by Alexander Dugin

Arktos Journal

Apr 19, 2024

Alexander Dugin explores the strategic shifts and ideological underpinnings of India’s evolving geopolitical stance, reflecting on the impact this has on Russia’s interests and global multipolarity.

To the surprise of many, India currently boasts the fastest-growing economy in the world. In 2023, the country’s GDP grew by 8.4%. By 2027, it is projected to become the third-largest economy globally. If this trend continues, India might surpass the USA and even China in the 2030s.

India is also leading in demographics and the IT sector. The Indian diaspora now controls a significant segment of Silicon Valley, and the UK’s prime minister is Rishi Sunak, who is ethnically Indian, albeit with liberal-globalist views. Interestingly, a prominent conservative politician in the Republican Party, a staunch Trump supporter of Indian origin, Vivek Ramaswamy, represents a complete ideological antithesis to Sunak. In any case, Indians are advancing.

We are witnessing an entirely new phenomenon — the emergence of a new global centre right before our eyes. India owes these successes largely to a new turn in policy that coincided with the rise to power of the conservative Bharatiya Janata Party. Indeed, modern India was founded during decolonisation by a different party, the left-leaning and progressive Indian National Congress. Of course, the highest value for Indians after gaining independence was liberation from the impacts of colonialism, yet India remained a member of the post-colonial Commonwealth of Nations, where Britain dominated, and clung firmly to the democracy introduced by the British. Moreover, it even took pride in being ‘the largest democracy in the world’. The Congress was content that the country had achieved political independence from its former rulers but agreed to emulate the socio-political, economic, and cultural paradigm of the West.

For the first time, the Congress’s monopoly on power in India was challenged by the victory of an alternative right-conservative party — the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) — in the 1996 elections for the lower house of parliament (Lok Sabha). This party was founded based on the extremely conservative movement Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh in 1980.

In 2014, Narendra Modi became the Prime Minister from this party and has held the position ever since. According to analysts, Modi has every reason to retain his post following the 2024 elections, which commence on 19 April and conclude on 1 June.

The rule of the Bharatiya Janata Party and Modi’s personal political charisma have fundamentally changed India. Interestingly, the official name of India under Modi was changed to its Sanskrit version — Bharat. This reflects that Modi relies on a completely different ideology than that of the Indian National Congress.

Initially, in the Indian struggle for independence from the British, there were two main approaches: one was gentle and pacifist, embodied by Mahatma Gandhi, who advocated non-violent resistance; the other was more militant and uncompromising, represented by figures such as the Indian traditionalist Bal Gangadhar Tilak, the founder of Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, Keshav Hedgewar, and the nationalist Vinayak Savarkar.

As the British departed from the country, they comfortably entrusted power in India to the Congress (having previously severed several territories populated by Muslims — Pakistan and Bangladesh — as well as Sri Lanka, Bhutan, and Nepal), believing that this party would keep India within the Anglo-Saxon sphere of influence and lead it along the path of modernisation and Westernisation (with regional specifics), thereby maintaining some form of colonial control.

In contrast, the main opponents of the Congress had believed from the very start of the struggle for independence that India was not just a country or a former colony but the territory of a mighty and distinct civilisation. Today, we refer to this concept as a ‘civilisation-state’. This idea was first articulated by Kanaiyalal Munshi and came to be known as Akhand Bharat, ‘Undivided India’, or ‘Greater India’.

In 2022, Narendra Modi declared the main goal to be the ‘decolonisation of the Indian mind’. Before us emerges an India we hardly knew — a right conservative India, a Vedic civilisation-state, and a Greater India on the path to total sovereignty.

Certainly, a superficial observer might notice a contradiction: India is geopolitically aligning more with the United States and Israel, becoming involved in an escalating border conflict with China (hence India’s participation in several regional anti-China blocs such as the QUAD), and relations are intensifying with the Islamic world — both within India and towards Pakistan. If Indian traditionalists are concerned with the ‘decolonisation of the Indian mind’ and combating Western material civilisation, what do they have in common with the US?

To resolve this ambiguity, one might look to the history of modern China’s rise. Representatives of the American Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), especially Henry Kissinger in the late 1970s, proposed a bilateral partnership to China against the USSR, aiming to ultimately dismantle the socialist bloc. China, under Deng Xiaoping, capitalised on this and gradually transformed over forty years from an economic client of the US into a powerful independent pole, with which the US is now competing and, essentially, engaged in a trade war. The escalating issues surrounding Taiwan suggest that this confrontation might soon enter a hot phase.

Now, the same globalist forces in the West have decided to support India — this time against China. Modi, considering the Chinese experience, has adopted this strategy. But just as China used globalisation for its purposes, strengthening rather than losing its sovereignty, so too does Greater India intend to act. Initially, considering the objective realities of international politics, to strengthen its power, raise the welfare of its vast population, expand domestic market volumes, military might, and technological potential, and then, at the opportune moment, emerge as a fully independent and sovereign pole.

The globalists understand this strategy best. For instance, George Soros and his Open Society Foundations — which is banned in the Russian Federation and openly aims to combat tradition, sovereignty, and independent cultures and societies — have declared war on Narendra Modi and the Bharatiya Janata Party. In doing so, Soros not only supported the opposition Congress but also actively fomented social and ethnic strife in India, specifically calling for the Dalits (a widely prevalent caste of untouchables) to rise up against Modi. This represents another version of the ‘colour revolution’ that the globalists are orchestrating.

Russia needs to recognise the fundamental changes occurring in India. This is a completely different country from the one with which we had quite close relations during the Soviet period. Yes, Indians still regard Russians with great fondness and nostalgia. This applies not only to the leftists in the Congress (where, incidentally, under the influence of Soros, voices of Russophobia are becoming increasingly loud) but also to the right-wing traditionalists. In this case, the key factor is not inertia but a clear understanding that Russia itself declares itself as a civilisation-state, is a major force in building a multipolar world, and is also currently undergoing its own kind of ‘decolonisation of consciousness’. If India has certain conflictual issues — especially in border areas — with China, another civilisation-state and another pole of the multipolar world, nothing similar exists with Russia, even in the long term.

That said, we absolutely should not be moving closer to India by sacrificing our close strategic partnership with China. On the contrary, we are vitally interested in settling relations between these two great powers because if conflict breaks out between them (as the West is indeed pushing for), the prospects for a multipolar world will be indefinitely delayed. Russia is now defending its traditional values. Thus, we should better understand all those who are standing up to defend their own.

Then the energy partnership, strategic plans for the North-South transport corridor, processes of Eurasian integration, cooperation in high technology (with India currently being one of the global leaders in IT), and the financial sector will acquire a new ideological dimension: traditionalists, interested in civilisational sovereignty and in stopping the expansion of Western hegemony, will understand each other much better.

(translated by Constantin von Hoffmeister)