Western double-speak: Is the right to remain neutral during war a part of white privilege?
The West has been putting tremendous pressure on countries such as India and Bangladesh that have chosen to remain neutral during the Ukraine war
Ravages of war in Ukraine. AP
Recently, Lithuania, which is a member of the European Union, cancelled its donation of over 4,40,000 vaccine doses to Bangladesh. This happened after Bangladesh, just like India, decided to abstain from voting on the recent UN resolution condemning Russian military action in Ukraine. Quite a throwback to tribal societies and childhood rivalries with all the civilisational and humanistic proclamations casually abandoned.
The Russian invasion of Ukraine has led to a searing reaction from governments and the public across the Western world. Apart from economic sanctions, some of the reactions have been downright absurd. For instance, there was the orchestra in Canada that cancelled a show by a 20-year-old music prodigy from Russia. Or the university in Milan that tried to drop the works of Dostoevsky from its literature curriculum. Then, there was the orchestra in Britain that decided they would no longer play music by Russian composer Tchaikovsky for celebrating Russia’s successful defence against Napoleon in 1812. Dear Piotr Tchaikovsky, who passed away in 1893, your reign of terror is over.
As a result, the West has been putting tremendous pressure on countries such as India that have chosen to remain neutral during this war. The pressure has been applied through official channels as well as unofficial ones, such as media, think tanks and intellectual circles. They say that we are either with the West, or against the West. And that as a democracy, it is our moral duty to side with the West.
But this raises a fundamental question: Who has the right to remain neutral in a war? For one, apparently Lithuania itself has that right. They were neutral during World War II. So were its Baltic neighbours such as Latvia and Estonia. And also Spain, Switzerland, Sweden and Ireland. The Kingdom of Belgium remained neutral until Hitler invaded them in May 1940. In that case, how can countries that remained neutral towards Hitler’s war insist that Bangladesh must take sides in a conflict in Eastern Europe?
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With regards to India, sometimes there is a second argument that is brought up. As an aspiring great power, India must step up and be willing to lead. In other words, India must prove its worth. However, a quick glance at history shows that this argument has never been applied to other great powers. The United States remained neutral in World War II until it was invaded by Japan in December 1941. Perhaps even more strikingly, the USSR continued to be neutral towards Japan from 1941 to 1945. At this time, the US was allied with the USSR, the US was at war with both Japan and Germany, but the USSR was at war only with Germany. What is more, the USSR was receiving billions in military aid, from tanks and airplanes to shoes from the US to fight its own war against Germany. But the great power status of the USSR was never questioned.
What explains, therefore, the hostile attitude of the West towards countries such as India or Bangladesh that have refused to take sides between Russia and Ukraine? Could it be that the right to remain neutral in a war is a part of white privilege?
As a matter of fact, the voting pattern in the UN General Assembly was quite revealing. While countries of the West voted en bloc against Russia, those of the Indian subcontinent, as well as a number of prominent African nations such as South Africa, Sudan, Uganda, Namibia, Congo and Zimbabwe, chose to abstain. It should be noted that while Mexico had to vote with the United States, their superpower neighbour and most important trading partner, Mexico, refused to join any sanctions against Russia.
The conclusion is inescapable. The public in countries where the majority is of people of colour see this war differently from countries that are majority white. And there is no better instance of white privilege than to demand that the rest of us have a duty to pick sides in a war between two countries that are both full of white people. Would we expect the rest of the world to feel a similar moral obligation in a war that is between, say, Ethiopia and Kenya? Probably not. For the same reason, countries such as India, Bangladesh or South Africa have a right to pursue an independent foreign policy that suits their own interests. We have no moral obligation to fit into binaries decided by the West.
There is also a lesson here for the Indian elites, tutored by the West, and now so used to lecturing Indian masses on the supposed dangers of “nationalism.” All it took was one crisis in Ukraine for the carefully constructed facade of Western liberalism to fall apart, sending the European continent back to a 1914 trench warfare mentality. The city of Munich just fired the conductor of its orchestra for being Russian. Right now, Russian speakers in Germany are feeling threatened, some are even facing attacks on their homes and businesses. At least at one hospital in Munich, a doctor refused to treat patients who speak Russian. Given the history of Germany, you would think that at least the Germans would realise the dangers of targeting an ethnic group like this. But, apparently they do not.
By contrast, Indian nationalism, driven by a simple love of our country, appears practically harmless. And yet, this nationalism has been written about in the most sinister terms in domestic and foreign media, often invoking Nazi comparisons. This nationalism is taunted daily by our intellectual class. They challenge our masses to prove their “tolerance” by singing songs about destruction of idols, penned by Pakistani poets no less. Think about all the aggression that India has faced from Pakistan in the last 25 years.
The fact is that neither Indian democracy, nor Indian nationalism, has anything to prove to anyone else. Those who defame either of these should be ashamed of themselves and they should start questioning their tutors in the West. The emergence of India from the woods will depend very clearly on choosing its own notions of democracy and nationalism emerging from our own bedrock of societal values and enlightened self-interest.
Abhishek Banerjee is a columnist and author. Vijita Singh Aggarwal is a professor of international business at Indraprastha University. Views expressed are personal.
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