A mute leader of the Global South when Imperialism strikes?

It is in India's self-interest to take a principled stand on the genocide in Gaza and the attack on Iran

Cat, Cat, burning bright /in the forests of Mt Zion and Washington DC, / What the appetite for India's respect among nations?

The bombing of Iran represents the return of old-style imperialism, making the point that might is right with the biggest bang possible without exploding an atomic bomb. Which cat got the tongue of India, leader of the Global South, when the US bombed Iran? Why did the tongue of India, leader of the BRICS, turn mute, when the world called on Israel, at the UN, to end its genocide in Gaza? Cat, Cat burning bright, in the forests of Mt Zion and Washington DC, why this appetite for India’s respect among nations?

New Delhi had a tough choice, admittedly, in deciding whether to speak up or mumble inanities — like “victim, de-escalate”!” — when the US or Israel goes rogue: India relies on these partners for vital intelligence and ordnance in the face of hostilities from across the border. It looks embarrassingly difficult to criticise, on the one hand, and extend the other for help, when help is needed.

This embarrassment is more apparent than real. Nations do not play nice with other nations, they pursue their self-interest. If the US helps India with intelligence and weapons, and Israel is happy to sell advanced military technology to India, this is not because a warm, fuzzy feeling envelopes the White House or Tel Aviv whenever India crops up in the conversation. It is because India, as authentic India, has its uses.

India enjoys a degree of global respect because it is a large and growing economy with diverse capabilities, enough strategic heft, or the promise of it, to be the countervailing force in the region vis-à-vis China, and a reputation for reasonably principled behaviour.

India is the world’s most populous nation, with 146 crore people. Its per capita income is barely lower-middle-income, but, in aggregate size, India will soon become the world’s fourth largest economy. It has a successful space programme, a successful nuclear programme, and these have yielded nuclear weapons and the means of delivering them accurately. It has diversified technological capability, managerial nous and is home to the world’s third largest herd of Unicorns, startups with a valuation of at least $1 billion.

India has very large and capable armed forces, nuclear-powered submarines that can stay submerged for long and undetected, to provide the country with second-strike capability, making for effective nuclear deterrence.

Thanks to the Indo-US nuclear deal of 2008, for which Dr Manmohan Singh staked his government’s survival, India is a member of key groupings that control access to strategic capability. It is a member of the Missile Technology Control Regime, the Australia Group on chemical weapons and precursor chemicals, and the Wassenaar Arrangement on dual-use technologies. It has quasi-membership of the Nuclear Suppliers’ Group as well.

Of late, and credit for this must go the present government, India has begun to marshal its technological and manufacturing capability to build its own weapons and weapons systems. India can, and ought to, do much more, but whatever it already has makes India a major power in the region. What makes it globally salient is the independent foreign policy it has carefully forged, thanks to Nehru, and pursued since Independence. This makes for strategic autonomy, and the credibility to speak on behalf of other nations of the Global South, acquired through its role as the moving spirit behind the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM), and other groupings such as BRICS and BASIC.

NAM has five basic principles: respect for sovereignty and territorial integrity, non-aggression, non-interference in internal affairs, equality and mutual benefit, and peaceful coexistence. And long before the Responsibility to Protect was formally articulated as a principle guiding international conduct, India had both adopted it and balanced it with the principles of NAM, when it acted to stop the genocide by West Pakistani forces in East Pakistan, in collaboration with religious fundamentalist elements.

The Responsibility to Protect imposes the obligation on each state to protect its own people from genocide and, when states fail in that duty, deems breach of the offending nation’s sovereignty warranted, to enable the global community to discharge that responsibility.

India stands only to gain by standing by those principles at all times. It could attract some hostility from some capitals for some time, but will win India lasting credibility.

Doesn’t the fact that Iran’s is an oppressive theocratic regime justify such attacks on its sovereignty? The best way to answer that question is to ask how many people would have welcomed an end being brought to Indira Gandhi’s Emergency — whose anniversary falls today, 25 June — by an attack by Pakistan, China or America? Internal oppressors are easier to tackle than powerful occupying forces.

Regime change through external aggression in volatile regions leads to chaos that radiates outside and engulfs distant shores. We saw that with Iraq and Libya. Regime change through internal resistance is something else, the resistance is ready to take charge.

India should find the self-interest, if not moral courage, to speak out against imperial aggression, and uphold the banner of principled international relations.