What Modi Told Putin (And How Some Mistranslated This)

“Aaj ka yug yuddh ka hai nahi,” India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi said when facing Russian President Vladimir Putin during a public bilateral meeting that took place as part of the recent Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) summit in Samarkand, Uzbekistan. As Russia’s relations with nearly all countries attract more attention now than they previously did, this one phrase in Hindi did the rounds on the internet within hours.

While the media, including Western outlets, usually conveyed its meaning precisely, in some cases its English translation focused more on what the Western audience would like to hear than on what was probably Modi’s original intention. Among the latter group is a commentary by CNN, which claims that “…Modi appears to have directly rebuffed Moscow's invasion of Ukraine, telling […] Putin that now is not the time for war.” In this quotation, “now is not the time for war” is supposed to be a translation of the Indian prime minister’s words, but unfortunately it is a stretched one. The sudden popularity of this single phrase makes for a fascinating case study in how knowledge of languages and proper, contextual translations are important in the realm of diplomacy.

The truth is that Modi’s entire statement to Putin in Hindi was very careful and general; Modi did indeed call for peace and dialogue in the next few sentences, but he did not put the blame on any side or criticize anyone (not Russia, not the West, and not Ukraine). His comments, including the aforementioned phrase, were coherent with the neutral approach New Delhi has taken toward Moscow since the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Modi’s words did not signal a foreign policy shift.

This text will not cover New Delhi’s foreign policy toward Russia or my opinions about it. Should the reader like to know more about my thoughts on this aspect as a whole, one can find a few commentaries on The Diplomat’s website. Here it suffices to say that I would like the Indian prime minister to condemn Moscow for the invasion of Ukraine (especially with the growing number of Russian atrocities being revealed as new territories are liberated by Ukrainian forces). However, I am painfully aware that my personal views on this particular issue do not align with what the current Indian government perceives as its national interest (simply speaking, retaining good relations with Russia is in India’s interest). Even though I would like it to be otherwise, this would not justify my mistranslating what Narendra Modi actually said.

So what did Modi say? A more precise translation could be: “Today’s era is not the one of war.” There are at least two interesting semantic aspects here. First of all, Modi used the phrase yug, for which “era” would be the best translation. It is a word that originates from an ancient Indian vision of time that divided the history of the world into very long periods, each with its own features. What was meant in Modi’s statement, apparently, is that generally modern times – which we could, for instance, understand as the post-Cold War period – are characterized by less conflict and more diplomacy.

Second, the sentence is an interesting, but very typical, usage of a possessive phrase in Hindi. In this language, such a construction can be used to define a characteristic or defining feature of an object or a person. Speaking in purely grammatical terms, in such a case this feature is linguistically the possessor. For instance, when in Hindi we say that “a girl belongs to 18 years” or “a car belongs to red color” we simply mean that a girl is 18 years old and a car is red. In English, we could often convey both the structure and the meaning by saying “a girl of 18 years” and “a car of red color.” What Modi said, therefore, is that today’s era “does not belong to war[s]” which means that military conflicts are not the defining feature of our times.

This, however, was not a literal reference to any particular war. It of course can be read as an indirect reference to the war in Ukraine, and what Modi said later certainly was a direct call to use diplomatic means to end the current conflict. But his wording was indeed very careful: Modi did not say who started the conflict (and called it a “crisis” earlier), who is to blame for it, and under what conditions an agreement would be acceptable. He also placed his call for peace within a delicate remark, which expressed a general belief that we live in times when conflicts should be solved through dialogue.

It is a belief I generally share, of course, but this is something nearly anyone could say during nearly every war. In this case, for instance, I would personally add that this conflict should be solved through dialogue only when the Ukrainian side – as the one that is being invaded and therefore the one that has a right to defend itself – wants such dialogue to take place and will find the preconditions and possible outcomes of this dialogue acceptable.

Regardless of what we would like India to do, the truth is that New Delhi has coherently remained neutral. When pressed by the West over its non-criticism of the Russian invasion, India stood its ground (and even multiplied its imports of Russian oil). Modi’s meeting with Putin and the words spoken in the Russian president’s presence serve as yet another signal that New Delhi intends to stay the course.