The Telegraph of the United Kingdom even asked, with colonial astonishment, “Can the West trust India?” It is a revealing question—revealing not of India’s conduct, but of a worldview in which the West is the custodian of global virtue and others are meant to obey.
Yet millions of Indians are asking a different, more ancient question: Can India trust the West? The answers forming in the Indian mind are shaped not by editorials but by history, memory, and lived experience. “A nation’s trust is not won by sermons; it is earned by solidarity,” as one might say—and solidarity is something the West offers only when convenient.
History, for Indians, is never an abstraction. It has weight, texture, and blood. In 1971, as India intervened to stop a genocide in East Pakistan, the United States did not support the world’s largest democracy. Instead, Washington dispatched Task Force 74—a powerful naval armada led by the USS Enterprise, the world’s largest nuclear carrier—to the Bay of Bengal, signalling that India was to be intimidated into silence.
In contrast, the Soviet Union responded with astonishing clarity: nuclear-armed submarines and cruisers sailed from Vladivostok and shadowed the American fleet, making it clear that New Delhi would not stand alone. The mighty task force, sent to bully a young India, found itself checkmated and withdrew quietly. “In moments of darkness, one does not forget the hand that reached out,” says an old proverb, and India has not forgotten.
This is what Russia means to India: not sainthood, not perfection, but reliability. And reliability, in a world of shifting allegiances, is worth more than eloquent lectures delivered from editorial pages soaked in selective morality. Those who now scold India for hosting Putin conveniently ignore their own hypocrisies. European LNG imports from Russia rose after the Ukraine war. Western corporations continue to operate in Russia through legal and financial loopholes. Western nuclear reactors still depend on Russian uranium.
“Morality enforced selectively is not morality—it is strategy disguised as virtue.”
Then there is the present. President Donald Trump’s second-term policies have shown India a mirror it did not seek but cannot unsee. His open tilt toward Pakistan, the imposition of tariffs on Indian goods, and his repeated jabs at India’s economy have made it clear that the West’s friendship is transactional. The new American doctrine, stripped of its diplomatic cosmetics, is simply: America first, and everyone else somewhere far behind. That leaves nations like India with no illusions. Trust, to exist, must be mutual.
Against this backdrop, Western outrage over India’s engagement with Russia feels both performative and patronising. If meeting Putin equals endorsing war, then why was there silence when Trump welcomed him? Where was this indignation when China hosted him at SCO summits attended by dozens of nations? Why is India singled out? The uncomfortable truth is that the anger is not moral; it is racialised. It emerges from the belief that Western nations may act in their interest, but India must act in accordance with theirs.
“The coloniser’s voice lingers long after the empire has died.”
India does not support invasions, but neither will it abandon an old ally to satisfy the fleeting indignation of distant commentators. Nations, like individuals, are defined by how they remember their friends. India will protect its interests, honour its partnerships, and walk its own path without apology. The world may frown, lecture, or protest. But sovereignty is not a performance; it is a principle. And India will uphold it—calmly, firmly, and without seeking anyone’s permission.
In the end, the message is simple: we will engage with whom we choose. We remember who stood with us. And we do not need the West’s approval to act as a sovereign civilisation-state.
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