Pax Indica: India and the World of the Twenty-first Century (40 page)

The importance given to India in the foreign policy priorities of British Prime Minister David Cameron is striking: he visited the country to burnish his international credentials soon after being elected leader of the Conservative Party, and India became the second country (after the United States) that he made an official visit to upon becoming prime minister. Barely eight weeks after taking office, Cameron travelled to India with an unusually large delegation of key ministers, including the Chancellor of the Exchequer, several well-heeled businessmen and a motley crew of MPs and academics in his entourage. His homage to the new India began with his arrival in Bangalore, at the headquarters of Infosys Technologies, the shining example of India’s success in conquering world markets, where he also took the opportunity to lecture Pakistan on the need to abjure terrorism against India. Apart from pleasing his hosts, Cameron was signalling a departure from what Indians had too often seen in the past as a patronizing and arrogant tone about India from British political leaders. He could not have begun his journey better.

At the same time, the substance of the relationship had been stagnating for some time, with trade showing little improvement from a plateau of $11 billion in 2008–09. Cameron’s visit signalled a spurt of some 20 per cent in the next fiscal year, which has led to talk of bilateral trade heading to $20 billion by 2015. Other areas also show both progress and setbacks. Despite the signing, also in Bangalore, of an $800-million deal between British Aerospace and Hindustan Aeronautics Ltd for fifty-seven advanced jet trainers, the potential for stronger defence ties remains largely unexplored, as would become apparent a year and a half later in Britain’s dismay when it too (like the United States) was rejected in India’s choice of a fighter aircraft. The operationalization of the civilian nuclear agreement signed during Cameron’s visit also remains to be tested in practice.

The media outcry in early 2012 over Britain’s modest development aid to India, which broke out when the fighter deal was announced, reflected many of the complexities that still bedevil the relationship. After two centuries of presiding over the systematic impoverishment of the Indian people, Britain arguably has a historical and moral responsibility towards the well-being of its former subjects, and it provides India annually with some $400 million of developmental assistance, mainly targeting beneficiaries in three of India’s poorest states. (This is perfectly reasonable: if the United Kingdom is to have an aid programme, it would make little sense
not
to aid poor Indians.) When India picked the Rafale over the British-backed Eurofighter, however, the British media resurrected a two-year-old statement by Indian Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee that British aid was ‘peanuts’ that New Delhi could do without, and created a national uproar over Indian ‘ingratitude’, not to mention profligacy. Even sober commentators saw the decision as a setback to Cameron’s efforts to establish Britain as a ‘partner of choice for India’. It did not help that India had dawdled for over six months in replacing its retiring high commissioner to the United Kingdom, suggesting that Britain figured low in New Delhi’s strategic priorities.

This is where a distinction would be worth drawing. Don’t aid the Indian government—the cumulative aid it receives amounts to little over half of 1 per cent of the country’s GDP, and the finance minister is not alone in wishing it away. But
do
aid poor Indians; they need it,
because however much the Government of India is doing for them, their poverty is so dire that it can never be enough. So don’t give the aid to the same people who are buying fighter aircraft; channel it instead through charitable NGOs, British or Indian, working directly with the poor. That would not only help people in need, it would avoid a revival of this invidious debate, and ease the journey towards a more equal, and less contentious, relationship between the two countries.

A more recent but arguably closer European relationship that is undergoing reinvention is that of India with Russia. Beginning with the Indian nationalists’—and particularly Jawaharlal Nehru’s—fascination with an idealized Soviet state in the 1920s (though Nehru, in particular, had few illusions about the nastier excesses of Stalinism), Russia enjoyed a privileged place in the Indian imagination. A celebrated pair of visits in 1955—Nehru’s to Moscow in June and Khrushchev’s return trip in November—inaugurated a particularly warm phase in the relationship, with steadily increasing Soviet technical assistance to India’s public sector, peaking with the decision in 1962 to transfer technology to manufacture the MiG-21 fighter jet in India. In 1965 the Soviets were still seen as neutral enough to broker a ceasefire in Tashkent at the end of the India–Pakistan war; but when tensions arose with Pakistan in 1971 over what would become the secession of Bangladesh from that country, Moscow clearly chose sides. A letter from Chairman Mao implying support for Pakistan in the event of conflict prompted India to jettison its non-aligned principles and sign a treaty of friendship and cooperation with the Soviet Union in August 1971. During the remaining two decades of the Soviet Union, successive Indian governments relied heavily on Russian military supplies (which accounted for over 70 per cent of Indian defence imports) and were broadly sympathetic with Russian objectives in Afghanistan and in Southeast Asia.

The collapse of the Soviet Union helped prompt the significant reorientation of Indian foreign policy already described in earlier chapters—the advent of the ‘Look East’ policy, the new opening to Israel and a much more serious engagement with the United States. Despite this, Russia and India remained important foreign policy partners for each other, as the continued frequency of high-level exchanges of visits demonstrated. The economic relationship underwent a downturn as
India opened up its trade with China and the West, but the defence and security relationship continued, with Russia remaining India’s top military supplier well into the first decade of the twenty-first century (when, in some accountings, it was overtaken by Israel). India is still Russia’s second largest customer for conventional weapons exports, after China. Russia continues to be seen by India as a faithful and reliable supplier of sophisticated, yet relatively inexpensive, weapons systems. Indians were conscious (and grateful) that Russian military cooperation did not merely constitute a buyer–seller relationship but included joint research and development, servicing contracts, and training, including joint exercises. But the abrupt cancellation of a pair of scheduled exercises in 2011 (in the wake of India’s rejection of the Mikoyan MiG-35 as a suitable combat aircraft, the same decision that also dismayed the United States and the United Kingdom), and continued delays and cost escalations in the refurbishing of the aircraft carrier Gorshkov for the Indian Navy, did not suggest that all has remained quite well in the military relationship.

The somewhat misty-eyed view of Russia born during the struggle against British imperialism was never wholly absent from Indian thinking, though. When India’s President Pratibha Patil visited Moscow in 2011, her then counterpart Dmitry Medvedev declared somewhat conventionally that ‘our mutual ties of friendship are filled with sympathy, and trust, and openness’, but his Indian visitor gushed: ‘We are confident that India lives in the hearts of every Russian. In the same way, I can assure you that Russia also lives in our souls as a Homeland, as people who share our emotions, our feelings of mutual respect and constant friendship.’ Such sentiments were never wholly absent in New Delhi’s attitudes, even though the nature of the Russian state had visibly undergone major changes since the Soviet era and the priorities of both sides meant that neither loomed quite as large in its foreign policy consciousness as before.

Nonetheless, though bilateral trade (at just above $2 billion) remained insignificant, the fact that Russia (and the Soviet Union) had contributed to the creation of India’s capacity in the nuclear, defence, space and heavy industry sectors when no other country was willing to do so has not been forgotten. Partly as a result of this legacy, Russia’s current
cooperation with India continues to occur in a number of vital strategic sectors (including nuclear development and space exploration, and the joint development of the highly sophisticated BrahMos missile), ensuring that Russia remains a factor in India’s contemporary
weltpolitik
.

New Delhi also has, over the last two decades, actively pursued Russian sources of energy, both oil and gas and nuclear. Russia is a useful partner for India in its quest for energy security in its extended neighbourhood, since India hopes to work with Russia to secure greater influence in Central Asia (which comprises several former Soviet republics). As mentioned in
Chapter Five
, this region could well constitute the route for several major potential oil and natural gas pipelines which would, if built, terminate in India.

It remains true that in every fundamental particular Russian and Indian interests do not clash. The two countries meet in the context of the trilateral Russia–India–China meetings of foreign ministers, at the East Asia Summit, in the Shanghai Cooperation Organization and as members of the newly emerged BRICS grouping. The opportunities to share compatible views of the world also arose at the UN Security Council during India’s stint as a non-permanent member in 2011–12, even if the two countries did not always vote in sync (with New Delhi agreeing with Moscow on Libya but voting in favour of the Syria resolution that Russia vetoed).

The changing global environment has had an inevitable impact on India–Russia relations. Russia’s startling opening to the NATO alliance, its warming relationship with China and its much-improved relations with Pakistan have all moved Moscow away significantly from the logic that had underlain its approach to New Delhi in the Cold War years. Indian policy-makers continue to see Russia as a friend whose sympathy and support for Indian objectives is time-tested, especially in India’s moments of need, such as in 1971 or in international discussions on Kashmir. Russia is the only country with which India maintains an institutionalized defence cooperation mechanism featuring annual meetings of defence ministers, and while Indo-US nuclear cooperation has been hamstrung over supplier liability issues, Russia is proceeding with the construction of two nuclear power reactors on Indian soil. And yet the absence of widespread people-to-people contacts, the barriers of
language and the fact that each country has greatly diversified its global relations mean that talk of a ‘special relationship’ is sounding increasingly hollow. The two countries are much more equal than they ever were; India’s is the larger economy and Russia’s will not long remain the much more developed one. Finding a new logic for the ‘special relationship’ remains a task in progress, and not one pursued with any great energy or enthusiasm, it would seem, on either side. In David Malone’s trenchant words, ‘Russia will remain a trusted interlocutor, if only out of habit. Economic relations can be conducted unsentimentally on the basis of mutual interest. But the parties are definitely out of love, if they were ever smitten.’

India shares a satisfactory relationship with Turkey but there is considerable scope for improvement, since neither side has reached out to the other fully. Military regimes in Turkey and Pakistan were close to each other, and Ankara made common cause with the supposedly kindred spirits in Islamabad, leading to a certain distance between New Delhi and Ankara. The volume of bilateral trade stands at a modest $7.6 billion. There has been an FTA deal in the offing for quite some time, but negotiations have dragged on for a while now and are far from nearing completion. High-level visits had not occurred for nearly a decade when President Abdullah Gül came calling in 2011; the last time a Turkish prime minister visited India was in 2003. Turkey is therefore undeniably a land of unexplored potential for India.

As for the part of Europe rarely discussed these days in India—Eastern Europe—the tale can be briefly told. While a considerable amount of rhetoric was expended on celebrating ties with the states of Eastern Europe during the era of India’s special relationship with the Soviet Union, they are no longer a significant preoccupation for India today. This is especially true of India’s most important old friendship in East Europe, the old non-aligned affinity with Yugoslavia now lying in the rubble of the Yugoslav civil war, the collapse of Titoism and the dawning of what one might mischievously dub ‘the Brussels Consensus’ in the Balkans.

A more promising narrative emerges from India’s relationship with an older continent—albeit one made up of newer states—Africa. Africa is increasingly emerging as a central plank in Indian foreign policy. The India–Africa partnership has deep roots in history. Linked across the Indian Ocean, Indians have been neighbours and partners of East Africans for thousands of years. There was regular interaction between communities and traders, especially from the West coast of Gujarat and parts of South India with Abyssinia, Somalia, Mombasa, Zanzibar and even as far south as Mozambique. These communities and groups played significant roles in the histories of both India and Africa; an Abyssinian warlord rose to political prominence in medieval India, and groups of African descent still populate parts of western India. The advent of the Europeans and the era of colonial rule disturbed these interactions but could not disrupt them: indeed they added to them the painful experience of indentured labour, shipped from India to work on African plantations.