Narrating order as resistance: India, the EU, and the ‘Russia-Ukraine conflict’

Abstract

This article investigates how India resisted pressure from the European Union to condemn Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine and align its overall response towards Russia with that of the EU. It argues that India responded through the strategic deployment of its order narrative that reproduces key self-identity representations, including India as a ‘leader of the Global South’, a ‘de-risker of the global economy’ and a ‘stabilising force’ in global politics. This narrative operates in service of India’s domestic political and economic imperatives under successive BJP-led governments since 2014 on the one hand, and its long-standing ambitions to be recognized as a great power on the other. Through an empirically rich analysis, the article demonstrates how Indian elites mobilized core elements of this narrative to successfully legitimize India’s position towards Russia. The analysis reveals how order narratives simultaneously function as tools of external legitimization and structures for internal stabilization, and also contributes to scholarly debates in IR on Global South agency by demonstrating how India mobilizes its order narrative not only to counter external pressure to adopt certain policy positions, but also to renegotiate the terms of the prevailing order and challenge the universalizing assumptions that give rise to such pressure.