Moral rhetoric, transactional reality

India can lead the global south, but it must first reconcile its moral vocabulary with strategic choices.

When the Taliban’s Foreign Minister Amir Khan Muttaqi touched down in Delhi last month, irony landed on the runway before his plane did, as a country that once backed Afghanistan’s democratic republic courted the regime that buried it. Not too long ago, India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi had declared that there is no “good Taliban, bad Taliban”. Yet, a few years later, his government proudly hosted the Taliban’s chief diplomat. Commentators call this a “ pragmatic shift ”—without realising that ‘pragmatic shift’ is a euphemism used by Delhi’s strategic class when principles become inconvenient. In India, when interests align, a red line swiftly becomes a red carpet .