Detachment of the Unifier

THE MOTTO THAT captures the globalisation of Bharat has to be culturally compatible. So nothing could have been more evocative than Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam as Delhi’s phrase for a polarised world to hang on to at the G20 summit. When power stresses its civilisational content, and when the modernity of development and the rewards of democracy are expressed through soundbites mined from antiquity, the sto­ry it tells is as much about the narrator as it is about the politi­cal space he dominates. When Narendra Modi, the host of the summit, invoked the imagery of the world as one family in Sanskrit, it was the penultimate touch in the self-portrait of a man who, since the very beginning of his public life, has been appending the metrics of power. The world that descended on Delhi over a September weekend provided him with the perfect stage to play the unifier—and the family sage.

As he stood there, with the wheel of time as backdrop, welcoming his guests, we could not have missed the variety of leaders that paraded past the motifs of an antique land, each one of those foreign visitors a statement about the world that dared the best intentions of the summit’s outgoing presidency. They were all there: Democrats weighed down by the demands of democracy itself; autocrats struggling for the kind of legitimacy that no democracy can offer; dictators whose global influence is unrelated to a reign of unfreedom; and apostles of redundant ideologies and casual man­ufacturers of the enemy. As Naipaul would have said, the world is what it is. Almost eight decades after World War II, it is home to leaders who believe in the uses of war and leaders who cannot afford to condemn it out­right—and the world is what the cult of national interest has made of it.

In this world, old descriptors of status have little value. Take the leader of the free world, and think of how fast the term’s loftiness of Cold War vintage has worn off. America may still be the world’s most influential country because of its economy and soft power—but an updated version of Wilsonian idealism is something a Joe Biden cannot apply on the world today, though his steady position on Ukraine is a triumph of international morality over pragmatism of the inward gaze a Donald Trump would have preferred.

America is not trapped in a new Cold War. It is a not a linear clash of ideologies; there is no singular rejoinder, like the Soviet Union in another time, to Americanism. Anti- Americanism as sustained by the power and paranoia of the ‘victim’ states has many variations today—a Xi version, a Putin version, a Kim version… It is Putin, in his various solilo­quies about Russian exceptionalism, who has rephrased anti- Americanism as a specific manifestation of his critique of a deranged Western value system. From the ruins of an empire, and still wallowing in lost glory, what he sees at home and beyond gives him no cheer. If it is a nation diminished by history that hurts him at home, what he sees beyond is the cause of the humiliation, a culturally inferior but resourceful West. Putin’s war against Ukraine is also an argument against the West, the same entity with which he argues Zelensky has struck a Faustian deal. His anti-Americanism is a global expres­sion of a domestic frustration.

For Xi, America is an inspiration as well as an anxiety. He wants to achieve every­thing America did—but with Chinese characteristics. His anti-Americanism is part competition and part combat, and his style is both overt and covert. Xi’s China aspires to be the alternative superpower, and he expands his spheres of influence through coercion and assistance. Still, China can’t be the other superpower, the Soviet Union of the 21st century, because it doesn’t trust its own people, and it is too paranoid to stand in the vanguard of global leadership.

At the Delhi summit, both were absent for obvious reasons. For Putin, waiting for the comrade from the Hermit Kingdom was worthier than supping with those Western grandees who treated him like a war criminal, even though Delhi was certain to make him feel at home. Xi knew what was at play and whom the leader of the West, read America, was trying so hard to contain. He also knew the strategic importance of the venue: India is being court­ed for being non-China. A Xi-shaped hole at the summit was the reminder of a world that still needed enemies—and that the doctrine of fragmentation was a prerequisite for the survival of the Xis and the Putins.

It was not for poetic effect that Modi invoked Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam; he was determined to turn it into a catch­phrase for his internationalism. The world endorsed him not just for being the leader of non-China, but for being the voice that others expressed too loudly or too meekly. Countries like the US and the UK, for instance, were okay with the Indian way of taking a stance against Russia and war without mentioning Russia—or without an open endorsement of Zelensky. No single nation prevailed in the Delhi declaration; India’s victory—as the authorship of a Declaration belongs to the host—was in updating its dip­lomatic independence as a global attitude of unity. It is not refurbished non-alignment. It is about multiple alignments without ideological affiliations. In another era, India’s internationalism was ideological subservience in the name of non-alignment and Third-World solidarity.

Moderation is an unlikely word the international media will use to tell the Indian story under the rule of a “Hindu nationalist party”, but that is the only word that captures the spirit of the Delhi declaration. In a world that swings between extremes, the new Wise Man from the East has written a global philosophy about unity through detachment. It’s a big deal.

G20 SummitgeopoliticsgovernanceNarendra ModiVasudhaiva Kutumbakamworld leaders