The West’s habit of projecting its desires onto India has an ancient pedigree. Edward Said famously called it “Orientalism”. Though most of us have long since dropped the snake charmers and timeless mysticism that bewitched our forebears, the West’s capacity to misread India — and assign it roles for which it has not auditioned — endures. The latest version is to assume that India is basically part of the West even if it does not yet want to acknowledge it. Pride may stop India from becoming a formal treaty ally of the US, or any other power. But New Delhi essentially shares our worldview.
This is an easy mistake to make. Think of the prominence of Indian-born figures in US public life. Sundar Pichai heads Alphabet, one of America’s largest companies. Satya Nadella is the chief executive of Microsoft. Arvind Krishna heads IBM, and so on (Neal Mohan, YouTube; Shantanu Narayen, Adobe; Raj Subramaniam, FedEx etc). Ajay Banga, the former chief executive of Mastercard, is about to become the next World Bank president. Now name me one China-born chief executive of a US-based multinational. In fact, there are two — Zoom’s Eric Yuan and DoorDash’s Tony Xu. But they are far fewer in number than their Indian-born counterparts. The ease with which Indian Americans have thrived in US society makes it easier to suppose that the country of their birth is doing the same on the geopolitical plane. That supposition is an error and is very likely to remain wrong.
To that end, Swampians should read this important Ashley Tellis essay in Foreign Affairs entitled
“America’s bad bet on India”. Tellis, who is also Indian-born and raised, is a co-architect with Robert Blackwill of America’s decision to assist India’s civil nuclear development in spite of the fact that India had recently become a nuclear weapons power without being a signatory to the non-proliferation treaty. I got to know Tellis and Blackwell in New Delhi in 2001 when I was based there for the FT. Blackwill was the US ambassador to India and Tellis was his strategic adviser. Tellis, in other words, has been a leading strategic brain pushing closer US-India ties over the past 20 years. So it is worth attaching the weight to what he says:
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Washington’s current expectations of India are misplaced,” Tellis writes. “Washington has sought to strengthen India’s standing within the liberal international order and, when necessary, solicit its contributions toward coalition defence. Yet New Delhi sees things differently. It does not harbour any innate allegiance toward preserving the liberal international order and retains an enduring aversion toward participating in mutual defence."
Two reasons lie behind India’s unwillingness to join Western alliances.
The first is that China would quickly overwhelm India’s military in a direct clash between the two 
. For understandable reasons, India wishes to avoid that fate. I believe Tellis is right in saying that if the US and China went to war over Taiwan, India would stand apart, though it would root from the sidelines for America to prevail.
The second reason is that India has no wish to see a bipolar world or to be part of either camp. Though India remains a democracy of sorts —
I would argue it is an electoral autocracy — New Delhi’s foreign policy is strictly realist. India has no preference either way for democracy in other countries and refrains from preaching about rights.
This is a consensus view among Hindu majoritarians and their greatly weakened secular opponents .
Because India is still seen as a democracy and shares America’s fear of China, we in the West habitually misread the character of its worldview. When Indian diplomats — such as S Jaishankar, its powerful foreign minister — say India wants to see a multipolar world, that is exactly what they mean.
Perhaps we are so accustomed to French presidents, from Charles de Gaulle to Emmanuel Macron, paying lip service to multipolarity without really meaning it that we assume India is a subcontinental version of France 
.
That would be a false analogy. India has recently overtaken China to become the world’s most populous country. It wants neither a China nor an America-dominated world, though, in the short term, it will tolerate the latter as the lesser evil. The sooner we acknowledge the reality of India as it is, not how we want it to be, the less likely we are to be blindsided by its stances (see Russia-Ukraine).
Rana, do you believe the US would come to India’s defence in another Himalayan border war with China? If so, do you think we are capable of thinking of ourselves as India’s ally while accepting that India is not ours?
Rana Foroohar responds
Ed, I agree with your general take on India. From a business standpoint, it’s such a hot market that large domestic firms such as Tata, which once spent most of their money trying to grow outside the country, have made a turn inwards recently (see this
very good Economist piece on the topic). India for Indians seems to be not only the political but the economic slogan. While the Indian diaspora is certainly huge, with many heading global companies as you point out, the fact that everyone — including the US — wants more access to Indian markets and also wants to be in security partnerships as a counter to China gives the Indians themselves a lot of leverage.
It’s interesting that the US continues to see India as a key ally even as the country imports large amounts of Russian energy, and goes after
US tech firms for digital imperialism (I can’t say I think they are wrong on that front). Still, geography is destiny and the US needs working relationships, strong or not, in and around Asia to counter China.
I wouldn’t expect India or any number of other allies to come to the US’s aid in a hot conflict over Taiwan. But I would expect the US to send weapons if another India/China border conflict broke out.
Troops, probably not.
Welcome to the multipolar world.
