March, the Indian Air Force said that Russia can’t meet its commitments and that the 'big delivery' expected this year would not come, forcing it to cut its modernisation spending by a third compared to last year.

In the short term, it will be difficult for India to become independent of Russia, but the process is already underway. And a symbol of building a self-sufficient defence industry is the commissioning of the first indigenous aircraft carrier, the INS Vikrant.

Even on the Ukraine issue, India is meandering but disapproving of Russia's actions. In August, India voted against Russia for the first time at the UN on Ukraine. While at the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation summit in Samarkand in September, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi openly expressed his displeasure with Russia, telling Putin that 'today is not the era for war'.

There is another, perhaps the most important, issue in India's take on Russia. And that is China. China is far more important to Russia than India - this hypothesis is unlikely to be controversial. So why is Delhi okay with a partnership with Russia, which is much closer to China, India's main rival or even enemy?

The answer lies partly in the multi-alignment strategy and a commitment to building a multipolar world, but not only. India's policy towards Moscow remains open to give the Russians a way out, so that they are not left with no options but a full submission to China. In a way, India is offering its potential to the Russians as a counter-argument in their talks with the Chinese, which Beijing is conducting from a position of strength. This helps Moscow maintain its subjectivity in talks with Beijing and coincides with the Indian interest in ensuring that the Chinese do not completely dominate the Russians. But this policy has its limits. If the Indians feel that by siding with Moscow, they increasingly support Beijing, this policy could change.

In order to maintain and extend its dominance over the region, China is forced to respond to India's growing potential. One way it does this is by developing close economic and military ties with countries in India's immediate neighbourhood, such as Sri Lanka, Pakistan and even Nepal. Second, China is constantly trying to engage India by maintaining the simmering conflict in the Himalayas, which escalates occasionally.

Thus the Indians are forced to sacrifice many resources, of which they have less than the Chinese, to respond to Beijing's provocations. This is all the more troublesome as the border with India's other rival, Pakistan, is right next door. As a result, resources that could be used, for example, to build up the navy and increase India's presence in the Indian Ocean, have to be diverted to the fruitless struggle in the Himalayas.

But even so, it is fair to say that it is not China that poses the greatest threat to India. It is... India itself.

Self-harm - the greatest threat?

As noted before, India has a number of assets on its side that argue for the state's growth. Whereas when analysing potential external causes that could derail India's prosperity train, the easiest thing to mention is a hypothetical war in the Indo-Pacific or an escalation of conflict in the Himalayas. However, the source of anxiety is more likely to be found in India's own backyard.

India is proud of its status as the world's largest democracy. However, the health of this democracy is, to say the least, controversial. Since Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his Indian People's Party came to power in 2014, there has been a clear shift towards Hindu nationalism in India.

According to the Swedish V-Dem Institute's 'Democracy Report 2020', under Modi "India is on the verge of losing its democracy status due to a severe shrinking of space for the media, civil society and the opposition.” While in 2021, India has been downgraded from 'electoral democracy' to 'electoral autocracy'.

It should be noted that such trends are particularly worrying for the world's most populous and perhaps most diverse country. As many as 250 million people in India do not belong to the religious group in power - the Hindu camp. Of this group, nearly 200 million are Muslims, and they are the main target of attacks by Hindu radicals.

The BJP, Modi's party, came to power mainly on the slogans of Hindutva - a nationalist political ideology that proclaims the cultural superiority of Hinduism over other ideologies within India. The movement is sometimes described as fascist. These policies have led to the rise of Hindu nationalism, which is undermining the country's internal stability.

In August 2019, the Modi government revoked the constitutional autonomy of the disputed state of Jammu and Kashmir in a bid to tighten its control over the region. It has also granted citizenship to illegal Indians and other immigrants from Muslim-majority Afghanistan, Bangladesh and Pakistan, while attempting to exclude Muslims from the national register of citizens. According to some commentators, Muslims in India are in a similar situation to the Islamic Uighurs in China's Xinjiang region.

Relying on Hindutva proved effective during the electoral contest, but after the BJP's victory, Modi's party, became a victim of its own politics. Because, in extreme manifestations, Hindu radicals are demanding the elimination of the Islamic minority and the establishment of Hindu Rashtra - a Hindu state.

An example of internal anxiety was the statement made by BJP spokesman Numur Sharma and the subsequent reaction to it. In late May 2022, Sharma made disparaging remarks about the Prophet Muhammad in a television interview. Another BJP official, Naveen Jindal, soon amplified these comments on Twitter. They enraged many Indian Muslims and led to protests and even riots.

Modi had to do some damage control, and as a result Sharma was removed from her post. In addition, India's Supreme Court issued a rebuke, saying that Sharma's 'loose tongue had set the whole country on fire'. The harsh response was necessary not only because of domestic unrest, but also because of the outrage of Delhi's key partners in the Gulf, who issued formal protests following Sharma's remarks. It should be remembered that Middle Eastern countries such as the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Iraq and Qatar are absolutely vital to India, accounting for the vast majority of its oil and gas supplies. On the other hand, in the eyes of Indian ideologues and radicals, such treatment of Sharma was a sign of weakness on the part of the central government.

In a word, placing one cultural or ethnic group above another always leads to extremism and consequent internal unrest. Such an approach should be the least desired for a culturally and ethnically rich country such as India.

There is no doubt that India has a number of strengths that point to a very interesting future for the country. This will be the case if the country does not fall into internal divisions along ethnic and cultural lines first. Nationalism may, in the short term, appear to be a good tool for gaining power and playing a more assertive role in the world, but in the long term, it looms as India's most significant threat to itself.

Sources:

Hubert Walas

Founder of Good Times Bad Times, author.

Regions

Topics

YT Series

Tags

India Wants Autonomy.

The Indian Age

Diplomatic acrobatics

Leader of the Global South

Self-harm - the greatest threat?

May interest you as well

North Africa - Europe's New Power Plant?

Europe's Make or Break Moment

Trump Shakes The Pillars of the American Empire