Imperialism and Its Bullying of India

By Prabhat Patnaik  –  Aug 10, 2025

It is ironical that on the 78th anniversary of the victory of the Indian people’s struggle against British imperialism, US imperialism is openly bullying India into obeying its diktat. But that, it would be argued, is in the nature of imperialism; in fact during these 78 years there have been several attempts by US imperialism to make India conform to its diktat. But there are two basic differences between the current attempt and the ones earlier: first, the current attempt is not couched in terms of “do what we are asking you to do for your own benefit”; it is much more direct than that: “do what we are asking you to do for our benefit otherwise you will be punished.” Second, unlike in the past the government of India is not standing up in a forthright manner but giving mixed signals in response to this bullying. Let me elaborate.

When independent India had refused to join any of the military alliances like SEATO and CENTO that US imperialism had formed around the world to encircle the Soviet Union, but had instead chosen to follow a policy of non-alignment, it had earned the wrath of the US. Its then Secretary of State John Foster Dulles had advanced the dictum “if you are not with us then you are against us”; in accordance with it the US had treated India with hostility. During the ambitious years of planning when self-reliance, building up the heavy industry base of the economy under the aegis of the public sector, and removing the stranglehold of metropolitan capital over the economy, were being emphasized, there was hardly any “development assistance” either from the US or from institutions like the World Bank that it controlled. The various American-funded “experts” who visited India “advised” against the Mahalanobis strategy that gave expression to this prioritisation of self-reliance (see the essay “Ploughing the Plan Under” in Daniel and Alice Thorner’s book Land and Labour in India).

With the steadfast support of the Soviet Union, however, India persisted both in its policy of non-alignment and in its policy of self-reliance, using the public sector to counter the hegemony of metropolitan capital. It had to undergo intense foreign exchange rationing but it stayed the course. Towards the end of the 1950s, after Dulles’ death, the US slowly changed its stance, afraid that its stand-offish policies were hurting it (and helping the Soviet Union) rather than making countries like India bend. After Eisenhower’s visit to India in the late fifties, some World Bank “aid” finally started coming in, and that too only for infrastructure projects.

Again, during the Bangladesh war when India’s intervention had robbed the US of a golden opportunity to fish in troubled waters, its government was so incensed that it even sent its Task Force 74, led by its aircraft carrier USS Enterprise to the Bay of Bengal to intimidate India. However undaunted by US threats India stayed the course, and helped the process of creation of Bangladesh.

Bullying by US imperialism, not just general imperialist endeavour to establish hegemony, but efforts in specific cases to make this country fall in line with the American agenda, is thus an old phenomenon, which independent India had earlier resisted with success; the current bullying however, while not new, is occurring in an altogether different context where the country has espoused neoliberal capitalism and hence the hegemony of globalised finance capital.

The current bullying by Donald Trump, which is not confined to India alone, is about two issues: the first is tariffs, where the failure to reach an agreement by August 1, now means that Indian goods would invite 25 per cent tariffs in the US market; the second is the penalty tariffs that the US threatens to impose on Indian goods because of the fact that India has been buying oil from Russia in violation of the western sanctions imposed on that country. In addition, Trump has thrown in remarks about BRICS that suggest that he proposes to bully India into either leaving that organisation, or, more likely, acting as an American Trojan Horse there; but that is not an issue of immediate relevance. On the immediate and basic issue of buying Russian oil however the Indian government has been dilly-dallying, making contradictory statements, which portends appeasement of the US.

Because Russian oil is cheaper than from any other US-approved source available to India, it is obvious that pressurising India to stop buying Russian oil amounts to making it act against its own interests. And why? These are not UN-mandated sanctions like those imposed against apartheid South Africa; these are unilateral sanctions imposed by the US and other imperialist countries against countries that defy their diktat, such as Cuba, Iran or Venezuela. Bullying countries into accepting such sanctions therefore amounts to making them go against their own self-interest to further the cause of imperialism. There is not even any pretence in other words that countries are being asked to fall in line with the US in the name of some higher principle; they are being openly and palpably bullied to serve the strategic interests of imperialism at their own expense.

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Why has the Modi government not boldly and decisively rejected Trump on this issue? After all, leaving aside China, the government of even a capitalist country like Brazil has taken on Trump boldly, with President Lula declaring that if Trump imposes 50 per cent tariff on Brazilian goods then Brazil too would impose 50 per cent tariff on American goods. The Congress Party has rightly highlighted Modi’s pusillanimity and contrasted it with Indira Gandhi’s bold confrontation with Nixon during the Bangladesh war (Nixon had once admitted to being afraid of looking into her eyes). But a leader’s boldness or pusillanimity is not independent of a class anchorage; and the difference between Lula and Modi is that while the former has his roots in the working class, the latter, while no doubt getting some workers’ votes, is basically propped up by the big bourgeoisie. Likewise, the difference between India’s stand vis-à-vis US imperialism’s bullying tactics then and now, lies not so much in the individual traits of a Nehru or an Indira Gandhi vis-à-vis a Modi (though that difference of course is undeniable), but in the difference between an anti-colonial dirigiste regime and a neoliberal regime.

It is obvious that a close relationship exists between a country’s foreign policy and its economic policy. While the dirigiste economic policy that prioritised self-reliance was in sync with India’s non-aligned foreign policy, and hence with its willingness and ability to stand up to imperialist bullying, the neoliberal regime prides itself for subverting any attempt at self-reliance; ‘Make in India” is an invitation to foreign capital to produce here. The very raison d’etre of neoliberalism is the moving away from all efforts at self-reliance by the developing country, which necessarily makes it vulnerable to imperialist arm-twisting.

When the neoliberal regime was introduced in India the argument advanced in its favour was that it represented a permanent new order where capital was globally mobile, because of which the low-wage countries of the global south would now constitute the primary locations of a whole range of activities that had been housed earlier in the global north; such relocation from the north to the south would remove underdevelopment and poverty in the south. An obvious problem with this argument was that nothing about a global order can be taken as being valid for ever. Such orders are created by imperialism and can be altered at will by imperialism, as is now obvious. But when imperialism does backtrack from any existing order, countries of the South like India caught in its grip find it difficult to extricate themselves.

Once a country becomes trade-dependent, then any disruption in trade knocks it hard. Hence, unless it is willing to make a major re-adjustment in its economic regime, the country would tend to compromise whenever imperialism engages in blatant bullying. But any such readjustment would be opposed by the big bourgeoisie and the urban upper middle class that has been the main beneficiary of the neoliberal regime; any government that is primarily concerned with the interests of this segment therefore would be prone to making compromises in the face of imperialism’s bullying demands.

An example will make this point clear. Trump’s tariff threat has already meant a weakening of the rupee. As the higher tariffs kick in, the rupee will fall further unless capital controls are imposed; and there would have to be trade controls in addition, to manage the foreign exchange front. All this would mean a retreat from the neoliberal regime and its replacement by an alternative regime. But the big bourgeoisie integrated with globalised finance capital will resist this, and a government committed to its interests will not contemplate any such alternative; it would much rather make compromises in the face of imperialist bullying.

Independence from imperialism, it follows, is fundamentally antithetical to the pursuit of a neoliberal strategy, as successive Indian governments had recognised for long before the 1990s turnaround. The espousal of neoliberalism has constrained the country’s freedom. Donald Trump’s bullying antics only make this point abundantly clear.

 

 

(People’s Democracy)