Amidst the jubilation over India’s diplomatic outreach to Central Europe, it is imperative to contextualise the region and the prime minister’s visit.
First, it may not produce a desired effect without the realisation that there are several Europes within Europe. Central Europe is a distinct cultural entity whose nations take pride in the unique space they have carved for themselves, often standing up against those who have tried to dominate them. The distance between Paris and Prague or between Brussels and Bratislava is greater than it may appear from New Delhi.
The self-image of the region was perhaps best articulated by Milan Kundera who wrote, “The people of Central Europe are not conquerors. They cannot be separated from European history; they cannot exist outside it; but they represent the wrong side of this history; they are its victims and outsiders.” It was one of Kundera’s lifelong concerns to express what he termed The Tragedy of Central Europe, a zone whose culture and geography often stood threatened by invaders, the most recent being Vladimir Putin’s Russia.
Second, there are Europes even within Central Europe, of which the Visegrad Four – an alliance of the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Poland and Hungary – is a prime instance. Several eminent citizens of the four countries are actively involved in promoting and safeguarding their shared interests through the alliance. However, there are differences even within this small group. While Poland, Slovakia and the Czech Republic are at the frontline to support Ukraine’s resistance against Russia, being acutely aware that they will be the first to be affected by the Russian incursion, Hungary has consistently leaned towards Putin and thwarted the efforts by other countries.
And thus, three of these four countries have the maximum resentment against India for its stand on Putin. Any diplomatic foray into Central Europe without acknowledging these nuances may not help India’s case.
Third, beyond the official visits, India had dynamic and vibrant exchanges with the region during the Soviet era. As the Eastern bloc spread its sphere of influence in Asia and elsewhere, India was among its prime partners. The tales of Indians nurtured by British and US institutions are well-documented but few know the bonds India had with countries east of the Alps. The brilliant artist Chittaprosad Bhattacharya, best known for his sketches capturing the suffering of the Bengal famine in 1943, and who lived in abject poverty in India, found a benefactor in the great Czech Indologist Miloslav Krasa in the 1950s. Chittaprosad began publishing in Czech elite journals and as many as 38 of his works were acquired by the Prague’s National Gallery in 1963-64.
Such exchanges have significantly reduced in the past three decades. In its diplomatic realignment after the disintegration of the USSR, India found ways to remain closer to Moscow but somehow abandoned its old friends in the Eastern bloc. Not long ago, an Indian ambassador to a central European nation vividly described for me New Delhi’s apathy to the region: South Block is scarcely interested in Budapest or Warsaw, its gaze remains fixed at bigger western capitals. Worse, the ambassador said, there’s little coordination even among India’s missions in the central European countries as they mostly operate in silos.
One prime example of the neglect is India’s mission in the Czech Republic where India’s current foreign minister had served as ambassador earlier this century. During the Cold War era, the Indian embassy was located in a sprawling campus in the posh Mala Strana area of Prague. It couldn’t retain those premises after the disintegration of the Eastern Bloc, and now operates from a rather nondescript and visibly smaller building.
Four, the bond that two nations share is not limited to diplomatic visits or bilateral trade, but is also shaped by cultural and civil exchanges. As aptly demonstrated by India’s policy failure in Dhaka, New Delhi placed all its eggs in one basket, completely ignoring the people of Bangladesh. The thriving bilateral relationship couldn’t rescue India’s image from being battered on the streets of its eastern neighbour.
Exactly two decades before Narendra Modi became the first Indian prime minister to visit Warsaw in 45 years, the Republic of Poland had honoured an Indian poet with the Officer of the Order of Cross in 2004. Elsewhere, Ashok Vajpeyi, who translated Nobel prize winners like Wisława Szymborska and Czesław Miłosz into Hindi would be a national treasure; in India he is the recipient of Right wing diatribe and hate campaigns. Not only has the Modi government done little to build, let alone deepen, cultural ties with Central European nations, it has dishonoured its own cultural ambassadors.
In fact, Europeans as a whole have a profound admiration for such ties, epitomised by a plaque at the landmark Paris bookstore, Shakespeare & Co: “Sylvia Beach did more to link England, the United States, Ireland, and France than four great ambassadors combined.”
Central Europe takes pride in its literary-cultural treasures and also values India for its richness. Chittaprosad is still a subject of research in the areas Modi recently visited; the Viennese art historian Simone Wille has published masterly texts on the artist. At a time when strategic thinkers in India have either declared the demise of South Asia as an idea or are struggling to salvage its remnants, Wille heads a project titled ‘South Asia in Central Europe’ at the University of Innsbruck.
Sadly, such conversations don’t figure in the consciousness of New Delhi, which appears smug and content with things like the rendition of Vande Mataram by an Austrian orchestra, reducing foreign policy to an optical illusion.
