Betwa Sharma
WITH its archrival, Pakistan, now seen to some extent as a peacemaker and gaining greater international weight even though the talks have failed, India sits somewhat on the sidelines with Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government and its supporters trying to reframe the narrative.
They argue that the war on Iran was never India’s war and that New Delhi’s priority is to protect its own people. This relates to cooking-gas shortages as Iran restricts traffic through the Strait of Hormuz and the millions of Indian migrant workers living and working across the Gulf and the Middle East.
From that perspective, the government says, it’s reasonable for India to sit this one out and wish for a peaceful resolution, even as some Indian media rather foolishly deride Pakistan.
That may have worked had Modi’s foreign policy not been built around projecting India as a vishwaguru (a world teacher), with much of the country encouraged to believe it was stepping into a new era of global influence.
A lot of that perception has been shaped by a supplicant mainstream media, which often contrasts Modi’s leadership with that of lower-key leaders like former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, suggesting India was somehow less significant in those years.
But India’s stance doesn’t come across as especially strategic under Modi; it looks confused, unable to take a clear moral position or stand up for the underdog, something India, the world’s largest democracy, was long known for.
It was much the same in response to the horrific and unimaginable crimes in Gaza, a clear departure from India’s historic sympathies with the Palestinians and longstanding part of the Non-Aligned Movement.
While India has called for peace and an end to hostilities, it has largely avoided directly criticising the U.S. and Israel for their unprovoked strikes on Iran, a cautious silence rather than the clear, principled stand one might expect from a “vishwaguru.”
That silence felt heavy, especially given the deep emotional and spiritual significance for millions of Shia Muslims across India, and given Iran’s long-standing friendship with India, so different from its more recent, transactional ties with the U.S.
The age-old wisdom is you don’t stab your friends in the back. Iran and Russia chose not to make a public spectacle of it or to embarrass New Delhi after the intense pressure the United States, under the increasingly erratic U.S. President Donald Trump, put on India — higher tariffs, pushing it out of the Iranian port India spent over a decade developing and insisting India had stopped buying crude oil from Russia, all evidence to the contrary.
Instead, Iran and Russia kept things calm on the surface, aware of the tight spot India was in and apparently confident their relationships with Delhi would outlast both the Indian government’s short-term decisions and Trump’s time in office.
But even when the pressure eased, thanks to a U.S. SupremeCourt ruling that undercut Trump’s global tariffs, India still said nothing about the Israeli-U.S. attack on Iran.
The lasting image is of Modi in Israel, hugging and laughing with Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, just days before the strikes on Iran.
That ever-present, performative warmth, once sold as statesmanship, now feels hollow and is being openly mocked online in viral videos leading the Indian government to block content by issuing take-down orders to social media companies.
Attempts to suppress those clips haven’t been very effective. And it’s no longer just Modi critics who find it grating; the feeling is spreading online.
It’s fair to say no head of state or government has had an easy time dealing with Trump. Yet some have chosen to hold a moral line — Spain, for instance — despite his threats and rants.
India, by contrast, seems to have ceded that ground to the point of not even condemning the U.S. sinking of an Iranian warship, which was participating in a naval exercise hosted by India. The U.S. submarine that fired the fatal torpedo killing 87 Iranian sailors was in Indian Ocean waters where India claims to be a net security provider.
Part of the problem is that, by wanting so badly to be a world leader, Modi has got himself into a bit of a bind, paranoid about any kind of public humiliation.
While comedians and satirists face criminal cases at home from Modi, there’s no way to censor Trump’s biting remarks in the news that undercut Modi’s strongman, public image. It is an image central to his appeal and helps keep his Hindu nationalist party, the Bharatiya Janata Party, in power.
India eventually had to make a course correction, not out of any particular goodwill toward Iran, but because the disruption at the Strait of Hormuz began to have direct domestic consequences. Liquid Petroleum Gas (LPG) shipments were affected, prompting the government to prioritise domestic supply over commercial users.
That led to restrictions that forced a number of restaurants to shut temporarily. Households, too, faced shortages, with people queuing for cooking gas cylinders and poor migrants hustling to procure small amounts to bring back to their villages.
A Course Correction
And then there was the astonishing turn of events in the weeks that followed, in which Iran dug in, held its ground, shaped the narrative, and won hearts and minds across the world.
It leaned heavily on its identity as a thousands-of-years-old civilisation and upped its social media game with striking ingenuity and impact.
Together with the damage it inflicted on Israel, U.S. bases in the region and the Gulf Arab monarchies, it made it close to impossible for the U.S. and Israel to present a clear, uncontested story of victory.
At that point, India had little choice but to engage more actively with Iran, but, as noted, it looked less like principle and more like necessity.
Over time, Iran began referring to India as one of the “friendly nations” in its messaging and let some India-bound vessels through the Strait of Hormuz. For a while, the Indian government permitted, or at least did notstop, massive donation drives via bank transfers and digital payments initiated by the Iranian embassy in India. The embassy recently stopped them, reportedly because of legal constraints.
Despite Rampant Islamophobia
Relations with Iran, like any Muslim-majority country, are affected by rampant Islamophobia in India that has worsened over the past decade since the BJP came to power in 2014. It ranges from everyday harassment and routine violence to anti-conversion laws in several states — used against interfaith relationships, involving Muslim men.
Hindu nationalist vigilante groups make periodic calls for social and economic boycotts against Muslims, while the state does nothing to stop them. More recently, there has been controversy over the revision of electoral rolls, with allegations that the process may be used to remove Muslim voters from the rolls.
At the same time, Modi’s BJP has gone on to win three successive national elections and continues to perform strongly across many states.
In that broader domestic atmosphere, when the Gaza conflict escalated, there was a heavy-handed response to protests and social media posts in support of Gaza or critical of Israel, including in some cases the filing of criminal cases.
It started the same way with Iran, but in the weeks that followed, earlier scrutiny of pro-Iran posts seems to have eased.
Surprisingly, even some on the Hindu right are supporting Iran.
A large public commemoration for the late ayatollah was held in Lucknow, the capital of India’s most populous state.
The event was notable because typically any BJP government, at the state or central government level, would have stopped such a gathering of Muslims.
But this one was held in one of India’s most religiously polarised states, where Islamophobia has become entrenched under the leadership of Hindu nationalist hardliner Yogi Adityanath, who routinely utters Islamophobic slurs.
In the end, despite itself, India may have exercised a measure of deft diplomacy in its engagement with Iran, potentially preserving a reservoir of goodwill with a longstanding partner. At the sametime, a strong relationship with the United States is strategically essential.
But while every country will always act in its own national interest in international politics, there is value in not abandoning friends at moments when they need you the most. Turning your back on them is not the hallmark of a vishwaguru.
c. Consortium News
