Nearly two months before this week’s G7 summit, a news agency relied on anonymous sources to speculate that Germany, the host, was debating whether to invite India’s prime minister. The purported reason: India’s reluctance to condemn Russia for attacking Ukraine. The German government said the report was “wrong” and, in due course, invited India to the June 26- 28 summit in Bavaria. Significantly, the resolute diplomatic line taken by India at the summit didn’t align with the reasoning behind the invitation that had surfaced in a section of the western media.
In any other year, India’s participation in a G7 summit would have been a routine affair. But this year a motive was attributed: a section of the western press saw the invitation as part of the West’s continued effort to pull India away from its close strategic relationship with Russia.
