To find a reference to the Ukraine crisis in today's (April 29, 2022) Times of India, one must leaf through to page 11, where the reader learns that US President Biden has so far been unable to budge India's Prime Minister Narendra Modi from "a fiercely independent" stand on the conflict. This aptly captures the political mood in India towards the war in Ukraine. First, it hardly makes headlines. Secondly, those who do care about India's position, are generally supportive of the government stance on the crisis. For both reasons, India's neutrality – deemed "shaky" by the US administration – is unlikely to change anytime soon.
Foreign policy is seldom discussed in India and even more rarely it has an influence on domestic politics. According to the latest post-poll national election survey conducted in 2019 by the Centre for the Study of Developing Society in Delhi, only 1.06% of respondents mentioned issues related to foreign policy as an important determinant of their voting choice. This is striking considering that, just two months before the 2019 general election, India had conducted air strikes in Pakistani territory (for the first time since 1971) as a retaliation against a previous attack led by the Pakistan-based terrorist group Jaish-e-Mohammed. And yet, foreign policy hardly came to the minds of the people when casting their vote.
Foreign policy discussions largely take place among the educated, English-speaking, urban elites. And within these circles, there is a general understanding that India, by refusing to firmly condemn Russia's aggression, has pursued and advanced its national interest, for at least three reasons. First, India does not want to push Russia even closer to its neighbouring enemies, China and Pakistan. Second, India depends on Russia for military equipment and does not want to find itself in a situation where supply is inordinately delayed or disrupted, especially since military escalations with both neighbours regularly occur. Third, India can very reasonably think that its (increasingly warm) relationship with the United States and the West – particularly in the context of containing China in the Indo-Pacific – will not be put in jeopardy by India's unwillingness to join the anti-Russia chorus. In other words, most Indian analysts, far from seeing India's stand on the Ukraine crisis as "shaky", consider it a very pragmatic way to navigate the intricacies of the emerging world order.
Furthermore, there is an additional advantage from a domestic politics perspective, to India's position on the war. The refusal to bend to the West's interests, assuming a "fiercely independent" position, pampers Indians' sense of national pride. In fact, the US and EU's criticism of India's position has displayed a failure to understand India's sensibilities as a post-colonial society – something that Indians share with peoples across the Global South. This is not new. The United States, during the Cold War years, showed a remarkable inability to understand India's position as a Non-Aligned country, the same that many post-colonial countries adopted precisely to distance themselves from new forms of dominations by the external powers. In fact, India's stance on the Ukraine crisis can be largely explained through the prism of "strategic autonomy", which is the new way to call the Indian traditional policy of not forming stable alliances (and instead forming partnerships on an ad hoc basis). From India's perspective, there is no contradiction between being a solid ally of the West in the Indo-Pacific and assuming a subtle pro-Russia position in Europe.
Moreover, India's pursuit of an independent foreign policy can help the government's popularity well beyond the circle of New Delhi's think tanks and foreign policy experts. The one way in which foreign affairs matter for a broader audience at home is when it is shaped into nationalist terms. This is exactly how India's airstrikes into Pakistan in 2019 were spun by Modi’s hyper-nationalistic government, which in fact contributed to its re-election. Similarly, the long list of dignitaries flying to Delhi to discuss the Ukraine crisis – from Ursula von der Leyen to Sergey Lavrov, and from Wang Yi to Boris Johnson – is seen by many as a recognition of India's increasing stand in the international arena as a power which can afford to have its own independent policy positions and does not bend in front of former colonial powers. This has been one of the pillars of Modi's communication strategy since 2014 and one of the bricks of the nationalist wall that he built in an attempt to make voters forget about the difficult economic situation and the mismanagement of the COVID-19 pandemic.
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