Why public sentiment in India is not against Russia

Russian President Vladimir Putin (File image)

Dissecting public sentiment is never an easy task. For sure, public sentiment need not be aspirational. If it were, the conflict between Russia and Ukraine wouldn’t have seen many Indians, from the extreme Left to ultra-Right and some usual fence-sitters thrown in between supporting Moscow and rooting for Russian President Vladimir Putin.

More than half of the Indian population was born after the collapse of the Soviet Union, and grew up seeing India shedding its hesitations of the past to get closer to the United States. Not in glacial speed, but in a rapid pace, driven by a host of factors ranging from economic interests to the rise of China.

At the same time, Russia, the inheritor of the legacy of the Soviet Union for all practical purposes and geopolitical reasons, has remained India’s surest veto in the United Nations, a steadfast companion, and its largest defence-supplier.

Russia is sure-footed in the realm of nostalgia for India’s older generation as the younger ones looked up to the US as the promising land to study, work, or even settle down.

Even those who grew up in the staples of the Soviet publications, treaties, and tales of unshakeable friendship between India and the USSR would prefer their wards to move to the US/West than to Russia.

Russia has no Hollywood. No Russian city has the charm that Las Vegas holds for India’s upper middle class. Against the US dollar, the Russian ruble is always in rubble. Apple phones have never had a Russian equivalent. A Russian substitute for the McDonald’s burger is not something even a culinary adventurist would rave about.

That is not to say Russia doesn’t have its own strengths. Russia’s defence-related advantages, nuclear power capabilities, and space prowess is always complimented with the fact that Moscow is the world's largest exporter of natural gas, and one of the largest exporters of oil.

Then, since 2000, Russia has had one leader — Putin, while India has had three different Prime Ministers (two of them belonging to two different political parties, and getting re-elected) and the US has had five different Presidents.

Suffice to say, the influence of popular culture, sharing of similar political systems, or an overdose of aspirational quotient don’t swing public sentiment in favour of a country easily.

For many Indians, bonding with Russia is rooted in a lingering collective memory despite the passage of time wearing it thin on some occasions. This affinity is remembered through the help Russia rendered when India needed them the most, and a general antipathy in seeing the US as an all-weather partner.

For most of the subcontinent's history, India was seen propagating a non-aligned foreign policy with a Soviet-slant, while Pakistan was more useful than a treaty-ally to the US. Pakistan’s foreign policy was centred on US dictations. Most Indians would relate to the outcome of such an attachment in the apt conclusion made by India’s first foreign secretary KPS Menon: “The net result of Pakistan’s diplomacy, however, was that Ayub Khan lost his job, Yahya Khan lost his freedom, and Pakistan lost half of its territory’.

To a great extent, the diplomatic bulwark of the 1971 war, one of the most visible achievements of India’s foreign policy till date, is the ‘Treaty of Peace, Friendship and Cooperation’ between India and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics on August 9, 1971. It was the same year Pakistan mediated between the US and China to establish contacts that had culminated in Henry Kissinger’s secret visit to China from Pakistan in July 1971.

For many in India, what Kissinger said half in jest holds true: "To be an enemy of America can be dangerous, but to be a friend is fatal.”

More than anything else, a country's strategic autonomy often gets the public sentiments it deserves, and rest of the commonalities don’t add up to replace this.

Jayanth Jacob is a foreign policy commentator who covered the ministry of external affairs for more than two decades. Twitter: @jayanthjacob.

Views are personal and do not represent the stand of this publication.