West Asia: India’s strategic clarity amid selective outrage
In politics, memory is often the first casualty of expediency. The present uproar in India over the government’s response to the convulsions in West Asia offers yet another illustration of this familiar phenomenon.
The Congress party has suddenly rediscovered the language of moral indignation. Its leaders now accuse the present government of “silence”, of “abdication”, and of abandoning India’s civilisational ethos in responding to the death of Iran’s Supreme Leader.
Is this judgement driven by concern for high moral values, or by the opposition’s selective memory, amnesia and political pressures? West Asia today stands on the edge of a dangerous precipice. Over the past two weeks, the United States and Israel have launched relentless aerial strikes on Iran.
Tehran, in retaliation, has launched missile and drone attacks across the region-targeting Israel while also striking American military installations and strategic assets across Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Kuwait, Bahrain, Jordan, Syria and Iraq.
The economic ramifications are equally severe. Nearly twenty per cent of the world’s daily oil consumption passes through the narrow maritime corridor known as the Strait of Hormuz. Iran’s decision to close this strategic waterway has effectively paralysed global oil shipments.
In this volatile theatre, one fact stands beyond dispute: none of the actors involved can claim the mantle of moral innocence. The Iranian regime itself has long been associated with repression at home and destabilisation abroad.
The Islamic Republic that emerged after the 1979 revolution institutionalised a doctrine of ideological expansion. Through the Revolutionary Guard’s Quds Force, Tehran nurtured and financed a network of militant proxies such as Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas across the region. This strategy enabled Iran to project power across West Asia while retaining plausible deniability.
Nor does Washington’s record inspire moral confidence. The United States has often behaved as a self-appointed global arbiter whose commitment to principle fluctuates with strategic convenience.
From the devastation of the Vietnam War to its equivocal conduct during the Bangladesh Liberation War of 1971, from the invasion of Iraq to the two-decade military experiment in Afghanistan, American policy has frequently subordinated moral consistency to geopolitical calculation.
In the 1980s, Washington famously nurtured militant jihadist networks as instruments against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan. Decades later, the same networks evolved into the violent forces that haunt the world today.
Even today, this pattern persists. If President Donald Trump, transactional in nature, genuinely believed in liberating the Iranian people from the excesses of their theocratic rulers, one might reasonably ask why his administration continues to embrace Pakistan’s military establishment with such warmth.
Against this turbulent international backdrop, political debate in India has acquired an oddly theatrical tone. Sonia Gandhi has criticised the government for failing to condemn the assassination of Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
Writing in a newspaper column, Sonia argued that the Modi government’s response represented not neutrality but abdication. According to her, India’s silence signalled tacit endorsement of a grave rupture in international relations.
Such claims, while rhetorically dramatic, collapse under the weight of facts. India did not remain silent. India’s External Affairs Minister held discussions with his Iranian counterpart to maintain diplomatic communication at a moment of extraordinary tension. These actions reflect a deliberate attempt to preserve dialogue rather than inflame passions.
At the same time, Prime Minister Narendra Modi engaged extensively with leaders across the region-from the United Arab Emirates and
Saudi Arabia to Jordan and Bahrain. His conversations emphasised the need for restraint, de-escalation and the protection of civilian lives.
For India, whose nearly ten million citizens live and work across the Gulf, such caution is not timidity; it is responsibility.
Yet the most striking element of the present controversy lies not in what the Congress says but in what it chooses to forget. Sonia Gandhi invokes India’s civilisational ethos of ‘Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam’-the belief that the world is one family. The phrase is indeed a profound element of India’s philosophical heritage. The same moral urgency is rarely heard when Hindus in neighbouring Bangladesh face persecution and violence at the hands of radical groups or when, closer to home, in Kashmir during the 1980s.
The irony deepens when one recalls the record of the very Iranian leader whose death has inspired such passionate commentary. Ayatollah Khamenei was hardly a sympathetic observer of India’s internal affairs.
On multiple occasions, the Ayatollah publicly criticised India on issues ranging from Kashmir to the Citizenship Amendment Act. In 2017, he urged the Muslim world to support what he described as the “oppressed Muslims of Kashmir”, echoing narratives long propagated by Pakistan.
After the abrogation of Article 370 in 2019, the Ayatollah again called upon India to adopt what he termed a “just policy”. During the riots in Delhi in 2020, he accused India of persecuting Muslims and warned of isolation from the
Islamic world.
Such statements did not reflect friendly engagement; they were overt attempts to influence India’s internal discourse. Yet those who now mourn Khamenei as a misunderstood statesman appear curiously oblivious to this history.
The Congress party’s moral posture becomes even more puzzling when one examines its own record on Iran. During the years of the United Progressive Alliance government, India voted against Tehran three times at the International Atomic Energy Agency-in 2005, 2006 and 2009-over concerns regarding Iran’s nuclear programme.
These votes, widely interpreted as aligning with American preferences during negotiations over the Indo-US civil nuclear agreement, triggered intense criticism within India. Nor was this the only instance.
Under sanctions pressure from the United States and Europe, India gradually reduced its imports of Iranian oil during that period. A proposed gas pipeline linking Iran, Pakistan and India lost momentum amid geopolitical complications. These decisions may well have been dictated by strategic necessity, but they make today’s accusations of diplomatic timidity ring somewhat hollow.
The deeper transformation, however, lies in the evolution of India’s foreign policy over the past decade. Modi’s own diplomatic initiatives symbolise this shift. His historic visit to Israel in July 2017 marked the first time an Indian prime minister set foot in the Jewish state. The visit ended decades of hesitation rooted in domestic political sensitivities.
Nearly nine years later, in February 2026, he returned again, reaffirming India’s growing partnership with Israel in technology, defence and innovation. These engagements did not alienate the Arab world; instead, India simultaneously strengthened its ties with Saudi Arabia, the UAE and other Gulf states.
The message was clear: India would pursue its interests with clarity rather than ideological anxiety.
This confidence was articulated succinctly by External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar at the Raisina Dialogue in 2022. “We have to be confident about who we are,” he observed. “It is better to engage the world on the basis of who we are rather than try and please the world as a pale imitation of what they are.”
In this intense conflict, there are no saints to be found. So, which side should India back — Iran or the US-Israel alliance? The answer is clear: neither. India must put its own interests first, and the Modi government is already leading the charge in doing just that.
The writer is an eminent columnist, former Chairman of the Indian Institute of Mass Communication (IIMC), and the author of ‘Tryst with Ayodhya: Decolonisation of India’ and ‘Narrative ka Mayajaal’; views are personal
