Christophe Jaffrelot 
India’s economic relationship with France is different from other comparable countries in one key area: their bilateral trade in goods. While Germany and the Netherlands recorded significant volumes – $25bn and $17bn respectively last year – France’s total, excluding military sales, was just over $12bn. French businesses are less well established in India than those from other European countries, with a few high-profile exceptions such as Capgemini, a technology services and consulting firm, half of whose 350,000 workers are employed there. But France ranks 11th among foreign investors in India, while the Netherlands is fourth, and Germany, a commercial power first and foremost, comes ninth, with 200 Indian investors active in Germany. Likewise, despite efforts by the French authorities and academics, the number of Indian students on French campuses – around ten thousand – lags far behind Germany, which had 34,000 in 2022.
The driving force of Franco-Indian relations is elsewhere, in the sovereign realm of strategy, and indeed security, where the state’s role is greater than in the economy. Both countries justify their closeness as being in their national interest, invoking the ‘democratic values’ they supposedly share. Yet India’s recent political evolution completely undermines this. So where do France’s short- and long-term interests really lie?
France’s Indo-Pacific strategy
Geopolitically, India has long been France’s strategic partner – officially since January 1998, when Jacques Chirac made a historic presidential visit at a time when India lacked a stable government and was just weeks from the election that brought to power Atal Bihari Vajpayee, the first Hindu nationalist prime minister from the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). Soon after, his government’s nuclear tests were widely condemned by the international community (India has never signed the Non-Proliferation Treaty), but not by France. The US, Japan, Germany, the UK and many other countries imposed sanctions, but France showed an indulgence that India still remembers.
In the current context, this 25-year-old strategic partnership has taken on increased importance because of China’s rise, particularly as manifested by a new kind of influence in the Indian Ocean. Countries in the region, such as Sri Lanka, which have taken on loans from Chinese lenders for large-scale projects, now find their sovereignty weakened. France, as a resident power in the Indian Ocean, where much of its exclusive economic zone (EEZ) is located because of its overseas territories, is concerned about this expansionism. So is New Delhi, to an even greater extent, as it is beginning to feel encircled as a result of the Chinese presence in Pakistan, Myanmar, Nepal and Bangladesh. These mutual interests in the region partly explain India’s place in France’s Indo-Pacific strategy, first presented by Emmanuel Macron in May 2018 in a speech in Sydney, in which he described China’s strategy in the region as a ‘gamechanger’. All official statements on the subject present India as France’s key partner in the region, as evidenced by trilateral dialogues that France and India have had with Australia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE). At the same time, the Indian government has helped Paris gain membership to multilateral (or ‘minilateral’) bodies on account of its extensive maritime footprint, such as the Indian Ocean Rim Association (IORA), which it joined in 2020. This has resulted in bilateral military manoeuvres, the earliest of which, Varuna, has been an annual event since 2001; the aircraft carrier Clémenceau took part in it in 2021.
The position of the French government, which regards India as its preferred partner in the Indian Ocean, particularly to resist China’s inroads, is worth examining. Academic Ashley Tellis is one of those who initiated this debate in the context of the United States’ relations with India. He has argued that Washington, where Narendra Modi made a state visit in June, ‘has made an enormous bet’ on India, treating it as a key partner simply because the US has neither the means nor inclination to confront Beijing.
This view is supported by three facts. First, India’s economy is much weaker than China’s, its largest trading partner, on which it is heavily reliant. Second, New Delhi prefers not to react to China’s territorial encroachment in the Himalayas, which is visible in satellite images, to avoid initiating hostilities in which India would come off worse. Third, India and China continue to collaborate within BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa) to dislodge Western powers from their positions of power in the UN system, mainly because both reject the West’s vision of the liberal international order.
You can read the rest of this article on Le Monde diplomatique.
This article was first published in English and French by Le Monde diplomatique.
Christophe Jaffrelot is a senior research fellow at CERI-Sciences Po/CNRS, Paris, Professor of Indian Politics and Sociology at King’s India Institute, London, and non-resident scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.