By Ankit Panda
Don’t hold your breath for a major shift in India-Russia relations in 2015.
In his inaugural piece for Flashpoints, our newest regular columnist Harsh V. Pant made a provocative — and compelling — case that India’s new prime minister, Narendra Modi, has ushered in a new era in Indian foreign policy. Modi’s foreign policy has departed from that of the Congress-led government that preceded him in major ways. Most prominently, Indian foreign policy in the Modi era seems to largely be free of the shackles of Nehruvian non-alignment thinking. Additionally, defying expectations, Modi has proven himself to be a dynamic globe-trotting diplomat.
While Harsh’s analysis is on point, at least one curiosity remains in Modi’s new foreign policy: Russia. While Modi dynamically engaged India’s South Asian neighbors, China, Japan, the United States, and even ASEAN, we only caught a slight glimpse of India’s approach toward Russia in the Modi era toward the end of the year. As this blog’s readers will be aware, it’s been a huge year for Russia on the international stage. To recap, Russia’s invasion of Crimea and ensuing support for anti-government Ukrainian rebels led to widespread international isolation and sanctions against it, primarily from Western powers. In the final quarter of the year, Russia’s economy has taken a dramatic nosedive with inflation skyrocketing and growth projections concomitantly collapsing amid tumbling oil prices worldwide. India and Russia have had a special relationship dating back to the early 1970s when the two converged during the Cold War (this despite India’s vocal pronouncements of a non-aligned foreign policy when the world split in two along ideological axes). Are things changing now?
As I’ve watched Russia’s behavior on the world stage this year and the state of Russia’s economy and politics, I’ve wondered how India would react. Russian President Vladimir Putin’s visit to India earlier this month was an important data point in answering that query. As Saurav Jha cataloged in an excellent feature piece earlier this month, Putin had a relatively productive visit to India despite all the problems facing his country. Significantly, and as many predicted, Narendra Modi welcomed Putin with open arms — he even went one step further than what standard protocol would require and rhetorically expressed India’s continuing and almost unconditional support for Russia in trying times. “Times have changed, our friendship has not,” Modi noted frankly. He added that “Now, we want to take this relation to the next level and this visit is a step in that direction.” Modi even said that India and Russia “stood by each other through thick and thin,” highlighting Russia’s current economic circumstances and perhaps even Moscow’s reluctance to condemn and isolate New Delhi following its nuclear weapons tests in the late-1990s.
Read the full story at The Diplomat