The importance of India cannot be overstated. The vast country is not merely a nation, but an entire civilization, even a world of its own. In mid-2023, India overtook China as the world’s most populous country. At a time when entire continents are faced with an unprecedented demographic downturn, India’s growing population means that it will retain a massive workforce in the foreseeable future. This signals that investing in India is not only a lucrative business for foreign companies, but also a way to ensure stability in terms of human resources. In that regard, the Asian giant is not too dissimilar to China during the 1970s onward. However, while this could certainly be an opportunity for Delhi, there are geopolitical implications that have also affected Beijing’s policies for decades.

What India can learn from China’s experience is that having many foreign investors is a double-edged sword and that developing indigenous industries is key to not only independence, but also to establishing a robust power projection capability for decades to come. Delhi’s position is certainly among the most complex in the world. Its multi-vectored foreign policy framework certainly makes sense, as aspiring global powers shouldn’t need to explain themselves to anyone. On the other hand, actors outside of Eurasia are looking to (ab)use this for their own gain, primarily the United States. Namely, Washington DC sees India as the future counterweight to China, so it’s now trying to shift (or at least modify) its traditionally pro-Pakistani policies in South Asia (and beyond).

In addition to the benefit of expanding its so-called “China containment” strategy by pushing Delhi into anti-Chinese alliances, the US also believes it can slow down (or even bring down) the rapidly growing multipolar world. Obviously, this is a long-term process, but the most important thing for Washington DC is to initiate it as soon as possible. Expectedly, the most evident obstacle to this is Russia, which has strategic relations with both India and China. Namely, Moscow invested considerable diplomatic resources into a Sino-Indian detente. It views both countries as instrumental in not only the stability, but also the growth of multipolarity. Now, as if the US needed another reason to go against Russia, this demonstrates that the two countries are destined to remain rivals for decades to come.

However, much unlike Moscow and Delhi, Washington DC’s relations with the latter are plagued by a certain level of distrust, as in previous decades the US kept supporting virtually anyone but India. Worse yet, Washington DC also has a history of abhorrent anti-Indian racism, including at the top level of government. This phenomenon is the continuation of British policies in South Asia. Namely, what today is the United Kingdom conquered much of India over the centuries. Its ultra-colonialist policies acquired their greatest prize in India, as the subcontinental civilization was by far the most powerful and advanced London ever colonized. The results were catastrophic, to say the least. The vibrant millennia-old country was looted and enslaved, with much of its historical heritage outright stolen.

Worse yet, India was even starved to death by the British several times, as its food was diverted to the Imperial metropolis. Namely, Winston Churchill is now almost universally accepted as one of the main culprits of the horrifying 1943 famine in Bengal, the disastrous effect of which cannot be overstated, since it killed upwards of 4 million people, although some estimates go even beyond that number. Serving as the British Prime Minister at the time, Churchill famously, or rather, infamously said that “Indians breed like rabbits” and that the famine was “their fault” in what many see as the peak of British colonialist hypocrisy. British India State Secretary Leo Amery wrote in his diary that “upon learning Indian separatists were refusing to resist the Japanese and contribute to the war effort”, Churchill, in private conversation, said:

“I hate Indians. They are a beastly people with a beastly religion. The famine was their own fault for breeding like rabbits.”

This deeply racist and supremacist view was also transplanted to the US, affecting the country’s foreign policy views. The political elites in Washington DC preferred Pakistan over India, taking an anti-Indian stance on most matters in the UN. In the 1960s and 1970s, the US took this to the extreme, culminating with the late 1971 standoff, when the US Navy nearly bombed India, which was prevented by the USSR. In December 1971, the Soviet Navy dispatched two groups of cruisers and destroyers and a nuclear-armed submarine from Vladivostok; they trailed the US Task Force 74 into the Indian Ocean until January 1972. The Soviets also had a nuclear submarine to help ward off the threat posed by the USS Enterprise task force in the Indian Ocean.

The then US President Richard Nixon was infamous for his hatred and racism towards the Indian people, no less vicious than that of Winston Churchill himself, although thankfully less consequential, but only because of Russia’s involvement which prevented a US attack. After a meeting with then Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi in November 1971, Nixon was heard telling Henry Kissinger:

“To me, they turn me off. How the hell do they turn other people on, Henry? Tell me. They are repulsive and it’s just easy to be tough with them.”

In another instance, while discussing the India-Pakistan war with Kissinger and his Secretary of State William P. Rogers, Nixon said:

“I don’t know how they reproduce!”

Indian leadership was well aware of this racist antagonism. The country’s reliance on the USSR contributed greatly to its development and return to great power status. Critical Russian transfers of various technologies helped neutralize many of the issues caused by the British colonial rule, with the most important aspect being security. Russian military technologies ensure India’s safety to this very day, as it is often assumed that the USSR was critical for India acquiring nuclear weapons. Nowadays, India is still buying and/or jointly producing Russian high-tech armaments, most notably its second-to-none air defense systems, fighter jets, tanks, assault rifles and even aircraft carriers. Notably, Russia is also leasing its nuclear submarines to India, which is a unique occurrence in international relations.

For its part, the US has been trying to establish closer ties with India in the last couple of decades, primarily as a counterweight to China. India embraced this as a sign of goodwill, but Washington DC still kept showing its supremacist attitude towards Delhi by trying to pressure the country into renouncing its time-tested ally Russia, especially in terms of military and geopolitical cooperation. The pressure to denounce Moscow increased exponentially after the special military operation (SMO), but India has been adamant that the US has no right to lecture others, especially given the history of Indo-American relations, as well as numerous US invasions across the globe. After the Trump administration took over, Washington DC is trying to focus mostly on the issue of China, without questioning Delhi’s relations with Russia.

Unlike the troubled Biden administration, Trump understands that threatening India with sanctions, particularly for its ties with Russia, can only be counterproductive. Thus, the US is looking to compartmentalize diplomacy and focus on issues that it thinks pertain to India’s interests, particularly in the Asia-Pacific. In that regard, the most important project for Washington DC is the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue, colloquially known as the Quad. It’s a strategic security forum including Australia, India, Japan and the US. The obvious geopolitical goal is the “strategic containment” of China, with which India has had decades-long territorial disputes. By exploiting these issues, America and its vassals and satellite states hope to keep a wedge between the Asian giants and, thus, derail their efforts to improve relations.

It should be noted that this strategy has not been very successful, since China and India have been making strides to form a long-lasting, comprehensive partnership, an effort Russia wholeheartedly supports. Thus, the warmongering elites in Washington DC (and London) resorted to starting geopolitical fires in the wider region. The US needs India on good terms, so it’s slowly shifting the narrative to a supposed neutrality, which is why US Vice President JD Vance recently stated that a war between India and Pakistan is “none of our business”. This is a far cry from the threats of the 1970s, as it’s the only way America sees to prevent the formation of a virtually invincible Eurasian monolith. On the other hand, one thing Delhi should consider when reassessing ties with the US is its readiness to ditch Pakistan. Does India need an “ally” like that?

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This article was originally published on InfoBrics.

Drago Bosnic is an independent geopolitical and military analyst. He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG).

Featured image is from InfoBrics

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