India was forced to side with the Russians out of necessity when the US barred Britain from selling India aviation-related weaponry. This was when the Russians seized the opportunity and gave Nehru a tour of their MiG factories, with aid and assistance to build jet fighters in India. The US simultaneously began ramping up ties with Pakistan, believing a religiously-”unified” Pakistan had better chances of making it through.
This was also the turning point when Indian weaponry, until now dominated by British wares, began to shift to Russian ones.
Also, don’t forget that India is fiercely independent when it comes to managing its strategic areas of interest - not a single sq. km of Indian territory was ever leased to the Soviets as any form of a military base. On the other hand, India did allow America to build listening posts along the Himalayas to watch Chinese nuclear tests. That image of “peaceful” India has also allowed the country to intervene in foreign territories militarily and establish its writ there.
India has a tradition of playing larger powers against each other to defend its own interests. When the US sent the aircraft carrier USS Enterprise to the Bay of Bengal during the 1971 Indo-Pakistan war, to intimidate India and show support to America’s ally, Pakistan, India engaged the Russians to get them to trail the Enterprise with their naval forces, including a nuclear submarine (the Soviet 10th Operative Battle Group). The US (and Britain, reluctantly siding with the US) was forced to watch as India ripped ita ally Pakistan into two separate countries.
If you ask me, depending on how well India continues to get its act together, it could swig from being a reliable ally of the West to a formidable foe in its own right. We are brain-dead stupid to continue Sidon with Pakistan, when instead, by now that entire country should have received a kill dose of nuclear radiation for its role in 9-11.
Swig = swing
Sidon = siding
That's a pretty bizarre way to put it, IMO.
The (West) Pakis were engaged in a genuinely genocidal campaign (upwards of 1M dead) to crush Bengalis with legitimate grievances. India eventually intervened, if only to stop the massive flow of refugees it couldn't adequately support.
Indian intervention in the Pakistani civil war was one of the most justified military actions of the 20th century.