The Indo-Soviet Treaty of Peace, Friendship and Cooperation was signed by then Foreign Minister Swaran Singh on August 9, 1971. Now, 54 years later, on another rain-drenched monsoon day, National Security Advisor Ajit Doval calls on Russian President Vladimir Putin on August 7. That too when the true legatee of US President Richard Nixon, who dismissed Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi with an abusive epithet in 1971, is hosting the Pakistani general after a conflict with India, slapping a 50-per cent-tariff on Indian exports to the US and deriding India as a dead economy. Too much of a coincidence.
Well, the coincidence ends there and new geopolitical realities take over. External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar’s mid-July meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping to break the ice that had dangerously turned glacial in Ladakh was a success. It was a diplomatic breakthrough after viewing each other through the gunsights for five years. The first step thereafter is Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s proposed visit to China to attend the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation summit on August 31. This detente comes after seven years of frozen ties at the top.
Now to add drama to diplomacy, there is talk of Putin visiting India either later this year or even later this month to proceed to China hand-in-hand with Modi. That would be some grand theatre Modi would love. Russia is a founding member of the SCO and there is every possibility of a trilateral summit at Tianjin between Xi, Modi and Putin. And such a meeting has the potential to change the balance of power in the region. The Russia-India-China platform could easily replace the half-a-century old Indo-Soviet Treaty and bring in stability, peace and prosperity to the region.
It is easy to forget that Soviet Union had lent a balancing pole in the post-War world. But for Soviet intervention, much of Asia would have remained colonial outposts for Western plunder. And no Gandhian fasts or revolutionary assassination tactics could have worked against Napalm bombs. It was Soviet Union which armed and assisted the newly independent colonies against the continuing Western dominance, direct or indirect. Pakistan’s wars against India were all indirect attacks by the West against India’s sovereignty.
Trump’s tariff tantrums should be seen in this context of shifting geopolitics in Eurasia. After having effectively controlled the national discourse in India, the West believed it could turn India into a military ally against China. The Ukraine-Russia proxy war was to be replicated in the Himalayan heights to wear China down through attrition and possible escalation. This point of friction in the mountains was blown out of proportion by Opposition politicians and the media. And there were no woke anti-war activists seeking to resolve the conflict as it is always seen in the case of hostilities with Pakistan.
This India-China tension had the potential to deal death blows to the Indian economy, to decelerate China’s rise, tie India to Western apron strings, and also to finish off the politics of Hindutva nationalism. This trick is from an older copy book. The tactic had succeeded against a rising India in 1962, serving a debilitating blow to Jawaharlal Nehru’s international standing and domestic reverential acceptance. India lost its national confidence and had to wait till 1971 to retrieve it; madly scrambled for Western support and Nehru died a broken man.
But the tactic did not work this time around because the Indian leadership saw through the Western game. It is mending the image of a proxy that was being used by the West against a rising neighbour. It honoured its old relationship with its only benefactor –– now much reduced and in trouble –– and bought oil from this old friend. Russian oil sales directly impact the revenue of the Western oil companies. The Islamic oil producers’ sovereignty, strictly speaking, does not extend to their oil revenues, some of which still accrue to the Western coffers, particularly from Iraq. The celebration of purdah and hijab in the West is not accidental, but a deliberate attempt to confine West Asia into a regressive, Islamic cocoon whose only window is to the West.
In Narendra Sarila’s The Shadow of the Great Game, the former ADC to the Last British Viceroy to India, quotes then British Chief of Staff General Leslie Hollis writing to Prime Minister Clement Atlee on May 12, 1947: “we would draw your attention to the sorry results of refusing an application by Mr. Jinnah –– which would in effect amount to ejecting a numerous and loyal people from the British Commonwealth. We should probably have lost all chance of ever getting strategic facilities anywhere in India (subcontinent); we should have shattered our reputation in the Muslim world and could not look for continued cooperation of Middle Eastern countries…”
Sarila establishes that the creation of Pakistan by the British was to primarily protect the oil reserves in West Asia. A militarised, nuclear-armed Islamic Republic in the Indian subcontinent was and still is a strategic inevitability for the West. Post-World War II, Pax Americana replaced Pax Brittania with little change in the Western political and cultural hegemony in post-colonial states like India. The Indira Gandhi aberration was quickly reversed by the mid-1980s.
Now, it is this neo-colonial hegemony that is being questioned by the new Indian leadership, which is trying to build a region of stability. China has never attempted cultural hegemony by imposing Mandarin or its religion (or lack of it), or attempted regime change in the neighbourhood. Whereas India is steadily losing itself to the West in terms of language, religion and much else.
Trump’s tariff bluster, hosting of the self-appointed tinpot Field Marshal and limiting of India’s sovereignty by imposing penalties on Russian oil should all be seen as an extension of the Western neocolonial hegemony over the “jewel of the British (read Western) crown”. Modi’s statement that he is protecting the interests of Indian farmers at a very high personal price has an echo of Indira Gandhi’s last speech at Bhubaneshwar. India is indeed at a geopolitical turning point. And if Modi’s gamble pays off and a Russia-India-China platform emerges as a reality, none of this would matter, neither tariff, nor bluster. For Asian sovereignty could herald an era of peace for the entire world.
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