India is a democracy, flawed maybe but definitely a functioning one. It’s a miracle that a landmass the size of Europe and encompassing the diversity of this entire planet, if not more, is a vibrant democracy. This despite so many obvious and not so obvious handicaps. The very fact that, as Patrick French once observed, “Half the people in the world who live in a democracy live in India”, should be enough to marvel at — and celebrate — the idea that is India.
Far from it, though! India is condemned every other day. It is repeatedly announced how the country is slipping into anarchy, majoritarianism, authoritarianism… When anti-India forces create chaos on Indian streets, the advocates of Western democracy take a vow in their favour. Remember, Justin ‘Humbug’ Trudeau, a self-appointed guardian of global democracy, who extended unconditional support to the farmers’ protests in India despite several credible reports suggesting how pro-Khalistan forces had sneaked into the movement. These protests continued for well over a year and never once did the Modi dispensation lose its patience amid grave provocations. If anything, the government can be accused of being too indulgent and the protests ended only after Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced the withdrawal of the three laws.
In sharp contrast, when Canada saw truckers’ protests a few months later, Trudeau readily forgot what he haughtily preached to the Indian government. He went into hiding and from a ‘secret location’ invoked the Emergencies Act, for only the second time in that country’s history. Such was the administrative intolerance towards protesters that the Trudeau government fired a woman for donating $100 to protesters!
Similar Western hypocrisy has been witnessed in the Rana Ayyub case. Early this week, the Washington Post published a full-page advertisement with a photograph of Ayyub, declaring quite alarmingly: “The Free Press is Under Attack in India.” This was after the Washington Post columnist was accused of mishandling a fund of Rs 1.77 crore she had collected in the name of Covid donation — an Enforcement Bureau charge that she accepted and yet claimed innocence! The American newspaper acted as judge, jury and executioner even before the probe could begin. Maybe the paper, just like Trudeau, believes India and its democratic institutions can’t be trusted! The Washington Post, in its obsession to save “democracy in darkness” has assaulted the world’s largest democracy in broad daylight! And in this endeavour, it found a supporter in UN Geneva, which called for prompt and thorough investigation into “relentless misogynistic and sectarian attacks online against” Ayyub.
The Western liberal duplicity has also been on display during the ongoing Ukraine crisis, as New Delhi has been specifically picked up for criticism for not standing up for democracy. Interestingly, the same big boys of Western democracy never think twice in challenging the democratic credentials of India, often hyphenating it with Islamist Pakistan and comparing it with communist China. As early as last year, US-based Freedom House and Sweden-based V-Dem Institute downgraded Indian democracy, citing restrictions on civil society, minorities, and free speech. And now, after almost certifying lack of democracy in India, these paragons of libertarian values are desperately seeking India’s support in the name of democracy!
As Vladimir Putin upped the ante on Thursday, with Russia launching a major offensive by sending its ground forces into Ukraine from several directions, the Joe Biden-led liberal West’s bluff was called. Biden had initially seen Ukraine as an opportunity to not just bolster his sagging approval ratings back home, but also salvage his son’s business interests in China and Ukraine. Biden must have thought of a controlled flare-up in Ukraine, but to his misfortune, he found more than a match in Putin. Ukraine seems to have backfired on Biden. Now he can’t swallow it, and he can’t throw it either.
To be fair to Putin, he has been raising the issue of NATO’s eastward movement for more than a decade now. In February 2007, he said at the Munich Security Conference: “We have the right to ask: Against whom is this (NATO) expansion intended? And what happened to the assurances our Western partners made after the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact?” The Russian President then quoted NATO General Secretary Woerner as saying in Brussels on 17 May 1990: “The fact that we are ready not to place a NATO army outside of German territory gives the Soviet Union a firm security guarantee.” Putin followed this up with the obvious question: “Where are these guarantees?”
The Russian president again raised this issue in 2014: “They (Western leaders) have lied to us many times, made decisions behind our backs, placed before us an accomplished fact. This happened with NATO’s expansion to the east, as well as the deployment of military infrastructure at our borders.”
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The West today denies signing any such deal with Russia. Technically, it is right as there has been no agreement signed to that effect. But numerous memos, meeting minutes and transcripts from US archives do indicate otherwise. They point at the understanding in the early 1990 that in exchange for cooperation on Germany, the US-led NATO would not expand “one inch eastward”. Later, as the records suggest, the George Bush Sr Administration decided not to commit anything on paper and see how things unfolded in future.
Biden, in that sense, has fallen into the trap Bush Sr had created for the Russians. What’s more tragic is the US has got involved into a war with Russia at a time when it should have courted Putin to its side. A person with a cursory understanding of world politics would say it’s China which is going to be America’s Enemy No.1. By not seeing the perils of expanding NATO eastward, Biden’s America seems to have forfeited an impending war with China to win a battle with Russia.
No wonder, the one man who must be laughing all the way through the Ukraine crisis is Xi Jinping. Cornered till the other day for China’s dubious role in Covid-19 and also aggressive territorial posturing in eastern Ladakh, Taiwan and South China Sea, Xi needed a breather. Biden’s Ukrainian act provided China just that.
In some way, it’s the repeat of the 1950s when China opened the Korea front which sucked America so deep that it could do nothing when the PLA forces invaded Tibet. By the time the Americans realised their folly it was too late. Just replace Taiwan with Tibet, and the Chinese gameplan could unravel itself. Or, would China reassert its claims at the Line of Actual Control (LAC) in eastern Ladakh vis-à-vis India? After all, China’s 1962 war with India was timed with the Cuban crisis. It’s hard to predict the Dragon, but the best way to checkmate China is to prepare for the worst.
India has done very well to tread a fine balance on the issue. It needs to keep the West along while ensuring that Russia doesn’t fall into the Chinese orbit. More importantly, given its leverage with the Putin Administration, India can play a big role, away from the prying eyes of the media, in bringing the US and Russia on a diplomatic table. This is the best-case scenario for world peace and democracy.
One hopes the big boys of democracy in the West finally realise the folly of targeting the world’s largest democracy. Wittingly or unwittingly, by targeting India and calling it names, they are playing into the hands of China. Just as Biden did with his Ukrainian stupidity!
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