China, Trump and India’s Democratic Aspirations

by Nandita Chaturvedi

The last few months have seen the repairing of the relationship between India and China, in defiance of pressure from the US government. The Indian government, so far having played sweet and non-threatening to the American ruling elite, has finally demonstrated that India is indeed an independent nation, with a foreign policy set by its people and its history, rather than the white world system. India is a difficult nation to understand. As Vladimir Putin once remarked with a smile in a joint press conference with Modi, it is an old civilization, straight answers are difficult. Yet, not only is India an old civilization, with indirect and subtle ways of communication, it is also an incredibly complex and diverse society.

In the days following Trump’s comments that the US would impose 50% tariffs on India if she refused to stop buying oil from the Russians, Narendra Modi said in one of his speeches, “For us, the interest of farmers remains our top priority. India will never compromise on the interests of farmers, fishermen, and dairy farmers. I know we will have to pay a heavy price for it, and I am ready for it. India is ready for it.” From the same leader who had planned to open up the farming sector these comments marked a departure. 

The divergence between India and the US grew deeper this past month as Modi visited Beijing for the meeting of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization. Pictures of Modi laughing in a close circle with Putin and Xi Jinping made newspapers the world over. This marks a huge event in India’s trajectory, where the media within the nation has been filled with anti-China articles by Western facing and Western trained analysts. The Observer Research Foundation is one such hub which keeps up a constant stream of articles in major newspapers that cite China as a threat, a competitor and an ally of India’s enemies in Pakistan. So then what caused this departure in the government’s stance on China?

Indian Farmers and Deepening Democracy

The years 2020 and 2021 saw massive protests by farmers organizations and unions in India. These protests were directed against three farm laws that were passed by the Indian parliament, opening up the agricultural sector to multinational corporations. The protests, initially started by farmers unions, pointed in particular to the removal of government guarantees on minimum prices for crops. The protests started in the states of Haryana and Punjab, which are also the two states that produce the maximum of India’s food surplus, but the movement spread quickly nationwide. 

The protests continued, non-violently through a wave of the COVID 19 pandemic. Farmers from Punjab, Haryana camped right outside Delhi, blocking roads entering the capital. They non-violently campaigned through the bitterly cold Delhi winter, with huge organizing to feed and provide basic necessities to thousands living in a makeshift camp. November 2020 saw a nationwide general strike in support of the farmers and thousands more arrived at Delhi’s borders. Rakesh Tikait emerged as a spokesperson of the leadership of these protests. From a family of farmers, Tikait spent some time working as constable in the Delhi Police. In the leadership of the movement, Tikait firmly stood on the side of non-violent protest. He would invoke Mahatma Gandhi more than once to justify the need for a mass movement. 

The farmers' protests were a democratic movement by the Indian peasants to defend the gains made by the Indian state to protect its people against foreign exploitation. They were possibly the largest non-violent movement of the peasantry since the freedom struggle. They showed that the Indian people were willing, even in this time, to sacrifice in order to struggle against imperialism, and in defence of the Indian freedom struggle. The Modi government, which had previously painted them as trouble-makers and forces for destabilization, could not ignore this movement. The government was forced to negotiate with the farmers, and repeal the farm laws.

Thus, when Trump demanded last month that India open up its farming sector to American companies, the Indian government knew that this was an issue that could potentially bring them to their knees. The Indian peasantry had already made clear that they would not accept a dismantling of the state, and they were willing to sacrifice for it. Modi and his cabinet could no doubt see that another confrontation with the farmers could cause their legitimacy to crumble. Thus, it was a triumph for a deepening Indian democracy that when the American government put pressure on the Modi government, Modi could, and had to come out declaring “For farmers, fishermen, and livestock rearers, Modi will always stand as a wall of protection.”

It was a democratic movement of the Indian peasantry that compelled Modi to seek China as an ally. The Indian people, and their democratic aspirations and capacities constitute a force for peace. For the struggle for peace is one and the same as the struggle to eliminate poverty in India. We in India must learn what we can from the Chinese experience, and work strongly with our neighbours to lift the Indian people to a new standard of life. The Indian people, struggling against imperialist exploitation for a better future for their children, open up the possibilities for a peaceful Asia, and a new world order. 

Confrontation with the Racial System

India does not have a racial system. Most Indians grow up away from the direct influence of the color line, and only deal with the indirect effects of whiteness. When face to face with white people, they assume them to be in psychology similar to themselves. This is, of course, a grave error, and can sometimes bias them towards an unconscious belief in white supremacy. Indians are unable often to read between the lines of white assumptions. Yet, Indians are proud people, and they remember the humiliations of their colonial past, as they remember the West’s treatment of the Indira Gandhi government. All these contradictions have been expressed in the actions of the Modi government over the past few months. 

Yet none of this is true about the current class of Indian intellectuals. Indian intellectuals, I argue, are one of the biggest anti-China and pro-war lobbies within India. Unlike the Indian people, they are weak and accustomed to getting rewarded for aligning with the white world. They have turned their backs on the people and on their civilization. Invited to discussions on peace in Asia, they only know how to bring up China’s support for Pakistan, neglecting to note that peace in South Asia must be a part of peace in Asia. They bring up the trade deficit, the border dispute, the incident in Galwan valley in 2020, in the name of being ‘pragmatic’. They have no long term vision for the nation or for Asia, and continue to be tied up in the western cast net of ‘pragmatic politics’. Further, they are insecure of China’s rapid rise, and delude themselves by thinking that India is an economic and military rival to China. The truth of the situation is that China is competing with the West, and poses not only an ideological but a technological challenge to the US.

As an example, a recent book on China was released in a high profile function in New Delhi where National Security Adviser Shivshankar Menon and former Foreign Secretary Shyam Saran were present. At the same event, Manoj Joshi, a fellow at the Observer Research Foundation, said, “The Tianjin summit was a process in repairing the relationship broken in 2020. No one knows why China did what it did in 2020, but this meeting certainly propels the relationship to where it stands today. But let’s not overstate the value of the summit.” He also brought up the contentious point of Tibet. Former Foreign Secretary Vijay Gokhale, also at this event, called the ‘regime’ in China ‘autocratic’. This is nothing but parroting American ruling class talking points, when everyone in the world can see the huge significance of an India-China alliance.

Not surprisingly, when the farmer’s protests were ongoing, the intellectuals had criticised them as being dominated by large farmers and not representing the aspirations of those at the margins. This reflected their leanings towards post-modernism and identity politics. 

The intellectual class has forgotten the legacy of our freedom struggle, when figures such as Tagore and Tan Yun Shan put forward a new framework and new ideas for thinking of relations between India and China. They did not view India and China through narrow geopolitical or pragmatic terms, but rather in civilizational terms. For Tagore, the relationship between these two great and ancient civilizations could not be based purely on material benefit or trade, but had to be rooted in a common understanding of humanity and peace. Cheena Bhavan, founded by Tagore and Tan Yun Shan, showed a new way of intercivilizational dialogue, not in reaction to the West or drawing from the West, but rather surpassing Western terms. Tagore would say in his trip to China, “My friends, I have come to ask you to re-open the channel of communion which I hope is still there; for though overgrown with weeds of oblivion its lines can still be traced. I shall consider myself fortunate if, through this visit, China comes nearer to India and India to China,—for no political or commercial purpose, but the disinterested human love and for nothing else.”

Despite this deep and rich legacy to draw on, the intellectuals in our think tanks and universities continue to draw from Western liberal theory and post modernism. This makes them Western facing, dependent on white intellectual figures for authority and validation. However, as Tagore had pointed out, a leaning towards the west means at best indifference to war, and at worst support for it. 

Thus, the struggle for peace in Asia and the world is inextricably tied to the ongoing ideological struggle between the Indian people and the intellectuals that set the path for the nation. The Indian people still draw on the philosophies of Gandhi and Tagore, although a leadership that can fully articulate their aspirations is absent. Their frameworks and desire for peace is in direct contrast to Western backed academics and intellectuals, who do not see peace as a priority. Thus, those who want to fight for peace and the elimination of poverty must struggle for a new movement of ideas that can challenge the current intellectual class, and build on the ideas and work of our freedom struggle. We must recognize that domestic movements are not separate from the struggle for peace, but rather that peace goes hand in hand with poverty elimination and a new democracy.

Nandita Chaturvedi is a member of the Intercivilizational Dialogue Project and an editor of this journal.