India too, like the US, makes distastefully pragmatic policy choices

Western politicians can often be pretty tone deaf about the oil price compulsions that guide foreign members of their tribe.

Consider the US. There, it is a given that petrol prices and presidential approval are yoked together and this consideration can guide policy.

And yet, it is seen as surprising (and disappointing) that prime ministers in other countries also make the same linkages.

Not being a fan of the Hindu nationalist exclusivism propagated by India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi, this is emphatically not a defence of the country’s pragmatic, if unprincipled stance on Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

In fact, this is an explanation.

There is nothing to defend in the sense that India owed it to itself and to the global south to have been less neutral about Russia’s brutal unprovoked attack on its sovereign neighbour. As a formerly colonised nation and one that has been historically committed to peace, India should have been more high-minded about the Russian invasion, its attempt to …