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The images were difficult to ignore. A viral video showed the body of a 35-year-old Indian seafarer on a vessel off Oman, with crew members using cold water bottles in a desperate attempt to slow the decomposition process.
He had died last Thursday from medical complications, but it had not been possible to send help or evacuate him from the ship because of the US blockade in the Strait of Hormuz.
The previous day, three more Indian sailors were killed when a tanker moored nearby was bombed after US Central Command said it “repeatedly failed to comply with directions from American forces”.
That same week, US strikes disabled two more Indian-crewed vessels, but all those on board survived.
These incidents have caused growing anger in India and raised questions about its ability to respond effectively to America’s actions.
Tensions were further fuelled by Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s response to India’s protests. He offered no apology, instead warning ships not to defy “orders” from the United States Navy.
Around 18,000 Indian sailors are reported to be in the entire Gulf region.
The human toll the conflict is taking on them now presents a difficult test for India and Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who is set to meet US President Donald Trump on the sidelines of the Group of 7 summit in France on Wednesday.
Subramanian Swamy, a veteran former minister from Modi’s own Bharatiya Janata Party, said the prime minister was acting like a “pussycat” and called for US ambassador Sergio Gor, a former Trump aide, to be recalled unless Washington apologised.
New Delhi’s restrained response has divided opinion about whether it reflects prudent diplomacy or a deeper foreign policy weakness.
The situation has also prompted comparisons with China’s reaction to Nato’s 1999 bombing of its embassy in Belgrade during the Kosovo conflict as an example of how “nations earn respect”.
At the time, China was “no match for American power [but] Washington was compelled to pay US$32.5 million in compensation for the damage and for those killed or wounded”, Brahma Chellaney, from the Centre for Policy Research in New Delhi, said.
The US always maintained the bombing was an accident. But Chellaney noted: “The US also issued repeated apologies for the bombing, with President Bill Clinton personally apologising to help defuse the crisis.”
He contrasted that with India’s “feckless” response to the sailors’ deaths, arguing that the country seemed to lack “comparable political resolve” demanding “neither an American apology nor compensation for the victims’ families”.
“These episodes differed in circumstance and scale, but they shared a common lesson: nations earn respect not merely through economic or military power, but through leadership, resolve and a willingness to defend their interests. Respect is earned, not bestowed,” he said.
Kunal Singh, from the Belfer Centre for Science and International Affairs at Harvard Kennedy School, described China’s response to the Belgrade bombing as “certainly more forceful than what India has offered this time”.
But he said there were “good reasons” for India to assume that Trump would be “more unpredictable [than Clinton] and probably vindictive if India demands the same things China did”.
Singh argued that the 1999 bombing highlighted the way that “rising powers must make foreign policy compromises vis-a-vis established hegemons”.
At the time, China was in the final stages of joining the World Trade Organization and Jiang Zemin, the country’s leader, did not want to derail the process, Singh said.
Beijing viewed the Nato bombing campaign as illegal and it prompted criticism of plans for premier Zhu Rongji to visit the US and offer concessions to secure support for China’s WTO entry.
“Jiang overruled the opposition and asked Zhu to go. The bombing of the embassy happened shortly after Zhu returned,” he said.
Singh added that though the bombing caused widespread anger in China – and was a rare instance of the government allowing student protests – Jiang prioritised long-term economic integration and resumed WTO negotiations later in 1999, securing China’s accession two years later.
According to Sourabh Gupta of the Institute for China-America Studies, a Washington-based think tank, the Belgrade bombing ultimately paved the way for a more assertive Chinese foreign policy by feeding into “the narrative of humiliation that had been meted out by the West … and steeled Beijing’s military backbone and modernisation agenda”.
But he added that even today, a similar situation could still be resolved peacefully.
“At the high leadership level, judging counterparts’ intent is crucial. There were good reasons for Beijing then – and the same good reasons exist today – to stay one’s hand when an important plausible question mark over intent exists, despite its tragic outcome,” Gupta said.
Gupta also said he did not expect Modi to directly confront Trump over the seafarers’ deaths, arguing that New Delhi first “needs to find its voice and learn to talk back, and even talk down, when conversing with Washington”.
He said Modi had made some “very poor” foreign policy decisions including “burning bridges” with China, which left New Delhi with “little elsewhere to turn to in the face of Trump’s impunity”.
“Showing up perpetually as a hanger-on at G7 summits hasn’t burnished India’s reputation either,” he added.
Some analysts have warned that New Delhi’s efforts to work with different countries in different key areas – Russia for weapons, the US for technology and investment and China for critical imports – had backfired and left it with limited room to act when these countries went against its interests.
Singh said the US was “exploiting India’s current moment of weakness”, adding that “India grows stronger, but it also grows relatively weaker against its major rival, China”.
He also pointed to India’s reliance on foreign arms supplies. After Pakistan downed at least four Indian jets using Chinese technology in May last year, India placed new orders for advanced French jets, and has since started pushing Paris for technology transfers to support domestic production of military hardware.
But even if it were to start building its own cutting-edge weapons today, “it might take two or three decades” to secure its autonomy, Singh warned.
Some analysts argued China was already in a stronger position in 1999 compared with India today.
Sarang Shidore, from the Quincy Institute, a Washington-based think tank, said unlike India, Beijing was a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council.
He added that the late 1990s were a “period of high globalisation”, when China had become “irresistibly attractive to US transnational corporations as a base for lower-cost manufacturing”, but Washington has now “ended its romance with offshoring and is seeking to reshore jobs back home”.
The Trump administration has pushed New Delhi to increase purchases from the US and deepen defence ties, while also imposing steep tariffs on Indian imports and introducing new hurdles for Indian professionals working in the US.
It has also avoided explicitly framing India as a counterweight to China. While Trump visited Beijing in May, he skipped New Delhi, instead sending Rubio weeks later.
Farwa Aamer, director of the South Asia Programme at the Asia Society Policy Institute in New York, said there remained a “wider” trust deficit between the US and India, despite efforts to stabilise relations.
“India finds itself emboldened over the past years, I don’t think it necessarily needs a China template. It has its own relations with Washington. But of course, India and China are two Asian giants and those parallels are inevitable,” she said.
Singh argued that India might “adopt symbolic measures, such as sanctioning US officials or cancelling trade talks, to pacify domestic opinion” while the US may “choose to ignore them”.
But he warned that without a tacit understanding between both sides, such measures risked a backlash from the US, for example further tariffs or visa delays. — SOUTH CHINA MORNING POST
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