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Defending democracy and universal rights here and there
Many nations in the Global South have a lot of traditions in terms of deliberation at the local level and these should be leveraged and discussed as best practices.
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India's Prime Minister Narendra Modi greets Indonesia's President Joko "Jokowi" Widodo as he arrives for the Group of 20 leaders' summit in Nusa Dua, Bali, Nov. 15, 2022. (Reuters/Kevin Lamarque)
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an a nation with ambitions to become one of the greatest economic powers keep blurring the lines between justice and responsibility on one hand, and economic calculus and sheer convenience on the other?
I am referring to a rising India, which strives to become “the indispensable” partner to the West to counter totalitarian regimes. A giant democracy lab that, still, at the same time, doggedly defies expectations and finds it easier to stick to its anachronistic logic of nonalignment.
A recent report by Christoph Hasselbach for Deutsche Welle and Amrita Narlikar, president of the German Institute for Global and Area Studies (GIGA), makes an interesting point while trying to explain the rationale for India’s abstention at the United Nations against the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
The piece, written in the context of a visit to India by Chancellor Olaf Scholz to India over the past weekend, stroked my attention, not because of Narlikar’s emphasis on the obvious fact that India is still too dependent on Russia for military equipment, but because she talked about the efforts by Germany, and indirectly the whole Europe and the West, to better understand the complexities of India’s view of international relations.
"Germany could do this very well if it were to improve its knowledge of India's political culture and traditions, and really work with it at an eye-to-eye level as a fellow democracy” explained Narlikar.
This is an extremely important and complex issue, one which European Union high representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy and vice president of the European Commission Josep Borrell also highlighted at the recent Munich Security Conference.
A frank, straightforward and often “undiplomatic” politician, Borrell, weighed in on the fears, apprehensions and, from a European point of view, misunderstandings that many “swing” countries still have toward Russia’s invasion.
