No one expects Manmohan Singh or Salman Khurshid to be a hawk like Rifkind who made no bones when we chatted after the meeting of his desire for regime change in Damascus. That must also be Cameron's aim since Rifkind chairs the British government's intelligence and security committee. But New Delhi's deafening silence hardly answers those well-meaning Europeans who ask at international conferences whether an economically reinvigorated India will play a lead role internationally. On one such occasion at Cambridge that I was chairing, a visiting Congress MP burst into emotional bombast about India being no stranger to international affairs since Asoka's empire had stretched across Asia! It didn't convince listeners of modern India's ability to take a constructive interest in global politics.
My gut feeling is that no Indian government will ever commit itself. There are unconfirmed stories about Jaswant Singh offering Indian facilities when George W Bush Jr attacked Afghanistan. But his Cabinet colleagues shot down the offer. I don't think this is a question of Right and Left. I think that Indian politicians - like all Indians - are too anxious to try not to displease anyone to come down on one side. It's like the man in E M Forster's A Passage to India who readily agrees to the Englishwoman's request to visit him on a day he won't be at home. He thinks it's impolite to tell her so and shuts up his wife who tries to remind him of his other appointment. In appearing to go along with everyone on all issues, Indians have created for themselves an international reputation for guile and dissimulation.
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I can think of only two occasions when India did take a decisive stand on a matter that worried the rest of the world. Inder Kumar Gujral's eventual support for the Western position at the UN when Iraq annexed Kuwait was pragmatic rather than principled. Instinctively, he opposed the US taking action. But when Washington cut off aid to Yemen for not supporting the American-Saudi Arabian coalition at the UN, Gujral knew that a near-bankrupt India would have to toe the line. After that, India voted tamely with the Americans every time though Gujral salved his own conscience by still refusing to utter a word of condemnation about Saddam Hussein whom the senior George Bush called the "Asian Hitler". The bluntness of Winston Churchill or Margaret Thatcher is inconceivable in our culture.
The second instance was more courageous. Chandra Shekhar's bold decision to allow American warplanes to land and refuel in India went against the grain of India's political and psychological conditioning. He even argued that sending the US aircraft to cantonment airports would look as if he was trying to conceal an obligation under the UN security council's Resolution 678 calling on members "to use all necessary means" to liberate Kuwait. "You can't go and occupy small countries" the former prime minister told me when I brought up the subject in his Delhi bungalow many years later. "What did the liberation of Palestine have to do with the annexation of Kuwait?" But he drew the line at military support. "When we can't even defend our own borders, why should we send soldiers to defend another country?" he asked rhetorically.
That still holds true. There isn't any reason why India should support military action against Bashar al-Assad. The US, Britain, Turkey and some Arab League members have their own reasons for hankering to attack. India doesn't share those reasons. But India can and should denounce the cluster bombing of civilians and the use of poison gas (whether by Assad or the rebels), demand a global effort to help the million or so Syrian refugees and insist on an immediate peace conference. Jawaharlal Nehru did it to mobilise Asian opinion in the teeth of American disapproval when the Dutch and British threatened Indonesia's new-found independence. Silence speaks of opportunism and pusillanimity.