USA arms Pakistan, forcing India-Russia ties

Even though Delhi had drawn inspiration from the way Moscow operated the Soviet economy with an almost exact replication of its five-year plans, focus on heavy industry, and nationalization of key sectors, the relationship between the two countries took off to an indisposed start. India was, in strategic terms, teetering life and death with an unfriendly Pakistan threatening to impinge its borders with newly-acquired American weaponry. Even then India’s PM Nehru scoffed at the idea of taking a side. Delhi did not want to be caught in the wrath of a superpower strife. For Nehru, sitting on the fence still seemed to be a viable option. 

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The Soviet Union, nevertheless, understood India’s latent and simmering angst with an American-armed Pakistan. To that end, it jettisoned a steady supply of economic aid in tandem with military equipment like MiG 21 aircraft, T-55 tanks, D-30 Howitzer artillery and Kilo-class submarines. Washington did not want to dole out resources to both India and Pakistan. America knew that closer relations with India would come at the cost of its strategic relationship with Pakistan. Leading up to Pakistan’s botched resection from India in 1947 over religious lines, migrants maneuvered through armed brigades to enter each country in what was one of the largest and bloodiest migrations in human history. An estimated eighteen million people crossed the borders. The product: An intoxicating nationalism that had since made the two countries irreconcilable enemies.

In addition to this India-Pakistan rivalry, the US itself was suspicious of India – an eccentric country - fitted with various facets of Soviet-style governance but democratic in practice. PM Nehru had nationalized all key sectors, encumbered those who wished to start a business and slapped hefty taxes on anything coming into the country. Still freedom of speech was sacrosanct; critics of the government were rarely troubled, and elections largely unfettered. The zeitgeist of the cold war was that of an America being suspicious of anything remotely linked to Communism and so tying up with India was not an option. Engagement was limited to dialogue to dissuade Delhi from seeking closer ties with Moscow.

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USSR fills the void of National Insecurity

The abyss of national insecurity induced by a newly-armed Pakistan brewed palpable trepidation in Delhi. It was too big a problem for a newly-independent and impoverished India to salvage on its own. This is where Moscow came in. The Soviet Union was the linchpin of India’s triumph against Pakistan when the world witnessed one of the largest engagements of armored vehicles since World War II. Delhi was grateful for Moscow’s help but did not pay back Moscow’s goodwill in Cold War terms - India was still sounding the bells of Non-Alignment.

The year 1971 would change that. In 1971, India and Pakistan became embroiled in their third conflict as the latter descended into a civil war that ended with the creation of Bangladesh, formerly East Pakistan, on December 6. Despite evidence of the Pakistani army’s tyranny against its own citizens killing at least three million people, the United States sided with Islamabad for its mediating role in President Nixon’s rapprochement with China. Delhi ultimately won but felt the pangs of deception.

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Moscow: Delhi’s One and Only Friend?

For then Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, any ambitions of building a relationship with Washington shattered into oblivion. The widespread view was that the US would revel in the deepest pits of moral quandary to safeguard a strategic relationship. India finally took a side. Delhi signed a twenty-year Treaty of Friendship and Cooperation with Moscow, sharply deviating from its previous position of non-alignment in the Cold War.

Thus far, I have established why India saw the Soviet Union as a strong ally. India’s relationship with the USSR was founded on a dire need to protect itself from Pakistan but soon materialized into an intimate friendship. The two countries would work and still work in conjunction to spearhead various missions in the domain of technology, specifically defense. Delhi’s top arms supplier was and still is Moscow. It is the long and useful India-USSR relationship that appears to be clouding how Delhi sees Moscow today. If one were to boil down India’s foreign Policy to its essence, that would be a fusion of continuity and expansion with no subtraction. Delhi’s new-found relationship with Washington, after decades of mutual mistrust, is one such expansion.

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Washington prods a still suspicious Delhi

For the USA, India seems to be an effective bulwark against burgeoning Chinese aggression. For India and the US, China is a shared enemy. Whilst India has every right to regard the US’s offer of allyship to counter China with suspicion, it should steer away from blindly trusting Russia. It is true that the Soviet Union helped bolster India’s technological prowess up until the end of the Cold War but it is also true that the circumstances have completely changed today. It is true that the US sided with Pakistan during the Cold War but it is also true that the US now needs India to tame China.

The most significant difference between Delhi’s current relationship with Moscow and that of the 1980s lies in the unprecedented thaw of Moscow-Beijing relations. In the 1960s, the Soviet Union and China were entangled in a fraught rivalry, ranging from border disputes to ideological battles stemming from sharp differences in their interpretation of the Communist doctrine. This rivalry would apex to the Sino-Soviet Split of 1969. It was this clash with China that significantly influenced the USSR’s strategic calculus towards India during the Cold War. With China off the table, India was on the table. The USSR knew it could sway India to its side by assuaging its anxieties vis Pakistan. To what extent that relationship with India was transactional or altruistic is perhaps cynically self-evident when seen through Cold War glasses. Regardless of the nature of that relationship, India must come to terms with the fact that the pawns have shifted on the global stage. Moscow and Beijing, once adamant adversaries, are now joined to the hip in their shared pursuit of undermining American influence, altering the power balance in Asia and beyond. There is no better testament than the ongoing Russian onslaught on Ukraine since 2022. The world saw how Xi Jinping brandished a shield of patronage for Putin. When Washington and the EU sanctioned Russian oil, Beijing swiftly increased procurement. When Washington and the EU sanctioned the export of critical technology components to Moscow, Beijing turned up technology exports to Moscow. Hitching its wagon to the world’s second largest economy empowers and emboldens a Russia that has been stripped off its superpower status in economic terms.

The infeasibility of Delhi-Moscow ties is not derived from Russia managing a relationship with both Delhi and Beijing at the same time. It is derived from the schisms between India and China themselves. 

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How China and India became adversaries

Harkening back to the 1950s, Indian Prime Minister Nehru thought China had so much in common with India. Like India, China was a civilisational behemoth. Like India, it was ready to shake off the needles of subjugation under foreign powers and break free from the shackles of its past. A hopeful Nehru had even brushed off China’s annexation of Tibet - presumably to persuade China to support India in the Kashmir tussle against Pakistan - in his eyes, China was destined to be India’s good friend.

With Tibet under full Chinese control, Nehru paid a visit to Beijing in 1954 wherein Mao concurred with him in extolling the Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence. Everything seemed to be in sync with what PM Nehru had envisaged. But he would soon be distraught. Just a few years after the rapprochement with Beijing, Nehru was deeply disturbed when he learned of the crimes committed under the auspices of the Chinese government in Tibet. With Channels of trade and commerce crushed, forced and unpaid labor mandated, deliberate depredations on farmland and forced sterilization of women, the news that came to Nehru was in stark contrast to the delightful demeanor of the Chairman Mao he had met.

By renouncing Chinese actions in Tibet, PM Nehru realized India risked being pitted against both China and Pakistan. As was expected, Delhi refused to comment on the matter directly. Indian conscience, however, prodded the opening of a circa 3000 km long border (with China) for those who needed it. From 1955-1959, the Indian government provided refuge to Tibetans who fled en masse. Among those seeking protection was the Dalai Lama, the spiritual leader of Tibetan Buddhism. The act of rendering him refuge, in particular, was an affront to Beijing. Tensions hit a tipping point when the Dalai Lama was allowed to establish the Tibetan government (in exile) in India’s Dharamsala. That spark lit up a fire in 1962: China and India plunged into a major battle that ended at least 4000 lives. Most recently in 2020, a skirmish at the border consumed the lives of 20 Indian and 4 Chinese soldiers.

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China could dictate the nature of Russia’s relationship with India

It is not just this Indian enmity with China that casts a shadow over the eventual tenability of India-Russia relations. Moscow domineered Beijing during the Cold War. Today, the tables have turned. Beijing now domineers Moscow. With an economy about five times the size of India, technological pedigree far higher, a distinct but shared reverence of Communism and most importantly, solidarity in curtailing American influence mean that choosing between China and India is facile for Russia. Whilst Putin certainly does not want Xi Jinping calling the shots in his place, he is stuck in the swamp of Ukraine and he needs help. In return for that help, Putin may be coerced to hand the levers of power to Beijing.

Indian diplomats often panache when talking about Russia and tout it as one of India’s greatest successes in the foreign policy realm. Although India and Russia have, today, a good working relationship when measured against the diplomacy yardstick, it is at the risk of an acute fracture. India will need to be ready to face that prospect. To counter China, India must decouple from Russia and align with the US.