Indian PM’s Sydney visit welcome
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s determination to go ahead with his visit to Sydney next week despite the disappointing cancellation of the Quad summit is welcome and significant. His decision will help give the lie to whatever smug misconceptions may have arisen in Beijing and Moscow that the summit’s abrupt cancellation has revealed a lack of commitment by Quad alliance members. After Joe Biden’s decision to return directly to Washington following this weekend’s G7 summit in Hiroshima, it would have been all too easy for Mr Modi, leader of the world’s most populous democracy, to return home too. Instead, according to reports on Thursday, he has decided to keep his commitment to visit Australia and Papua New Guinea, as scheduled. The importance of his doing so would be difficult to overstate.
He may have been motivated, in part, by the expectations of Australia’s rapidly growing Indian diaspora of more than 750,000, due to hold an event to welcome him at Sydney’s Olympic Park on Tuesday. What Mr Modi is clearly determined to do is signal the strong, undiminished support for the Quad by a country that, according to the UN, now has a population larger than China’s, armed forces not far short of China’s, and economic progress that is fast challenging China’s. Mr Modi’s visit reinforces perceptions of the Quad as an alliance of four democratic nations forming a crucial bulwark against malevolent Chinese communist expansionism in the Asia-Pacific region. It will also be vital to building the bilateral relationship between Canberra and New Delhi following Anthony Albanese’s trip to India in March. The Indian leader’s visit should help reinforce the view that despite the summit’s cancellation, the Quad has lost none of its momentum, relevance or purpose in defending democracy and national sovereignty wherever it is being threatened.
It will be unfortunate, however, if in signalling India’s determination to play a key role in securing democracy in our region Mr Modi does not reconsider his government’s perplexing unwillingness so far to utter a word of criticism about Vladimir Putin’s assault on Ukraine’s sovereignty and the destruction of democracy and human rights flowing from the lawless Russian invasion.
India has decades-old ties to Moscow dating back to the post-independence Nehru-Gandhi dynasty. Mr Modi’s right-wing Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata party still relies heavily on the Kremlin for military supplies. But its unwillingness to speak out about the human rights abuses and disregard for national sovereignty being committed by Mr Putin in Ukraine damages perceptions of India as a true defender of democracy and human decency.
After the debacle of the cancelled summit, Mr Modi can be assured of a very warm welcome to Australia, which he has not visited for nine years. But he must be prepared to explain why his government, as a member of the Quad, has been so reluctant to align itself with its three partners when it comes to the slaughter and destruction unleashed by Mr Putin in Ukraine.