Blaming others not enough for aspiring Big Power

India has come under a fair bit of international criticism, especially from much of the Western world, for its fence-sitting stance on Russia-Ukraine conflict. The reasons for India’s equivocal position on this massive humanitarian crisis are well known: it is dependent on Russia for diplomatic, military and energy matters. The combined costs of adopting a firm posture on the crisis, at least in the immediate term, are too high for New Delhi to bear.

That said, it is useful to survey how India has behaved in the past when dealing with prior cases of human rights violations and what are deemed to be other global moral causes. The historical account demonstrates that like most major countries in the world, its record is quite inconsistent. Within the first decade of independence, India was confronted with a critical choice when the Soviet Union brutally invaded Hungary in 1956. Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru, while quick to condemn the joint Israeli-British-French intervention in the Suez in the same year, maintained a mostly stony silence on the Hungarian crisis.

The difference in New Delhi’s positions on the two issues can be attributed to a number of factors. Nehru avoided commenting on Hungary largely on ideological grounds.

He was sympathetic to the Soviet Union and so more willing to grant it leeway even though he was well aware of the repression that Moscow had unleashed on the Hungarian dissidents. Very belatedly, several weeks after the Soviet invasion, he offered the anodyne formulation that the Soviets respect Hungarian sovereignty. In the Suez case, however, not only was he on friendly terms with the Egyptian leader, Gamal Abdel Nasser, but he saw the combined British-French intervention on Israel’s behalf as a return of European imperialism.

His daughter Indira Gandhi, who was Prime Minister from 1966 to 1977 and then again from 1980 to 1984, adopted a bifurcated position when she was confronted with the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in August 1968,. At home, in the Lok Sabha, Prime Minister Gandhi expressed displeasure with the Soviet actions. Yet, when it came to the UN vote, India abstained. In considerable measure, this stemmed from India’s growing reliance on the Soviet Union for both diplomatic and military support.

While India avoided taking a clear-cut posture on the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia it was prepared to bear certain costs on other issues of global concern. For example, from the outset, New Delhi adopted an unyielding approach when it came to dealing with the apartheid regime in South Africa.

This position, of course, was not without significant material costs as South Africa could have been an important source of access to vital minerals. Yet the Nehruvian legacy of anti-colonialism played a critical role in India’s shunning of the squalid regime. Similar considerations, though hardly identical, also led India to keep Israel at an arms’ length owing to its denial of any form of self-determination to the Palestinians. As is well known, India shifted its stand and formally recognized Israel leading to full diplomatic relations following the Oslo Accords of 1993.

India was again confronted with a choice when the Soviets invaded Afghanistan in December 1979. At the time of the invasion, there was an interim government in New Delhi under Chaudhury Charan Singh. Based upon elite interviews it can be asserted that he gave the Soviet ambassador to New Delhi, Yuli Vorontsov, quite a dressing down for the invasion. However, India’s public position at the United Nations in January 1980 underwent a change as the government of Indira Gandhi returned to office. It is widely believed that pro-Soviet elements within the Indian foreign policy establishment swayed Indira Gandhi to vote in support of the Soviet position. Of course, by that time India had also become quite dependent on the Soviet Union for a range of military supplies, not to mention support for the Kashmir question at the United Nations Security Council.

Can India continue with its waffling on major human rights issues? After all, key pillars of the Indian foreign policy apparatus have been at pains to argue that many of the great powers themselves hardly have unblemished records. During the Cold War, for example, they are keen to highlight, the United States supported any number of disreputable regimes across the world as long as they were suitably anti-Communist. Even today, one of the principal powers in Europe, Germany, is unable to swiftly end its dependence on Russian gas and petroleum even as it has condemned the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

These criticisms are not entirely bereft of merit. However, they cannot be used to entirely exculpate India of its moral responsibilities. As the country, despite significant domestic limitations that are hobbling its rise, assumes a greater role in global affairs, merely underscoring the shortcomings of other major powers, will ill-serve its quest for global standing.

In the past, when India was not a significant player in world politics, it could afford to highlight the shortcomings of other major states while overlooking its own failings. This strategy, of dwelling on the limitations of others, however, is no longer really tenable. Today it has, albeit fitfully, acquired a certain standing in global politics. Consequently, the world now expects India to shoulder some responsibilities even if it comes at some cost.

Before long, India too must devise a strategy that enables it to adopt policies that demonstrate its capacity to more consistently uphold global human rights.

(The writer is a Distinguished Professor of Political Science and holds the Tagore Chair in Indian Cultures and Civilizations at Indiana University, US)

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