Putin’s actions in Ukraine do not make Indians anti-Russia. Here’s why
Story highlights
Over 500 days into the war in Ukraine, the Indo-Russian generational goodwill dating back several decades remains unshaken.
The year was 1984. Nearly half of all Indians lived in poverty. India was still seven years away from being a free-market economy. Internally, simmering tensions in Jammu and Kashmir, Punjab and Assam states were beginning to erupt.
Today’s fifth largest economy of the world was not in an aspirational shape about four decades ago. But Mithun Chakraborty-starrer ‘Disco Dancer’ (1982) was a big hit in the Soviet Union with reportedly 120 million tickets sold.
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A poster of Indian actor Mithun Chakraborty-starrer 'Disco Dancer' in Russian | Twitter/@RusEmbIndia
Then on one remarkable day in the spring of 1984, the then Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi appeared on state broadcaster Doordarshan. Over the satellite link emerged Wing Commander Rakesh Sharma, the first Indian person in space, who began speaking from a Soviet spacecraft. Alongside him were five other members of the Soyuz T-11 space mission, all Soviet nationals.
Gandhi asked Sharma: “What does India look like from space?”
Sharma replied by quoting poet Iqbal’s famous composition: “Ji main baghair kisi jhijhak se keh sakta hu, saare jahan se achha…” (Without any doubt, better than the whole world.)
It was one rare moment of collective national pride which the Indians of 1984 witnessed due to New Delhi’s close ties with Moscow.
Indian Air Force's Wing Commander Rakesh Sharma (centre), flight engineer Gennady Strekalov (L) and commander Yury Malyshev (R) alongside the screengrabs of the-then Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi's interaction with Rakesh Sharma | spacefacts.de/YouTube via Indian National Congress
One wonders how the millions of Indians — after they saw five Soviet nationals sitting beside their country’s first person in space — perceived the Soviets back then, if not as genuine friends of their nation.
The “generous collaboration” between India and Soviet Union — as Prime Minister Indira Gandhi termed the Soyuz T-11 space mission — was one of the most significant milestones in India's space journey. Rakesh Sharma going to space was the initial leap in the remarkable marathon of accomplishments that the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) heralded in upcoming decades.
Moscow’s counter to the Washington-Islamabad-Beijing axis in India’s favour
India and the Soviet Union signed a comprehensive treaty of ‘Peace, Friendship and Cooperation’ on August 9, 1971, the 29th anniversary of Mahatma Gandhi-led ‘Quit India Movement’ for India’s freedom from the British.
Months later in December 1971, at the peak of the Bangladesh Liberation War, the then US President Richard Nixon’s administration deployed Task Force 74 of the US Navy’s Seventh Fleet in the Bay of Bengal to prevent India from overrunning Pakistan. In response, the Soviets deployed two groups of cruisers and destroyers as well as a submarine armed with nuclear warheads in the region.
The Moscow-Delhi partnership robustly countered the Washington-Beijing-Islamabad axis.
On December 5, 1971, the United States – sidelining the Pakistani military’s ferocious atrocities against people of present-day Bangladesh – made attempts for a UN-sponsored ceasefire. It was vetoed by the Soviet Union, twice.
A day later on December 6, 1971, India recognised Bangladesh as an independent nation.
Exactly 10 years before in 1961, when New Delhi liberated the Indian state of Goa from the colonial occupation of Portugal — a NATO ally — the erstwhile Soviet Union vetoed a UN security council resolution proposed by Portugal that asked India to withdraw its forces from Goa.
Over the decades India's military cooperation with the Soviet Union and then with Russia evolved from a buyer-seller framework to one involving joint research, development and production of advanced defence technologies and systems, reflecting the economic distance New Delhi travelled since its freedom from the British in 1947.
India-Russia ties: Generational goodwill cultivated over decades
In the 1970s, the West led by the United States — especially under US President Richard Nixon’s administration — was remarkably anti-India and notoriously pro-Pakistan and consciously fostered an Ivy League of jihadist organisations in India’s neighbourhood.
Indians carry with them a historical memory of a difficult past when economic growth was stagnant, prosperity was scarce and New Delhi consistently felt geopolitically cornered by the West.
During those moments, Indians found the Soviets beside them just like they saw five Soviet nationals alongside Rakesh Sharma on that spacecraft.
Indians do not suffer from historical amnesia — a loss of collective national memory about a time — even as they march on to become the world’s third-largest economy in the next five years.
Between India and Russia, there is a generational goodwill cultivated over decades that remains least shaken even after Russian President Vladimir Putin’s imposition of the war on Ukraine.
Despite the optics of New Delhi’s opposition to the war in Ukraine, such as a strongly-worded “support [for] the call for an independent investigation” into alleged Russian atrocities in the Ukrainian town of Bucha early on during the war, a form of anti-Russia sentiment in New Delhi is almost non-existent.
This was best reflected during Russian foreign minister Sergey Lavrov’s New Delhi visit in March 2023, when a mostly Indian crowd at Raisina dialogues laughed as Lavrov claimed Russia was “trying to stop the war which was launched against us”. They subsequently applauded when Lavrov asked what the US and NATO were doing in Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya.
Russian foreign minister Sergey Lavrov at Observer Research Foundation's Raisina 2023 dialogue in March 2023 | Mukul Sharma/WION
A Russian foreign minister, given Moscow’s scale of offensive in Ukraine, cannot expect such a reception in any other Washington-aligned capital but New Delhi.
(Disclaimer: The views of the writer do not represent the views of WION or ZMCL. Nor does WION or ZMCL endorse the views of the writer)
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