Who is india allies with

Delhi plays a delicate balancing act between self-interest and historical friendship. And it’s all about oil and gas.

Russian President Vladimir Putin and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi at Hyderabad House, New Delhi (Sanjeev Verma/Hindustan Times via Getty Images)

More information about India is available on the India Page and from other Department of State publications and other sources listed at the end of this fact sheet.

U.S.-INDIA RELATIONS

The U.S.-India strategic partnership is founded on shared values including a commitment to democracy and upholding the rules-based international system. The United States and India have shared interests in promoting global security, stability, and economic prosperity through trade, investment, and connectivity. President Biden and Prime Minister Modi have held two in person bilateral meetings during which they reaffirmed their commitment to a resilient, rules-based international order that safeguards sovereignty and territorial integrity, upholds democratic values, and promotes peace and prosperity for all. President Biden and Prime Minister Modi have also participated in multiple engagements of the of the Quad Leaders mechanism with Japan and Australia. The United States supports India’s emergence as a leading global power and a vital partner in efforts to safeguard the Indo-Pacific as a region of peace, stability, and growing prosperity. The strong people-to-people ties between our countries, reflected in the four million-strong Indian American diaspora and vibrant educational exchange between the two countries, are a tremendous source of strength for the strategic partnership. The 2+2 Ministerial Dialogue between the U.S. Secretaries of State and Defense and their Indian counterparts is the premier recurring dialogue mechanism between the United States and India. The United States hosted the fourth 2+2 Dialogue in April 2022.In addition to the 2+2 Dialogue, the United States and India cooperated in dozens of bilateral dialogues and working groups, which span all aspects of human endeavor, from space and health cooperation to energy and high technology trade. These include the U.S.-India Counterterrorism Joint Working Group, which was established in 2000, as well as the Strategic Clean Energy Partnership, Climate Action and Finance Mobilization Dialogue, Cyber Dialogue, Civil Space Working Group, the Education and Skills Development Working Group, Trade Policy Forum, Defense Policy Group, and Counternarcotics Working Group.

Economic Relations

In 2021, overall U.S.-India bilateral trade in goods and services reached a record $157 billion. The United States is India’s largest trading partner and most important export market. Many U.S. companies view India as a critical market and have expanded their operations there. Likewise, Indian companies seek to increase their presence in U.S. markets and at the end of 2020, Indian investment in the United States totaled $12.7 billion, supporting over 70,000 American jobs. The nearly 200,000 Indian students in the United States contribute $7.7 billion annually to the U.S. economy.

International Cooperation

India and the United States cooperate closely at multilateral organizations, including the United Nations, G-20, Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) Regional Forum, International Monetary Fund, World Bank, and World Trade Organization. The United States welcomed India joining the UN Security Council in 2021 for a two-year term and supports a reformed UN Security Council that includes India as a permanent member. India is an ASEAN dialogue partner, an Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development partner, and an observer to the Organization of American States. Together with Australia and Japan, the United States and India convene as the Quad to promote a free and open Indo-Pacific and provide tangible benefits to the region. In June of 2022, the Quad countries concluded recruitment for the inaugural Quad Fellows, an opportunity for 100 students, 25 each from Australia, India, Japan, and the United States, to pursue a master’s or doctoral studies in STEM in the United States. India is also one of twelve countries partnering with the United States on the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework for Prosperity (IPEF) to make our economies more connected, resilient, clean, and fair. India is a member of the Indian Ocean Rim Association (IORA), at which the United States is a dialogue partner. In 2021, the United States joined the International Solar Alliance headquartered in India, and in 2022 the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) Administrator Samantha Power became Co-chair of the Governing Council of the Coalition for Disaster Resilient Infrastructure (CDRI) where India is a permanent co-chair.

Bilateral Representation

Principal U.S. embassy officials are listed on the embassy website and in the Department’s Key Officers List.

India maintains an embassy in the United States at 2107 Massachusetts Avenue NW, Washington, DC 20008 (tel. 202-939-7000).

More information about India is available from the Department of State and other sources, some of which are listed here:

CIA World Factbook India Page 
U.S. Embassy
USAID India Page 
CDC India Page 
History of U.S. Relations With India
Office of the U.S. Trade Representative Country Page 
U.S. Census Bureau Foreign Trade Statistics 
Export.gov International Offices Page 
Library of Congress Country Studies 
Travel Information

Since the beginning of Russia’s all-out invasion of Ukraine on February 24, the Indian government, and large segments of the Indian public, have firmly been on Putin’s side. Hashtags like #IStandWithPutin and #istandwithrussia trended on Indian social media, and the Indian government demonstrated – perhaps most notably by refusing to support UN resolutions condemning the invasion – that it is not willing to jeopardise its strong ties with Russia over Putin’s actions in Ukraine.

India’s approach to the situation in Ukraine is hardly surprising or atypical. Since the establishment of diplomatic ties following India’s independence in 1947, relations between Moscow and New Delhi have been shaped by a “high degree of political and strategic trust”. Across the years, Russia and India routinely took similar stances and supported each other on contentious international issues.

A partnership based on mutual trust

From the very beginning, Moscow saw its alliance with India as essential for offsetting American and Chinese dominance in Asia. And India always enjoyed the leverage that support from a major power like Russia provided in international politics.

In 1961, after India used its military to end Portuguese colonial sovereignty over Goa, Daman and Diu, for example, the US, the UK, France, and Turkey put forth a resolution condemning India and calling upon its government to withdraw its troops immediately. But the Soviet Union opposed the proposal.

In 1971, India and the Soviet Union signed the “Treaty of Peace, Friendship and Co-operation”. The treaty formalised India’s alliance with what was then a superpower and arguably ensured its preeminence in South Asia.

The Soviet Union and later Russia’s support for India on the issue of Kashmir has also been unrelenting and politically significant. In 1955, declaring support for Indian sovereignty over Kashmir, Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev said, “We are so near that if ever you call us from the mountain tops we will appear at your side.” Since then, Moscow has been a bulwark against international intervention in Kashmir.

The Soviet Union vetoed UN Security Council resolutions in 1957, 1962 and 1971 that called for international intervention in Kashmir, insisting that it is a bilateral issue that needs to be solved through negotiations between India and Pakistan. And it took a similar stance on the Indo-Pak conflict in general. Such a stance was appreciated across the political spectrum in India.

In 1978, then Foreign Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee – a founding member of the right-wing, Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) who served as India’s prime minister between 1998 and 2004  – for example, put aside his ideological differences with the Soviet Union, and greeted a Soviet delegation to India saying, “our country found the only reliable friend in the Soviet Union alone”.

Since the fall of the Soviet Union, Russia has worked to maintain its special relationship with India.

In 2000, Russia’s President Vladimir Putin and then Prime Minister Vajpayee signed a “Declaration of Strategic Partnership”. In 2010, marking a decade of this strategic partnership, both countries signed the “Special and Strategic Partnership”. As part of this special partnership, Russia reaffirmed its pro-India stance on Kashmir. In 2019, when India scrapped Article 370 of its constitution that gave Jammu and Kashmir special status, the Modi government faced severe criticism in the international arena, but Russia once again deemed this to be an “internal matter” for India.

In January 2020, following a China-led push for international intervention in Kashmir, Dmitry Polyanskiy, Russia’s first deputy permanent representative to the UN, tweeted, “UNSC discussed Kashmir in closed consultations. Russia firmly stands for the normalisation of relations between India and Pakistan. We hope that differences between them will be settled through bilateral efforts.”

About the same time, after envoys of several countries announced their intention to visit Kashmir, the Russian Ambassador to India Nikolay Kudashev refused to do so. He said, “I do not feel there is a reason for me to travel. This is an internal matter belonging to the Constitution of India … This is not an issue for Russia. Those who believe that this is an issue, those who are concerned about the situation in Kashmir, those who doubt the Indian policies in Kashmir can travel and see for themselves. We never put it in doubt.”

New Delhi may not have the political clout that comes with being a permanent member of the UN Security Council, but since entering into a strategic partnership with the Soviet Union soon after independence, it has done everything it can to show its support for Moscow in the international arena.

In 1956, for example, India refrained from publicly condemning the Soviet Union’s violent suppression of the Hungarian revolution – this despite India’s then Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru being critical of Moscow’s actions in private.

More than a decade later, in 1968, when Soviet forces invaded Czechoslovakia to crush the Prague Spring, then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi gave a disapproving speech in the lower house of the Indian parliament but refrained from criticising Moscow on an international platform. India abstained from a subsequent vote on a resolution condemning the invasion.

When the Soviet Union entered Afghanistan in 1979 to prop up the new pro-Soviet regime, many in India – including Prime Minister Charan Singh – strongly opposed the invasion. However, having been the beneficiary of many Soviet vetoes across the decades, India once again abstained from voting in the UN General Assembly resolution condemning the Soviet Union. It was the only non-aligned country to do so.

Maintaining this pro-Moscow voting record in the 2000s, India voted against a UN Human Rights Commission resolution that condemned Russia’s “disproportionate use of force” in the second Chechen war. In 2008, along with North Korea, Iran, and Myanmar, it also voted against a UN General Assembly resolution that declared the “right of return” of those displaced by Russia’s campaign in Abkhazia. India also abstained from voting in the 2013 and 2016 UN General Assembly resolutions critical of the Assad regime supported by Russia. Expectedly, in 2014, it also abstained from the UN General Assembly resolution condemning Russia’s invasion of Crimea and, in 2020, it voted against a Ukraine-sponsored UN General Assembly resolution condemning human rights violations in Crimea.

A multifaceted relationship

The relationship between Russia and India, however, is not dependent only on UN vetoes and favourable political statements. The decades-old Indo-Russian alliance is also underpinned by a long history of bilateral collaboration on economic and strategic issues.

The Soviet Union was India’s largest trading partner until its collapse. Soviet economic contributions and technical know-how were essential in the establishment of India’s domestic industries, including oil and gas and mining. The Soviet Union also helped ensure India’s energy security. The first Indian citizen to travel to space, Rakesh Sharma, had done so through the Soviet Union’s Intekosmos programme.

Cultural exchanges have also been at the centre of Russia and India’s bilateral relations from the very beginning. Russian historians, philosophers and artists have expressed their admiration and respect for revolutionary and literary Indian figures. During the height of the Cold War, Hindi films were dubbed into Russian and were immensely popular among Muscovites. The Soviet Union also went to great lengths to ensure that Russian classic texts were available in India, setting up publishing houses that were solely focused on the Indian market.

As Deepa Bhasthi recounted in a recent essay, “For a generation that came of age at the cusp of that very strange period in India when socialism ended and capitalism was becoming wholeheartedly embraced, these books remain a kind of sentimental paraphernalia. The world depicted in the Russian stories was an exotic one … different in weather, names, food, and façades. But the affordable books made it a world its readers felt able to touch, to sense and know well.”

Of course, the most enduring aspect of the Indo-Russian ties has been the military cooperation between the two countries.

The Soviet Union is said to have supplied India during the years with enough military hardware to equip several fleets. This has included “aircraft carriers, tanks, guns, fighter jets, and missiles”. The Soviet Union was also central to the creation of the Indian navy and, in the 1980s, it even leased a nuclear-powered submarine to India.

This Soviet-era legacy has persisted post-1991. Russian-origin weapons are believed to account for 60 to 85 percent of the hardware of the Indian armed forces today.

According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, Russia was the second-largest global arms exporter to India between 2016 and 2020. As its largest importer, India received 23 percent of Russian hardware. Admittedly, compared with 2011-2015, exports to India dropped by 53 percent. However, there are several recent deals in the works. This includes a deal to buy state-of-the-art air defence systems, a Russian proposal to build AIP-powered conventional submarines, as well as a plan to lease two Russian nuclear-ballistic submarines.

A tricky path ahead

In light of this long history of strong diplomatic, military, cultural and economic ties, it is hardly surprising that the Indian government and the public at large, chose to stand with Russia as it faced condemnation from the international community.

India wants to maintain a positive relationship with Russia because it needs Moscow’s support in resolving its territorial conflicts with its neighbours, especially China. It also wants to continue to enjoy economic and military support from Russia. Furthermore, as Russia repeatedly supported India at the UN on issues like Kashmir, many Indians feel as if it is now their turn to return the favour.

Maintaining support for Russia is not going to be easy for India in the coming weeks and months – especially as Moscow, facing crippling sanctions, comes closer to officially becoming a pariah state.

India, however, is experienced in maintaining a needs-based partnership with pariah states. It did so with Iran, for example, despite mounting pressure from the US. Furthermore, under Modi’s leadership, India cultivated strong relationships with other authoritarian leaders like Putin, who had received much criticism from the international community because of their rhetoric and actions, on issues like human rights, democracy and migration, in recent years. Modi famously enjoyed a “bromance” with populist right-wing US President Donald Trump. Under Israel’s far-right leader Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel laid the foundations for a robust economic and strategic alliance with India. In 2020, Brazil’s far-right President Jair Bolsonaro was a guest of honour at India’s annual Republic Day celebration in New Delhi.

But all this does not mean India will maintain its support for Russia whatever it does. In recent years, New Delhi has been rapidly strengthening its ties with the West, and it may soon become too costly for it to maintain its traditional ties with Moscow.

Indeed, if Russia fails to score a decisive victory in Ukraine, or struggles to maintain its economic and military influence in Asia due to sanctions, the Indian government may feel the need to reassess its stance on Putin.

But, at least for now, no one should be at all surprised that India is “standing with Russia” and “supporting Putin”.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.