In 1998, India put France in what should have been a tough spot. Just a few months after French President Jacques Chirac had been the chief guest at the Republic Day Parade in Delhi, and Prime Minister I.K. Gujral signed India’s first ever Strategic Partnership agreement with him, newly elected Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee announced that nuclear tests had been conducted in Pokhran (Pokhran-II), in May. In the United Nations (UN) Security Council, French diplomats joined the P-5 countries in condemning the tests, but did not join (along with the United Kingdom and Russia) the United States-led move to impose sanctions on India. Nor did France scrap the Strategic Partnership Agreement.
The philosophy behind the relationship
Throughout their relationship, New Delhi and Paris have built a tradition of joining each other’s national day parades — Chirac himself was guest at India’s Republic Day twice (his first appearance was in 1976), Valéry Giscard d’Estaing (1980), Nicolas Sarkozy (2008) and François Hollande (2016) have been guests since, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh (2009) and now Prime Minister Narendra Modi were invited to the Bastille Day parade. While the purchase of defence equipment often overshadows the outcome of any of these big visits, it is the underlying philosophy of their engagement that propels India and France ties forward. Both countries have held on to three pillars in the relationship: non-interference in each other’s internal affairs, a steadfast belief in strategic autonomy as expressed by President Charles De Gaulle, and non-alignment, as expressed by Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru, and a refusal to pull the other into its own coalitions and alliances.
