Delhi’s Deafening Silence On Iran

India’s diplomatic establishment eventually found its voice in the context of the multipronged attack on Iran as we are now informed that Prime Minister Narendra Modi spoke to Masoud Pezeshkian, the President of Iran. The External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar also publicly acknowledged that he had spoken several times with his counterpart in Tehran. It seems that the outreach and gestures that the nation’s moral conscience demanded were eventually made. In diplomacy, timing is often the message itself. Nations communicate through the speed, urgency and moral clarity with which they respond to unfolding crises. Therefore, the uncomfortable question refuses to go away: why did it take so very long? This is especially troubling when the region in question is one where India’s strategic interests and historical friendships converge naturally.

For a country like India, this question of timing carries an even deeper resonance because India has long projected itself as a civilisation with a moral vocabulary. The phrase Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam (the world is one family) from the Upanishads is often invoked as the philosophical anchor of India’s global engagement. If the world is indeed one family, then moments of crisis are precisely when that idea must translate into visible moral responsiveness, and that is why such hesitations and reluctance become difficult to explain. The claim to be Vishwaguru (teacher of the world) is hollow if it cannot be sustained during moments when people are being killed indiscriminately by regimes that neither recognise nor respect international law.

India’s civilisational narrative has long placed dialogue above indifference and empathy above expediency. A glance at the past—from the principled proclamations of Ashoka to the moral imagination that animated India’s freedom movement—reveals a consistent belief that power must carry an ethical cargo. When India emerged as an independent nation in 1947, this sensibility gradually found institutional expression in its foreign policy. The architects of India’s early diplomacy, most prominently Jawaharlal Nehru, sought to craft an international posture that balanced the compulsions of realism with the claims of historical-moral voice. The newly independent nation attempted to demonstrate that foreign policy could be guided by ethical conviction. It does not have to remain beholden to strategic calculation.

In practice, this translated into a diplomacy that frequently spoke the language of principle, whereby India advocated sovereignty and peaceful coexistence during the anxieties of the Cold War, supported anti-colonial struggles across Asia and Africa, and helped shape the moral vocabulary of postcolonial internationalism through its leadership in the Non-Aligned Movement. These initiatives were neither naïve nor merely rhetorical, but were attempts to assert that a newly decolonised country could participate in global politics without surrendering its ethical self-image.

India has always sought to be heard as a voice shaped by deeper civilisational ethics, one that drew from history, philosophy, and the experience of anti-colonial struggle. That aspiration also contained a quiet, but important assertion of autonomy. India’s foreign policy imagination was never meant to function as an echo of any great power’s strategic priorities. In other words, the republic did not envision itself as playing second fiddle to any country, irrespective of its might. The ambition was to participate in the world as an equal partner, guided by both judiciousness and principle. It follows then that Indian diplomacy must serve India and not the ideological preferences of any ruling dispensation whose vision of the world may be narrower than the republic’s own.

Seen in this light, India’s diplomatic choices have always carried a layered expectation as they are judged not only by their strategic outcomes but also by how faithfully they reflect the inheritance that the republic claims as its own. And it is precisely this inheritance that continues to shape the questions citizens ask whenever the country confronts moments of moral testing on the global stage.

If the diplomatic outreach to Iran was inevitable, as events eventually demonstrated, then what explains the initial silence? Was it caution shaped by strategic calculations and an attentiveness to the world view emanating from Washington? Was it the slow churn of bureaucratic machinery that often tempers the immediacy of political response? Or was it simply a reluctance to speak until the direction of the international winds became clearer? Each of these explanations may have some validity. Diplomacy, after all, operates within a complex matrix of interests, alliances and geopolitical sensitivities, and no responsible government can afford to ignore these constraints. But there is a fourth possibility: that the silence reflected a foreign policy so shaped by the domestic political instincts of its stewards that it lost sight of the larger India it was meant to represent.

But acknowledging complexity does not erase the symbolic power of timing. In public life, delays often reshape the meaning of actions. A statement made promptly appears principled; the same statement, issued after a visible and disturbing pause, risks appearing reluctant. The substance may remain identical, yet the perception changes dramatically. And perception, in diplomacy, is often as consequential as policy.

India’s global voice has historically carried weight because it often invoked the belief that a civilisation shaped by millennia of philosophical reflection and a republic guided by constitutional morality would possess the courage of timely moral articulation. That expectation still exists, both within India and beyond. When India speaks with moral clarity, its voice resonates across continents precisely because it appears to rise above narrow calculations. But when that voice arrives late, the world does not merely hear the eventual statement; it remembers the silence that preceded it. And silence, in moments that demand moral clarity, can become its own form of communication. The challenge for India, therefore, is not simply to speak, but to speak when the moment demands it.

A civilisation that takes pride in its ethical inheritance and the institutional architecture built upon it must recognise that moral language loses its meaning when it is reduced to ceremonial invocation rather than ethical responsiveness. The aspiration to Vishwaguru cannot be donned like a ceremonial dress for multilateral summits and then quietly set aside when a neighbouring region bleeds. Diplomacy will always require prudence, yet prudence must not harden into paralysis, and calculation must not eclipse the deeper moral instincts that shape a nation’s character in the eyes of the world. A foreign policy that speaks only when the winds are favourable risks appearing cautious to the point of hesitation. Moral authority, however, is rarely built on perfect timing; it is built on the willingness to acknowledge suffering even when the geopolitical weather is uncertain.

There is no shortage of history for those who wish to make films celebrating India’s decisiveness and courage on the world stage. Our past offers them abundant material when this country spoke clearly, acted boldly, and bent the arc of events through moral and strategic conviction. The nationalist filmmaker has much to draw from. But the contemporary moment offers a different kind of raw material altogether. The current crop of Leni Riefenstahls of Indian cinema will find themselves in an uncomfortable predicament when they turn to the present for inspiration. What kind of a film, after all, can be made from handwringing, strategic silence, and a delayed phone call?

(Views expressed are personal)

Manoj Kumar Jha is professor, University Of Delhi, and member of Parliament (Rajya Sabha)