When I came to the United Nations earlier this week to appeal to world leaders to take action on Russia’s carpet-bombing of my country, Ukraine, my hometown had been reduced to rubble, and its people were refugees in their own city.
They have been living through the horror: terrified families hunkered in bunkers, bombs raining down on civilian convoys, people dying of disease, food supplies running out, maternity hospitals being bombed.
In Kharkiv, in the east of Ukraine, the shelling has destroyed 600 buildings and killed people indiscriminately, tragically, including an innocent Indian student, Naveen Shekharappa. And at the borders, it has been chaos. Ask any one of the 20,000 Indian students caught up in the war, who lived through hell for simply wanting a good education, to understand the fast deteriorating situation.
India is not new to war, having recently survived many, including Kargil. Why does the largest democracy in the world want to be singled out among the free nations for standing alongside brutal authoritarian regimes such as China, one that tried to annex Indian land? What has prompted the Indian refusal to condemn what is not just an immoral act of violent invasion, but now the fastest-growing humanitarian crisis in the world?
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If India needs arms primarily to dampen the aggressive territorial intentions of China and Pakistan, why would it stand with them in supporting Putin’s invasion? These countries want Russia to succeed in order to legitimise their own future plans for aggressive border expansion. Does India really want to back that precedent?
A moral imperative for India
It is the moral question that is the most difficult for India to answer, striking at the very heart of the country’s identity as the world’s largest democracy. Since independence, India has proudly stood as a beacon of hope for the idea that an entire continent of different peoples can peacefully and productively co-exist; that democracy works even when conducted on the largest scale. Besides, if India sees itself as a candidate for permanent seat at the UN Security Council, it needs to first stand for and uphold the very ethos of democracy – one that it fought to achieve.
One cannot deny India’s soft power. As Ukrainians, we are in awe of India’s extraordinary, seemingly unique ability to juggle multiple ethnicities, languages, religions, special interests, geographies and histories – and somehow make it work as a free society. But that kind of democratic co-existence of peoples is anathema to Vladimir Putin.
File photo of Russian President Vladimir Putin with Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Photo: PTI
He has consistently refused to recognise Ukraine as a nation despite the fact that the whole world has done so for decades. He simply does not want democratic independence on his borders. He wants to drag us back to colonial times, with rule from afar by uncompromising dictatorships.
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It is exactly why he is waging this war – with the backing of China and other authoritarian regimes. Putin has spent two decades challenging the international consensus that democracy is the only viable path to prosperity and security. He has been waiting for his moment to strike against it.
He sees democracy as a fatal human flaw. He is prepared, at first, to undermine it with subtle disinformation; then with open lies and propaganda; and then, if all of that fails, to bomb it out of existence until it is only a folk memory. Do Indians want to be seen as an ally of the person who doesn’t believe in the foundation of democracy on which India stands today?
Ukraine has been Putin’s moment to launch the final attack. He wants to snuff out the basics of human liberty in Ukraine. But in the process, he has a wider goal: To set a precedent for the death of democracy around the world. He wants this to be an emblem that freedom has been vanquished.
The invasion of Ukraine is, therefore, not just a domestic dispute. This is not just our war. It is the signal that we are at an inflection point in history. When this year began, democracy was already under threat, with just one in five of the world’s population now living in free societies today. China is rattling its sabres at India, Japan and Taiwan; Russia is now attacking free nations. This is not a war on the Ukrainian people. It’s a war on democracy and the free future of the world. On which side of this war does India stand?
Yevhenii Monastyrskyi is the Monitoring and Evaluation Manager at Stabilisation Support Services in Ukraine, and Research Lead at the War Childhood Museum, Ukraine.