Coverage of Ukraine’s Cultural Heritage in Indian Media

The third speaker in this IAMCR 2024 session on cultural and heritage narratives surrounding the war on Ukraine is Shalabh Chopra, who begins by highlighting the changes in global power structures; in this the newly multipolar world the Global South is not readily on the side of the west in major conflicts, and may therefore also be less sympathetic towards Ukraine in the current war.

This can also be observed for the case of India. India has a long history of non-alignment, and has had historically good ties with the USSR; it has engaged in diplomatic efforts surrounding the war but taken a mostly neutral role. This may be understood from the perspective of ontological security: here, security of the self is derived from a continuous, unchanging self-identity and selfhood.

But such ontological security is also relational: India derives its ability to be neutral in global settings by narrating these conflicts in a manner where maintaining neutrality appears as the only sensible option. This is done here by narrating the war as too far away to take a stand, as a European war, and as a proxy war between the west and Russia. But is this true also for narratives relating to Ukrainian culture and heritage?

Previous studies of Indian media have tended to show a pro-Russian bias, and this often leads them to present the war as a conflict between the west and Russia, erasing Ukrainian agency. Narratives surrounding cultural and heritage in the Indian print media – which are increasingly aligned with the agendas of the authoritarian Modi regime, self-censoring, and censored by it – that were examined in this project address a range of narrative categories: dominant cultural theme, emotional charge, broader political narrative, and the intentionality of Russia.

These predominantly focus on music and theatre, art, paintings, and sculptures, and sport; they are mostly positive or neutral, and never negative. Key narratives claim that this is just another war, but also that Ukraine is fighting for its identity, and that it is fighting a righteous war. Russia is rarely blamed for this, however; only a quarter of the articles take this view, and none blame Ukraine directly – this narrative is bereft of any inherent normative content, in other words.

This aligns with India’s overall neutral stance: India appears to speak against the destruction of Ukraine, but at the same time does not blame Russia for it. This enables the continuation of India’s neutral foreign policy position.