The 1st IISS-Citi India Global Forum
India as a Rising Great Power:
Challenges and Opportunities
New Delhi, 18–20 April 2008
Fourth Plenary Session:
India and the Great Powers
The Franco-Indian Relationship
Pierre Lellouche
President, Franco-Indian Group, French National Assembly;
President, NATO Parliamentary Assembly, France
(Provisional transcript as delivered)
Before I speak about France and India, I would like to mention one of the things that I have learned during this visit. It started when your Prime Minister received us. He said something to the effect that for the Indian people, good Indian kings are the ones who do not interfere with people’s daily lives. I guess that is why you have become the world’s largest democracy and got rid of the king. I then had a conversation in comparative constitutional law with my British colleague, and we recalled that the British beheaded one of their kings but were smart enough to give the crown back to the nobility; the British have thus built a democracy and kept the king. The French, as you know, beheaded everybody, stole their property, tried an emperor and now elect our kings. We have a new form that is a mix of royalty and democracy.
France and India is an easy subject for me; there are much more difficult problem areas for French diplomacy. It is easy, and it is a pleasure. It is a pleasure for me to be back in India, and I am very grateful to John Chipman and the organisers of this meeting. I was here in January with my President, who had the honour of being invited on Republic Day. I am the chairman of the friendship group in parliament, and I have been a long-time visitor and observer of India. When President Sarkozy says that we want to be the best friend of India, he is saying a basic truth. There is no problem with the relationship, and we really value this friendship. We see India as an emerging world power in a multi-power world which we, the French, have wanted for a long time. We see it as an independent positive world power. ‘Independent’ is a word that is important in French political language; the history of non-alignment and the history of French independence under the Fifth Republic are parallel in many ways, so there is an intellectual complicity in the way that we look at the world. We see you as a positive power because India is not an aggressive imperialist power; it is a force of stability, democracy and growth in a multi-ethnic environment, as are we, the French, in Europe, which is also multi-ethnic and multi-religious.
Beyond this friendship, we want to construct a truly long-term partnership on strategic issues because in many areas we share the same views and interests, be it the Middle East, the struggle against terrorism, the struggle against proliferation, and the position about helping democracy and development. There is a lot of parallelism in this strategic relationship; we also want to be a strong economic partner with a rising global economic actor.
This friendship started a long time ago. This is not like America; we did not start lecturing. We attempted colonial power when we created the Compagnie des Indes under Colbert and landed with five trading posts, one of which is still strong in the heart of many French people. It would be useful to remind the Quay d’Orsay that even though Pondicherry is a nice, quaint place where policemen still dress as the French, it would be useful to move the French consulate and education facilities to Chennai because this is where the action is. If the French after meeting the British in Madras had not been kicked out by the Treaty of Paris, we would have remained in India. Imagine today: we would have Indian boules teams instead of cricket beating French teams, and you would have Indians drinking Pernod instead of bad British whiskey. After this episode, the friendship survived, despite the British. We received a lot of Indians in France, many of whom went to colonise some of our French départements. We have had a lot of Indian influence in our literature and paintings.
This friendship underwent a rough period during the Fourth Republic and the era of decolonisation, when India sided against us during the Suez expedition and then during the Algerian War. It then took off under the Fifth Republic, of which I have memories. My master in nuclear energy, Bertrand Goldschmidt, father of the French bomb, was a personal friend of Baba and of Serabi[?], and I was taught that the nuclear friendship between India and France started a long time ago. I remember visiting the breeder reactor in Kalpakkam; India is the only other country who has breeder technology, and that technology is from France, as is the original technology which helped you start your space programme. It is bipartisan and was started by de Gaulle, Giscard d’Estaing in 1980, and François Mitterrand in 1982, and it is in full swing since the big turn in India in 1991 after the Cold War with the visits of President Chirac in 1998 and President Sarkozy 10 years later, when we really consolidated and gave meat to this strategic partnership. In testimony of this, I counted more than 65 ministerial visits between the two presidential visits of 1998 and 2008.
On the strategic level, we strongly support India’s legitimate aspiration to sit in the G8 and in the UN Security Council. We have worked alongside India in the so-called interim formula, which was negotiated in July 2005 and now is being re-launched, and we hope that it works. In the same way, we commend very highly India’s great contribution to the operation of peace-making and peace-building under the UN. India is fielding something like 10,000 soldiers in very difficult areas, and we support India’s effort to restructure the UN Department of Peacekeeping operations in order to reinforce military expertise in some of these bodies.
On the civil nuclear dimension, we support, and have supported from day one, the necessary evolution of international rules as compared to India. As a non-party to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) but as a stated military nuclear power, India does not have at present a nuclear fuel scope safeguard agreement with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), which in turn limits the cooperation it can obtain from nuclear suppliers as part of the so-called nuclear supplying group. We are in favour of an evolution of regulation for India. We supported very early on the American agreement in July 2005; since we announced the same intention in September 2005, we have negotiated over recent years and continued this agreement.
We did this because we believe that it is legitimate for India to have this recognition and to start a full-fledged nuclear programme. Secondly, we feel that it is in the interests of the world that it has a large nuclear programme because it is a way to reduce dioxide emissions; otherwise, you will continue to have problems worldwide. At the moment, 50% of the electricity produced in India is made out of coal. Finally, we find that it is a necessary formula to relieve some of the pressure on oil demand worldwide. For all of these reasons, we hope that we get an agreement quickly.
We are also committed to help the modernisation of the Indian armed forces. We were there during Soviet times. I remember visiting Jaguar factories in India where Jaguars were put together; it was a first in technology cooperation between France and India. I remember flying in the Himalayans in the only helicopter which can fly at 5,000 metres. Though this history of military cooperation between India and France is a very long one, of course we regret the fact that the government reopened the tender on the helicopter recently, but I am sure we will compete successfully. Contrary to what Bob just said, we are also hoping to be better than American aircraft for the tender in the next generation after the Mirage 2000, which your pilots love.
Let me move to another form of partnership, which is dear to all of us: the environment. In January, both your Prime Minister and President signed not just a political charter, but an environment charter, which is again a first. We feel that while we understand the priority of the Indian government to boost growth and development for its people, given the size of India, clearly there needs to be a convergence in the way we conduct our growth. While we are not demanding that India applies the same criteria as rich countries today, obviously this convergence has to happen over time. Here, again, it is a point of difference with my American friends. Frankly, we do not support the view as I heard it expressed recently by President Bush that the US should not submit itself to the Kyoto Protocol in the name of protecting American jobs as long as India and China do the same. We should not use India as an alibi for keeping an intolerable situation, but should instead work together towards convergence in the way we conduct development and environment policy.
Finally, I have a word on the economy. We see India as a major driving force in the world economy to come. There are 160,000 French tourists who have already come to India, but that is because we have a long history of fondness of this country. More interestingly, there are already 10,000 French ex-patriots working in India in more than 500 companies. Trade is small at 1.8% of India’s market, and only 0.7% of total French exports, but it is relevant and touches on intermediate goods and will grow as the middle class grows in India. In terms of foreign direct investment (FDI), we are in seventh position, which is not bad, although it could be improved, behind the UK, Germany and Holland. I am a strong believer that France can do much better in this country. We are working hard to make this happen, including in our small companies. However, it takes time, it takes culture, and it takes a long-term establishment in India.
In conclusion, I have a word of friendship. Good luck to India, and good luck to the relationship with France and with Europe, as well as with democracies in general. We need a strong, prosperous India to stabilise the area, to help stabilise the Middle East, and to be a stakeholder in a global, multi-power world, which we hope to be essentially going in the right direction of democracy and fixing the great trans-national problems we have in front of us. This is a relationship that works nicely, and I am glad to testify to this. Thank you.
