Right from the time Russia’s invasion of Ukraine was put to vote in the UN Security Council in the last week of February, India has chosen to stay neutral—or as some would say, impartial. This has been evident from India’s abstentions on resolution after resolution at the United Nations tabled by both sides of the divide. However, India’s neutrality has been taken as support for the Russian invasion and a “campaign-of-calumny” of sorts has been launched, with the western media in particular acting as the cheerleader of the brigade that wants India sanctioned. In a bizarre you-are-either-with-us-or-against-us situation, India is supposed to sacrifice its national interests and follow the West blindly in condemning Russia, even as the majority of western countries continue to do business with Russia on the side. Conveniently, purchasing oil from Russia has been kept out of the ambit of sanctions, even as the western countries have ramped up their purchase of fuel from a country they describe as their bitterest foe. If the Russians have to be believed, the United States has increased its oil imports from Russia by 43% in the past one week. As Deputy Secretary of the Russian Security Council, Mikhail Popov told the Komsomolskaya Pravda newspaper on Sunday, “The US forced Europeans to introduce anti-Russian sanctions, while not only continuing to import oil from Russia but increasing volume of [oil] deliveries for the past week by 43% up to 100,000 barrels per day. Besides, Washington allowed its companies to import mineral fertilizer from Russia, listing it as essential goods.” Europe, one of the biggest purchasers of Russian “mineral fuel” too has taken the “essentiality” route to ramp up its purchase. Amid this, to make a moral question out of buying Russian oil by countries such as India amounts to blatant hypocrisy, unless of course the whole exercise is designed to make India and the others buy expensive fuel from the US. Hence, it is rather amusing to hear western commentators berate India as behaving like a “commodity trader” when Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman says that India would buy the cheapest fuel that is available to it. Compared to other countries, less than 1% of India’s fuel import is from Russia, which, should change, ideally, given that prices are in turmoil worldwide, with India too being pummeled by skyrocketing rates. As External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar said in the Lok Sabha on Wednesday, “What should India do in these circumstances? At a time when energy costs have spiked, we clearly need to ensure that the common person in India is not subjected to additional and unavoidable burden.” He also pointed out how increasing fertilizer prices too are directly affecting the livelihoods of Indians, besides increasing food prices.
It is strange that a section of the western commentariat is trying to project India’s neutrality/impartiality as a support for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. While speaking in the Lok Sabha, the External Affairs Minister made it clear that India was against any form of conflict. “We are, first and foremost, strongly against the conflict. We believe no solution can be arrived at by shedding blood and at the cost of innocent lives.” “In this day and age, dialogue and diplomacy are the right answers to any disputes,” he added.
It is because India is neutral that it condemned the massacre at Bucha and called for an independent investigation at the United Nations, a call repeated by EAM Jaishankar in the Lok Sabha. Surely no one can have a problem with an independent probe, given that the Russians are categorical in their denial of committing the Bucha massacre. Even if the Russians are not speaking the truth, according to Ukraine, only an independent probe can establish that.
Given that most of the western commentary on India’s stand on the Ukraine war has started to sound like a campaign against this country—as pointed out by EAM Jaishankar last week in the presence of British Foreign Secretary Liz Truss—it is but natural that the latent distrust of the West that many Indians have, will start coming to the surface. And this is not helped by Americans with Indian names working in the Biden administration, such as Deputy National Security Adviser Daleep Singh, to come and wag their finger at their brown-skinned brethren and warn of consequences of following an independent foreign policy. It is hoped that the Biden administration will have better sense than to school Indians in the American way of conducting India’s foreign policy. It is also hoped that Indians who are now openly supporting the Russian aggression and basking in their anti-Americanism, will take a cue from their government and moderate their rhetoric. Lest they forget, the India-US partnership is likely to be the defining partnership that shapes this century.
