India’s ‘New Era’ and Western Imperialism in 2023 Part 4

[The following article is the fourth instalment in a series.]

4. The G20 Summit and After
The killing of Hardeep Singh Nijjar took place in June 2023, and the alleged plot to murder Gurpatwant Singh Pannun took place a little earlier, in May-June 2023. The Canadian and US governments concluded immediately that these were done on the instruction of the Indian government. However, they did not publicly air their allegations of Indian government involvement in these two events till September in the case of Nijjar and November 2023 in the case of Pannun.

Keenly aware of the Indian rulers’ aspiration to recognition as a global power, the US did its best to make the September 2023 G20 summit in New Delhi a success. Biden attended the summit, in contrast to Putin and Xi, who stayed away. In the words of Brookings fellow Tanvi Madan, “Prime Minister Modi has wanted to make it India’s coming-out party to the world — as a major power, with its own independent voice, whose time has come”. The Wall Street Journal remarked: 

… [F]rom an American standpoint, the most beneficial of… [recent] developments is the emergence of India as one of the world’s leading powers and as an increasingly close partner of the U.S. The G-20 summit was a personal diplomatic triumph for Prime Minister Narendra Modi. With both the Chinese and Russian leaders absent, Mr. Modi dominated center stage at a world gathering just weeks after India joined the elite club of countries that have landed probes on the moon.[1]

The G20 was set up to address the 2008 Global Financial Crisis and its aftermath, and hence was meant to focus on economic questions of global importance. At the present juncture, it was expected to focus on three grave questions: the debt crisis of developing countries, the rise in global food prices, and climate change. The questions of the reform of multilateral development banks and the multilateral trading system were also pressing. However, the Summit made negligible progress in relation to any economic issue, and restricted itself to some general statements of little practical consequence.[2] Instead the focus of discussion was shifted to achieving consensus on a resolution concerning the conflict in Ukraine. Once this was achieved by making a statement too vague to give offence to anyone, the summit was celebrated as a success.

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India’s ‘New Era’ and Western Imperialism in 2023 Part 3

[The following article is the third instalment in a series.]

3. India’s ‘human rights’ and the western powers

It is a year now since the broadcast of the BBC documentary, ‘India: The Modi Question’ (the first part was released on January 17, 2023, and the second part a week later). The documentary’s main ‘revelation’ was the report of a confidential UK government inquiry at the time of the Gujarat riots (2002). The inquiry concluded that Narendra Modi (then chief minister of Gujarat) was directly responsible for the riots, and referred to the events as a “systematic campaign of violence” with “all the hallmarks of ethnic cleansing”. Jack Straw, foreign secretary of the UK at the time, is interviewed in the documentary. He reveals that he ordered the confidential inquiry into the events in Gujarat because he was “very worried” about the developments there. The magazine Caravan has carried the text of the report on its website. 

However, the documentary in fact contains no revelations as such. The events in question were reported extensively by Indian organisations and individuals two decades ago.

The 206-page report of the Concerned Citizens Tribunal, Gujarat 2002: An Inquiry into the Carnage in Gujarat, headed by former Supreme Court judges V. R. Krishna Iyer and P.B. Sawant, and former High Court judge Hosbet Suresh, was published in October 2002. The Tribunal based its findings on 2,094 statements from victims, First Information Reports, eyewitness accounts, and findings of forensic investigations. It also went through more than a dozen fact-finding reports and inquiries that had already been carried out by various Indian organisations. Significantly, the Gujarat cabinet minister Haren Pandya deposed before the Tribunal on May 13, 2002, directly incriminating Narendra Modi.[1]

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India’s ‘New Era’ and Western Imperialism in 2023 Part 2

[The following article is the second instalment in a series.]

2. The benefits of Russian crude oil imports

Western sanctions and Indian actions
The most frequently cited example of India’s independent and self-assertive policy in the recent period has been its decision to import crude oil from Russia, despite Western sanctions on that country.

Did India’s imports of Russian oil, “serve the Indian people”, as External Affairs Minister Jaishankar said, in defiance of the dictates of the US, UK, and Europe? The reality is that the Indian people did not benefit. As we shall see below, the beneficiaries were the western countries; private sector refiners in India; and to some extent the finances of the Government of India (as distinct from the Indian people). 

Through their sanctions on Russia, the western powers intended to achieve two ends: (1) They wished to maintain the flow of oil from Russia, thereby bringing international oil prices under control, and (2) at the same time, they wished to keep Russia’s revenues down, thereby maintaining pressure on the Russian government. Therefore, they placed a cap of $60 per barrel on the price at which crude oil could be imported by any country from Russia; this was much below the market price. For imports within that cap, other services related to transport and financing too were permitted. The explicit aim of these exemptions was to “reduce price surges driven by extraordinary market conditions, while limiting Russian oil revenues.”[1]

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India’s ‘New Era’ and Western Imperialism in 2023

[The following article is the first instalment in a series.]

1. Introduction

On December 21, 2023, India’s Parliament passed bills replacing three existing legislations regarding criminal justice[1]with revised Acts titled in Sanskrit.[2] The Prime Minister said that this was a “watershed moment in our history. These bills mark the end of colonial-era laws. A new era begins…” 

This is the latest in a series of such measures by the Indian government. In his 2022 Independence Day speech, the Prime Minister asked Indians pledge to remove “any trace of the colonial mindset”. Shortly thereafter, he changed the name of the capital’s central avenue from Rajpath to Kartavya Path, and congratulated the Indian people “for their freedom from yet another symbol of slavery of the British Raj”. In September 2023, the Indian Parliament moved from its colonial-era building to a brand new structure. The Finance Minister no longer carries a briefcase when presenting the Union Budget, but instead the Indian ‘bahi-khata’, thereby “shedding another vestige of a colonial past.”[3]

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