4 min readMay 6, 2026 04:52 PM IST
First published on: May 6, 2026 at 04:52 PM IST
As the war in the Gulf enters its third month, the daily bombardment is on pause, though the ceasefire looks fragile. Iran seems to be holding its ground; its talks with the US sputter amid President Donald Trump’s threats and reports of a rift within the Tehran regime. Yet to blame the caprices of a single individual for a global catastrophe is to trivialise the deeper, structural forces that underpin it.
Our first thought must go to the suffering of ordinary people across all conflict zones: Iran, Gaza, Lebanon, the Gulf, Russia, and Ukraine. Beyond that, one must ask: What lessons does this moment hold for the citizens and states of the Global South?
Foremost is the structural crisis convulsing the West. Western economies are in serious disrepair, and the extreme Right has risen in direct proportion to the liberal democratic establishment’s loss of credibility. The coalition sustaining Trumpism is a volatile amalgam: Blue-collar workers displaced by deindustrialisation, evangelical Christians alarmed by what they perceive as the erosion of traditional values, a military-industrial complex that remains the principal beneficiary of perpetual conflict. It is the projection of state power, at home and abroad, that holds this otherwise incoherent alliance together.
Were the West’s afflictions confined to Western societies, the Global South might shrug them off. But the tsunami unleashed by the Middle East war is spreading worldwide. The consequences for India are already visible: The Indian diaspora in the Gulf lives under daily uncertainty; oil prices remain elevated; queues for gas cylinders lengthen; small eateries shutter; and growth projections are revised downward.
This should serve as an incentive to introspect, decolonise our mindset, and reach toward a genuine, endogenous modernity. China’s synthesis of Confucian values with modern technology, however different its political dispensation, offers an instructive model for how civilisational roots and contemporary ambition need not be mutually exclusive. Yet one must not lose sight of the world’s interconnectedness. Global challenges do not respect the boundaries of the nation-state.
What, then, is the future of multi-alignment in an age of uncertainty? For India, the moment calls for a measure of Kautilyan realism. According to Kautilya’s Arthashastra, the primary responsibility of the king (swami) is the protection, security, and welfare of his subjects (praja-palana). Legitimacy, therefore, flows from the contentment and prosperity of the people — not from grandstanding on the world stage. New Delhi would do well to set its foreign policy case by case, protect the diaspora, and secure access to vital supply chains through pragmatic bilateral arrangements. The wisest course remains strategic autonomy.
Domestically, the imperatives are equally pressing. The government must prepare Indian society to shoulder greater responsibility for its own security, revive manufacturing to generate employment, transcend partisan divisions in the pursuit of structural reform and, most urgently, foster social cohesion rather than polarisation.
The all-party briefing on global security was a step in the right direction; more such meetings would strengthen the case for national consensus. India is a civilisational state with the rare capacity to combine cultural depth with a modernising agenda. Its democratic ethos, rooted in pluralism, positions it credibly as a consensus-builder. But the credibility of India’s G20 motto — One Earth, One Family, One Future — is contingent on the construction of that consensus at home.
Each of today’s major war theatres lays bare the collision between two sacred principles: National sovereignty and the universal right to life and dignity. Confronted with this genuine moral dilemma, those calling on the Indian state to take sides would do well to recall Wittgenstein’s counsel in the Tractatus Logicus-Philosophicus: “Whereof one cannot speak (clearly), thereof one must be silent.”
The writer, emeritus professor, Heidelberg University, is the co-editor of Re-use: The Art and Politics of Integration and Anxiety
