The Russia hand

WHEN all the dust is settled and the conches blown and the embraces imprinted on the timeframe of history, one little exchange will symbolise the just-concluded summit between Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Russian President Vladimir Putin — a photo that shows the PM gifting a copy of the Bhagavad Gita, in Russian, to the President.

So what, you may ask, dear Reader. But look closer. The Russian smiles, half-quizzically, as he receives the book. The PM’s glance is more patient and comes with several embedded messages — the age-old civilisational teachings of the Gita; the message from the Kurukshetra battlefield about fighting a just war; the implied comment on Putin’s own three-year-old escapade in Ukraine; and the message to all the Western world curiously watching India’s red-carpet welcome to a man who continues to be severely sanctioned by them, that India remains on the side of peace, a “not neutral” party in the Ukraine conflict.

After a long time, this week it seemed as if India had come into its own. In the wake of the Trump battering that India has received these last few months (over trade, the US President’s insistence that he brokered the end of Op Sindoor, and Field Marshal Asim Munir’s red-carpet welcome at the White House), Modi must have decided that enough was enough and that it was time to show some spine.

The invitation to Putin was overdue — the Russian last came four years ago. Modi decided to throw him a warm welcome not just because Trump is romancing Asim Munir, or because the India-US trade deal is experiencing a prolonged agri-hiccup, or because India’s energy import bill is $55 billion out of the $64 billion India-Russia bilateral trade — but because of the fundamental lesson in geopolitics. There are no permanent friends or enemies, only permanent interests.

There can be no better example than the Ukraine crisis. The US is sanctioning Putin’s Russia — including four Russian companies which supply energy to India — but Trump as well as his aides have repeatedly met Putin to try and resolve the conflict. The Russian President, meanwhile, has stuck to his guns; he has spent the last three years fighting not just the Ukrainians — but also the Europeans and the Americans who have funded the Ukrainians — for the right to occupy Russian-speaking territories, such as the Donbas, in Ukraine.

That is the second lesson in geopolitics — that it is possible to stand up to powerful opponents, as long as you have the strength to do so.

Modi knows that big powers — the Chinese, the Americans and the Russians — have this uncanny ability to shed the high moral ground when they want their way. He realises that for India to take a leaf out of their book, it must build its economic strength. How to do that when the rupee is falling against the dollar and has lost half its value in the last 15 years, a large part of which period Modi has been in power?

The problem is that Delhi is significantly dependent on the US market, which is why it needs a sympathetic trade deal; on the Chinese market, which sells quality goods for less money than any other country in the world, which is why the $100 billion bilateral trade is hugely in China’s favour; and on the Russian market, on which India depends hugely to supply cheap energy, which is what keeps the wheels of India’s economy functioning far more smoothly than if it had to buy oil at international rates.

Why not, then, talk to all sides and build meaningful relations with each. Multipolarity. Non-alignment. Call it what you will.

That’s why Modi broke protocol to receive Putin in the evening cold when Putin’s plane landed at Delhi’s Palam airport on Thursday. The two leaders together watched Indian dancers welcome the Russian President and drove home for dinner. Significantly, no agreements have been signed between the two sides, only memoranda of understanding — a good signal to nervous Western democracies, especially those from the European Union who are showing up as chief guests for India’s Republic Day ceremonies next month, that India won’t succumb to a Russian alliance even if it desperately needs Moscow’s oil.

So there’s no Hindi-Russi bhai-bhai sloganeering — that sounds too much like the bad or good, old days, depending on what side you’re on. Instead, there’s lots of rhetoric about a strategic revamp, just not at the cost of any other relationship.

Clearly, Putin understands Modi’s America problem. He knows India needs a trade deal with the US. If Delhi can allay US anxiety over its relationship with Russia, it might even be able to tempt Trump to come to India sometime next year. Especially if a US-Russia deal over Ukraine can, in the meantime, be sealed. Even if Trump has committed to going to China next April.

In this brave, new mixed-up world in which big powers carry large imprints, smaller powers like India must learn to negotiate, sidestep, circumvent and broker. It’s what India has done since the early, tough days after Independence, when it refused to succumb to the false gods that tempted Delhi with one alliance.

This ability to play all sides — not just one, namely the US, which Delhi had set its heart on in the past few years — works for India not just because it is a smaller power, but an ancient one. It has the ability to preach the high moral ground but practise saam, daam, dand, bhed, a daily statecraft that combines persuasion with bribery, punishment with division.

Modi understands that for India to be counted, it must demonstrate economic strength. That it must take to heart the old comrade, Deng Xiaoping’s fully capitalist slogan, and make it a central tenet of its own mixed economy. That it doesn’t matter what the colour of the cat is, as long as it catches the mice.

That’s why the Putin visit is important to both Modi and Putin. It allows the Russian President to tell the world that despite all the Western sanctions, Russia is not isolated — Putin needs to thank Modi for that. Equally important, the India visit allowed Putin to send a message to his good friend, Chinese President Xi Jinping, that there are other flowers blooming in Mao’s “let a hundred flowers bloom” garden — India.

That’s why, after a long time this week it seemed as if India had come into its own. PM Modi greeted the Russian President with the familiarity of an old friend, but kept an eye out for the other friends in the room. The message of multipolarity — or non-alignment — was clear to see.