Ukraine crisis: Don't blame non-alignment for India's inaction

Despite its vishwaguru aspirations, India has ceded the role of proactive peacemaker to other countries

A nuclear-armed power attacks another country, sparking fears of a new World War. It has a veto on the United Nations Security Council, giving it significant impunity from international backlash. The conflict that erupts threatens global energy supplies.

This is the story of Russia's invasion of Ukraine. It is also the exact sequence of events that played out in 1956 when Britain — which had tested an atomic weapon four years earlier — joined Israel and France in attacking Egypt after Gamal Abdel Nasser nationalised the Suez Canal.

The one big difference: India, today a fence-sitter desperately trying to balance ties with Russia and the West, played a pivotal role in ending the Suez War and ensuring the return of peace.

As New Delhi's current tightrope walk on the war draws global scrutiny, with US President Joe Biden calling it the one "somewhat shaky" friend among Washington's partners willing to act against Russia, many analysts have cited India's non-aligned traditions as an explanation for its behaviour. Some have argued that India's desire for strategic autonomy has actually created a reflexive anti-Americanism that is reflected in its approach to global tensions.

Also read: US calls India's position over Ukraine 'unsatisfactory' but unsurprising

But in 1956, a recently independent India that was much poorer than it is today demonstrated how non-alignment could be a tool to proactively intervene and help stop a war, rather than an albatross weighing a nation down into inaction. And it did so while working with America.

A year earlier, India had played a leading role at the Bandung Conference in Indonesia that planted the seeds of the Non-Aligned Movement. In October 1956, the government of Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru decided to encash the goodwill it had earned in the developing world.

The UN Security Council was unable to agree on a response to the aggression against Egypt because Britain and France were permanent members of the body and held veto powers. So the council called an emergency session of the UN General Assembly for the first time to vote on a resolution demanding the withdrawal of the invading forces. Nehru's government quietly worked with the administration of US President Dwight Eisenhower to secure the numbers for the resolution: India banded African and Asian together while the US united most of the West. The resolution passed comfortably, with Australia and New Zealand apart from Britain, France and Israel opposing it.

The resolution called for an immediate pull-out by the aggressors and the reopening of the Suez Canal, which had been blocked. It also laid the ground for a separate resolution that created the first-ever UN peacekeeping force to monitor the Egypt-Israel border.

More than six decades later, the crisis in Ukraine bears striking parallels. Russia has repeatedly vetoed UN Security Council resolutions condemning its aggression, forcing the body to call an emergency General Assembly meeting. But at two sessions of the General Assembly — one on March 2 and the other on March 24 — India abstained from resolutions critical of Russia.

Ukraine's ambassador to India, Igor Polikha, has publicly pleaded with Prime Minister Narendra Modi to use New Delhi's friendly relations with both Moscow and Washington to mediate for peace. But while Modi has spoken at least thrice with Russian President Vladimir Putin and twice with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky since the start of the war, India has ceded the role of proactive peacemaker to other countries. Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and French President Emmanuel Macron have been leading efforts to broker talks between Putin and Zelensky.

In Parliament, on Thursday, External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar appeared to respond to Biden's comments by describing India's position on the war as "steadfast and consistent." He outlined a set of principles that he said guided India's approach — from a call for peace and diplomacy to the supply of humanitarian aid to Ukraine. If New Delhi appeared to be unwilling to play a more proactive role, Jaishankar suggested that was because India was guided by "our thinking, our views, our interest." Yet this mindset doesn't square with the claims made by Modi of turning India into a vishwaguru.

To be sure, a bolder role carries greater risks, too: Peacemakers can end up upsetting all sides without getting credit. But Modi loves to assert how global respect for India has risen since he came to power. The Ukraine crisis would have been an opportunity to put that credibility to the test. After all, just like 1956, spiking oil prices hurt India.

Nehru's government helped secure peace at a time when India had no great power aspirations, and its status wouldn't have been hurt had it stayed on the sidelines. Today, India sees itself as a leading nation in the world. It needs to start acting like one.

(Charu Sudan Kasturi is a journalist)

Check out DH's latest videos