Amidst the jubilation over India's diplomatic outreach to Central Europe, it is urgent to contextualise the region and the Prime Minister's visit.
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First, the desired effect may not be achieved without the recognition that there are Europes within Europe: Central Europe is a distinct cultural entity, and its countries take pride in the space they have carved out for themselves, often in opposition to the West: the distances between Paris and Prague, between Brussels and Bratislava, are greater than one might imagine from New Delhi.
The region's self-image is perhaps best expressed by Milan Kundera: “The peoples of Central Europe are not conquerors. They cannot be separated from European history, nor can they exist outside it. But they represent the wrong side of this history; they are its victims, outsiders.” One of Kundera's lifelong concerns was to represent the so-called “tragedy of Central Europe”, a region whose culture and geography have often been threatened by invaders, the most recent invader being Vladimir Putin's Russia.
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Secondly, there is a Europe within Central Europe, a prime example of which is the Visegrad Four, an alliance of Czech Republic, Slovakia, Poland and Hungary. Several prominent citizens of the four countries are actively involved in promoting and protecting their common interests through the alliance. With Poland at the forefront, they are also keenly aware that Poland and Slovakia will be the first to be affected by Russian aggression and have been at the forefront of supporting Ukraine's resistance against Russia. These countries harbor the greatest resentment towards India's position vis-à-vis Putin. A diplomatic foray into Central Europe without recognising these nuances will not help India's position.
Thirdly, apart from official visits, India had a lively and active exchange with the region during the Soviet era. As the Eastern Bloc countries expanded their influence in Asia and elsewhere, India became one of their main recipients. The story of Indians nurtured by British and American institutions is well documented, but few know the ties India had with the countries east of the Alps. Chitprasad Bhattacharya, a brilliant artist who lived in extreme poverty in India and is best known for his sketches depicting the suffering of the 1943 Bengal famine, found a benefactor in the 1950s in the great Czech Indologist Miroslav Krasa. Chitprasad began publishing his works in well-known Czech magazines and the National Gallery in Prague purchased as many as 38 of his works in 1963-64.
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These interactions have declined significantly over the past three decades. In the diplomatic realignment following the collapse of the Soviet Union, India found ways to maintain close ties with Moscow, but somehow abandoned its old friends in the East. Recently, an Indian ambassador to a Central European country vividly described to me New Delhi's disinterest in the region. “The South has little interest in Budapest or Warsaw, with its gaze fixed on the capitals of the Western powers. What's worse, Indian embassies in Central European countries mostly operate in silos, with little coordination,” he said.
A prime example of this neglect is the Indian Embassy in the Czech Republic, where India's current foreign minister served as ambassador at the start of this century. During the Cold War, the Indian embassy was housed in a vast site in Prague's upscale Malá Strana district. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, it was unable to maintain the site and now operates from a less conspicuous and noticeably smaller building.
Fourth, the bond shared between the two countries is not limited to diplomatic visits and bilateral trade but is also forged through cultural and people-to-people exchanges. As the failure of India's policy in Dhaka has glaringly demonstrated, the Indian government has put all its eggs in one basket, completely ignoring the people of Bangladesh. A flourishing bilateral relationship could not prevent India's image from being tarnished on the streets in its eastern neighbour.
Just 20 years before Narendra Modi became the first Indian Prime Minister to visit Warsaw in 45 years, the Republic of Poland had awarded the Order of the Cross to an Indian poet in 2004. Ashok Vajpayee, who translated the works of Nobel laureates Wisława Szymborska and Czesław Miłosz into Hindi, may be a national treasure on another planet, but in India he is the subject of right-wing vilification and hate campaigns. Not only has the Modi government done little to build, let alone deepen, cultural ties with the Central European country, it has dishonored its own cultural ambassadors.
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In fact, all of Europe held these bonds in such high regard that a plaque at the Parisian bookstore Shakespeare & Company symbolized it: “Sylvia Beach has done more to unite England, America, Ireland and France than any four great ambassadors combined.”
Central Europe is proud of its literary and cultural wealth, and India also values its riches. Chittaprosad remains a subject of study in the region, which Modi recently visited. Vienna art historian Simone Wille has written an excellent book on the artist. At a time when Indian strategists are either declaring the end of South Asia or struggling to salvage what remains of it, Wille is heading a project at the University of Innsbruck called “South Asia in Central Europe.”
Unfortunately, such conversations are not on New Delhi's radar, which seems content with things like an Austrian orchestra playing Vande Mataram and letting its foreign policy delusions take hold.
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