West must stop pressurizing India against Russia on Ukraine

For the West to build pressure on India to condemn Russia for its invasion of Ukraine as some kind of a political and moral obligation for a democracy is a brazenly manipulative exercise. If western democracies genuinely believe that all democratic countries have an obligation to band together against Russia on this issue shows how much they have become prisoners of their own rhetoric and are incapable of seeing the incongruities in their position. If, on the other hand, they are aware that they themselves have not adhered to the principle that they now espouse in the case of Russia, it denotes outright cynicism bred by a sense of unaccountable power.

India, which has been a democracy since 1947, has not received any special consideration on the political economic and security fronts from the West. On the contrary, it has been subject to decades of sanctions in the strategic nuclear, space and high technology areas. It was pushed toward a close relationship with the Soviet Union in the area of heavy industry because of American unwillingness to help build our industrial infrastructure in collaboration with our public sector.

In the defence sector, we experienced a reluctance on the part of the US and the UK to sell us high end platforms and weaponry because of concerns about upsetting a degree of parity with Pakistan. In fact, Pakistan was roped into military blocs and provided with arms that endangered India’s security.

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