In 1957, a year after the Soviet intervention in Hungary, Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru explained in Parliament why India took a non-condemnatory approach. “There are many things happening in the world from year to year and day to day, which we have disliked intensely. We have not condemned them... because when one is trying to solve a problem, it doesn’t help calling names and condemning.” Nehru’s axiom has continued to guide India’s approach to conflicts, especially those involving its partners. Be it the Soviet interventions in Hungary (1956), Czechoslovakia (1968) or Afghanistan (1979), or the American invasion of Iraq (2003), India has more or less followed this line. Its response to Russia’s invasion on Ukraine — condemnation of the civilian killings without any name calling, and abstention from UN votes — is not fundamentally different from this historically cautious neutrality.
Nor is India’s position isolated. South Africa, another major democracy, abstained from the UN votes that sought to condemn Russia. The United Arab Emirates, a close American ally in the Gulf that hosts thousands of U.S. troops, abstained from a vote in the UN Security Council. Israel, the U.S.’s closest ally in West Asia, condemned the Russian attack but refused to join the sanctions regime and said no to sending its defence systems to Ukraine. Turkey, a North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) ally, did the same and is mediating between Ukraine and Russia. But none of these countries has come under the kind of pressure and public criticism from the West that India has. U.S. President Joe Biden said India’s position was “somewhat shaky”. His Deputy National Security Adviser for International Economics, Daleep Singh, who was in New Delhi on a visit recently, warned India of “consequences” if it conducts trade with Russia circumventing American sanctions. Why this selective targeting?
