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India and Central Europe
Perceptions, Perspectives, Prospects
Edited by
Rajendra K. Jain
India and Central Europe
Rajendra K. Jain
Editor
India and Central

Europe
Perceptions, Perspectives, Prospects
Editor
Rajendra K. Jain
Centre for European Studies
Jawaharlal Nehru University
New Delhi, India
ISBN 978-981-16-2849-8 ISBN 978-981-16-2850-4 (eBook)

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-2850-4
© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer
Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2021
This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the
Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights
of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on
microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and
retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology
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The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc.
in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such
names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for
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The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and informa-
tion in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither
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The registered company address is: 152 Beach Road, #21-01/04 Gateway East, Singapore
189721, Singapore
Dedicated to
Sunita, Ruchika, Anekant and Jigyasa
Contents
1 Introduction 1
Rajendra K. Jain
2 India and Central Europe: From the Margins
to the Centre in Three Stages 13
Pramit Pal Chaudhuri
3 Indian Perceptions of Central Europe 29
Rajendra K. Jain
4 India and the Czech Republic 79
Rajendra K. Jain
5 India and Hungary 137
Rajendra K. Jain
6 India and Poland 181
Rajendra K. Jain
7 India and Slovakia 235
Rajendra K. Jain
8 India’s Trade and Economic Relations with the V4
Countries 267
Karina J˛edrzejowska and Anna Wróbel
vii
viii CONTENTS
9 Indian Foreign Direct Investment in Central Europe 285

Karina J˛edrzejowska and Anna Wróbel
10 Indian Diaspora in Central Europe 307
Patryk Kugiel and Konrad P˛edziwiatr
11 India and Central Europe: A Road More Travelled? 333
Patryk Kugiel
Appendix A: India-Czechoslovakia Visits, 1947–1992 343

Appendix B: India-Czech Republic Visits, 1993–2020 353
Appendix C: India-Czechoslovakia Agreements,
1949–1991 369
Appendix D: India-Czech Republic Agreements,
1993–2018 375
Appendix E: India-Hungary Visits, 1948–2021 379
Appendix F: India-Hungary Agreements, 1949–2019 401
Appendix G: India-Poland Visits, 1951–2020 409
Appendix H: India-Poland Agreements, 1949–2019 429
Appendix I: India-Slovakia Visits, 1992–2020 435
Appendix J: India-Slovakia Agreements, 1993–2019 443
Appendix K: India-Central Europe Agreements,
Comparative Chart 447
Appendix L: Foreign Direct Investment in India, April
2000–March 2020 449
Index 451
Notes on Contributors
Rajendra K. Jain was formerly Professor and Chairperson at the Centre

for European Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. He has
been Director, Europe Area Studies Programme, JNU, and the first
Jean Monnet Chair in India (2010–2015). He has also been Adjunct
Research Professor, Monash European and EU Studies Centre, Monash
University, Melbourne (2010–2015). He was formerly Visiting Professor,
Asia-Europe Institute, University of Malaya (2010), and Visiting Inter-
national Fellow, Monash Europe and EU Centre, Melbourne (2009).
He was Alexander von Humboldt Foundation Fellow at the University
of Constance (1992–1993, 1994) and Visiting Fellow at the School of
Slavonic and East European Studies, University of London (1993) and the
Foundation for Science and Politics (1995), Ebenhausen, Germany. He
has been Visiting Humboldt Foundation Professor at Freiburg, Leipzig
and Tuebingen universities and at the Maison des Sciences de l’Homme,
Paris (2005, 2006, 2008, 2010, 2013). He has also been Visiting
Professor at the universities of Sofia, Warsaw and UPFM Barcelona. He
was Indian Council of Cultural Relations (ICCR) Professor of Contempo-
rary India, Leuven University (2015). He is the author/editor of over 35
books and has written over 150 articles/book chapters. He has travelled
extensively in Asia, Europe and North America and has lived in the United
States (5 years) and Germany (3 years). He has most recently edited
Changing Indian Images of the European Union: Perception and Misper-
ception (Palgrave, 2019), India and the European Union in a Turbulent
ix
x NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS
World (Palgrave, 2020) and India, Europe and Asia: Convergence and
Divergence (Palgrave, 2021).
Karina J˛edrzejowska is Assistant Professor, Department of Regional and
Global Studies, Faculty of Political Science and International Studies,
University of Warsaw. She is a graduate of the University of Manch-
ester (M.Sc. Globalization and Development, 2008), Warsaw School of
Economics (M.A. in Finance and Banking, 2007), and an M.A. in Inter-
national Relations from the Institute of International Relations, Warsaw
University 2005. Since April 2017, she is a Governing Board Member and
Treasurer of the World International Studies Committee (WISC). She is
co-editor of The Future of Global Economic Governance: Challenges and
Prospects in an Age of Uncertainty (2020).
Patryk Kugiel is the Head of the International Economic Relations and
Global Issues Programme at the Polish Institute of International Affairs
(PISM), Warsaw. He is a specialist on South Asia and international devel-
opment cooperation. His research in PISM focuses on the foreign policy
of India and Pakistan, the security situation in South Asia, United States
and EU policies towards the region, implications of India’s rise on the
global order as well as the development cooperation policy of Poland and
the EU. He is the co-editor of India-Poland Relations in the 21st Century:
Vistas for Future Cooperation (Vij Books, 2014) and India’s Soft Power:
A New Foreign Policy Strategy (Routledge, 2017).
Pramit Pal Chaudhuri is a Distinguished Fellow and Head, Strategic
Affairs at Ananta Aspen Centre and the Foreign Editor of the Hindustan
Times. He writes on political, security and economic issues. He was a
member of National Security Advisory Board of the Government of India
(2011–2015) and is a member of the Asia Society Global Council and the
Aspen Institute Italia, the International Institute of Strategic Studies and
the Mont Pelerin Society.
Konrad P˛edziwiatr is Senior Researcher at the Centre for Advanced
Studies of Population and Religion at the Cracow University of
Economics and in the Centre for Migration Research at the University
of Warsaw. His publications include Transformation of Islamism in Egypt
and Tunisia in the Shadow of the Arab Spring (2019), Polish Migration
Policy—In Search of New Model (2015), The New Muslim Elites in Euro-
pean Cities (2010) and From Islam of Immigrants to Islam of Citizens
(2007).
NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS xi
Anna Wróbel is Assistant Professor, Department of Regional and Global

Studies, Faculty of Political Science and International Studies, Univer-
sity of Warsaw. She holds a Ph.D. on the policy of liberalization of
international trade in services. A Member of the Polish Association of
International Studies, she is also the co-editor of The Dragon and the
(Evening) Stars: Essays on the Determinants of EU-China Relations (in
Polish) (2013) and The Future of Global Economic Governance: Challenges
and Prospects in an Age of Uncertainty (2020).
Abbreviations
AAI Airports Authority of India

AI Artificial Intelligence
AJT Advance Jet Trainer
ASEAN Association of South East Asian Nations
BBC British Broadcast Corporation
BEML Bharat Earth Movers Ltd. (BEML)
BHEL Bharat Heavy Electricals Ltd. (BHEL)
BJP Bharatiya Janata Party
BPO Business Process Outsourcing
BRI Belt and Road Initiative
CBI Central Bureau of Investigation
CEECs Central and East European countries
CEIF Central Europe India Forum
CFE Conventional Armed Forces in Europe
CIH Central Institute of Hindi
CII Confederation of Indian Industry
CMEA Council for Mutual Economic Assistance
COP Conference of Parties
CPI Communist Party of India (CPI)
CPI-M Communist Party of India-Marxist
CTBT Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty
DRDO Defence Research and Development Organization
EU European Union
FDI Foreign Direct Investment
FICCI Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry
FOCs Foreign Office Consultations
xiii
xiv ABBREVIATIONS
FRY Federal Republic of Yugoslavia

FTA Free Trade Agreement
GATT General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade
GDP Gross Domestic Product
GSQR General Staff Qualitative Requirements
HICC Hungarian Information and Cultural Centre
HZDS Movement for a Democratic Slovakia
ICBM Intercontinental Ballistic Missile
ICCR Indian Council for Cultural Relations
ICEBF India-Central Europe Business Forum
ICSC International Commissions of Supervision and Control
ICT Information and Communication Technology
ICWA Indian Council of World Affairs
IDEB International Defence Exhibition Bratislava
INF Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces
INSTC International North-South Transport Corridor
ISIS Indian School of International Studies
ITEC Indian Technical and Economic Cooperation
JDC Joint Defence Committee
JEC Joint Economic Committee
JNU Jawaharlal Nehru University
JWG Joint Working Group
LSD Lok Sabha Debates
MEA Ministry of External Affairs
MFA Ministry of Foreign Affairs
MOA Memorandum of Association
MoU Memorandum of Understanding
MP Member of Parliament
MTCR Missile Technology Control Regime
MW Mega Watt
NATO North Atlantic Treaty Organization
NPT Non-Proliferation Treaty
NRI Non-Resident Indian
NSG Nuclear Suppliers Group
OCI Overseas Citizenship of India
OECD Organisation of Cooperation and Development
OEM Original Equipment Manufacturer
PIO Persons of Indian Origin
PNE Peaceful Nuclear Explosion
PPP Purchasing Power Parity
PSP Praja Socialist Party
SAARC South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation
SIPRI Stockholm International Peace Research Institute
ABBREVIATIONS xv
SMEs Small and Medium Enterprises

SS Second Series
SWJN Selected Works of Jawaharlal Nehru
TCS Tata Consultancy Services
TOI Times of India
TSI Three Seas Initiative
UN United Nations
UNCTAD United Nations Conference of Trade and Development
V4 Visegrad 4
WMD Weapons of Mass Destruction
WTO World Trade Organization
List of Figures
Graph 9.1 Outward Indian FDI in V4 Countries, 2006–2018 294

Graph 9.2 V4 FDI in India, 2006–2018 298
Graph 10.1 Indian Citizens residing legally in V4 countries,
2010–2018 312
Graph 10.2 Foreigners Residing Legally in Poland with Valid
Residence Permits, 2010–2018 314
Graph 10.3 Growth of the Indian Community in Poland,
2010–2019 315
Graph 10.4 Immigrants in Czechia, 2009–2019 319
Graph 10.5 Citizens of India Residing in the Czech Republic,
2008–2018 319
Graph 10.6 Foreign Citizens Residing in Hungary (without asylum
seekers), 2009–2019 322
Graph 10.7 Number of Valid Residence Permits for Third Country
Nationals in Slovakia, 2009–2019 324
Graph 10.8 Indian Citizens in Slovakia, 2009–2019 324
Map 10.1 Indian Citizens in Poland in 2014 (Green) and 2019

(Red) 317
xvii
List of Tables
Table 3.1 India’s Trade with Central Europe 39

Table 4.1 Export of Czech military equipment to India, 2003–2017 103
Table 5.1 Hungarian export of arms and military equipment
to India, 1992–2018 155
Table 6.1 Export of Polish military equipment to India, 2008–2017 208
Table 7.1 India–Slovakia Trade, 2000–2019 247
Table 7.2 Export of military material by Slovakia to India,
2004–2017 252
Table 8.1 India–V4 trade in Goods: Exports, 1996–1997
to 2018–2019 274
Table 8.2 India–V4 Trade in Goods: Imports, 1996–1997
to 2018–2019 275
Table 8.3 India–V4 Trade in Services: Exports, 1996–2017 279
Table 8.4 India–V4 Trade in Services: Imports, 1996–2017 279
Table 9.1 Outward Indian FDI in V4 countries, 2006–2018
(in million US dollars) 293
Table 9.2 V4 FDI in India, 2006–2018 299
xix
CHAPTER 1
Introduction
Rajendra K. Jain
From the mid-1950s till the end of the Cold War, India’s relations with
the Central and East European Countries (CEECs) were an adjunct of
Indo-Soviet relations. Having been let down by the West, India turned
to the Soviet Union in 1955 as a partner in economic and industrial
cooperation. The CEECs followed suit after Moscow offered economic,
financial and technical assistance for large public sector projects. There
was no serious conflict of interest and almost identical views on most
international issues. The CEECs also did not have any colonial hangovers
and were indifferent to some of the issues that troubled West European
lobbies when dealing with India such as human rights, Kashmir, treatment
of minorities and so on (Sibal, 2019: 78).
Central Europe figured in parliamentary debates only on critical issues
which received wide publicity. During the relatively well-informed debates
on the Hungarian uprising (1956) and the Czechoslovak crisis (1968),
the Nehru and Indira Gandhi’s government faced substantial criticism.
No debates on Central Europe took place subsequently in the Indian
Parliament though references to individual countries did resurface peri-
odically. The West usually gave no credit either to the Indian Parliament
R. K. Jain (B)
Centre for European Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, India
© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 1

Singapore Pte Ltd. 2021
R. K. Jain (ed.), India and Central Europe,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-2850-4_1
2 R. K. JAIN
or to Indian leaders for ‘speaking plainly, though in guarded language, on

Hungary or Czechoslovakia. The restraint was dictated by the need to be
helpful’, but it was not ‘appreciated by either side’ (Damodaran, 2000:
114–115).
In the post-Cold War era, India and the CEECs viewed each other
from opposite directions: the Visegrad 4 looked towards the European
Union and India focused on its key partners in Western Europe. As
Central Europeans aligned their foreign policy with those of the EU,
India and the CEECs began to have divergent worldviews and differences
on how they perceived the world and the challenges that confronted it.
There was little that brought them together. Indian foreign policy took
time to adjust to the changing realities in Central and Eastern Europe.
Mutual indifference led to slim political interaction and meagre people-
to-people ties. For nearly a decade-and-a-half (1990–2004), Central
European countries concentrated on gaining admission in the European
Union and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. Their preoccupation
with a ‘return to Europe’ and transatlantic relations left them little time
or interest in India. New Delhi too showed little economic and strategic
interest in the region given the radical transformation of the socio-
economic and geopolitical milieu in Central Europe. Mutual neglect for
nearly two decades led to a sharp decline in political contacts as well as
people-to-people ties. The communist glue had withered away though
some observers felt that clichés about post-communist societies in the
older generation still persisted in India.
The CEECs began to rediscover India after they gained membership of
the European Union in 2004 and more consciously after the 2008 finan-
cial crisis. India also took time to recalibrate its policies. Today, India
and Central Europe have a convergence of views on issues like terrorism,
reform of the United Nations and non-proliferation. There were however
differences over Western interventions in Iraq (2003), Libya (2011),
crises in Syria and Ukraine in which India had no geopolitical interest
or stake.
Outline of Chapters
India’s postwar relationship with Central Europe, argues Pramit Pal
Chaudhuri in the second chapter, has undergone three distinct phases.
The first phase, during the communist period, was a subset of India’s
relations with the Soviet Union. The collapse of communism left New
1 INTRODUCTION 3
Delhi with almost no points of engagement with the newly democratic

Central Europe. This was compounded by the fact both India and Central
Europe began a process of reforming their socialist-oriented economies
that continued through the 1990s. The early 2000s saw the beginnings
of a new economic relationship with a few Indian firms beginning to
invest in countries like Poland. Today, Indian firms and their European
subsidiaries are both large investors and have a footprint in almost all
Central European states. The combination of Brexit, the rise of China
and India’s expanding geoeconomic interests have led the Narendra Modi
government to contemplate relations with Central Europe through a
more strategic lens though New Delhi is doing what it can in terms of its
capabilities.
Chapter 3 examines Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru’s interwar and
postwar perceptions of Central Europe. It describes how the geographical
scope of the Central Europe Division of the Ministry of External Affairs
gradually expanded to comprise thirty countries at present. It goes on
to examine Indian perceptions of Central Europe in the early 1990s and
discusses how Central Europe figured in parliamentary debates. It assesses
the changing perspectives of the region by India’s two leading corporate
chambers. The chapter provides a succinct overview of Indian scholarly
literature on economic and political relations as well as the evolution
and current state of teaching of contemporary Central Europe at Indian
universities. In conclusion, the chapter examines New Delhi’s proactive
re-engagement with Central Europe with greater vigour and the Indian
commentariat’s perceptions of Chinese inroads in Central Europe.
Chapter 4 discusses political relations between India and Czechoslo-
vakia from 1947 to 1992. It outlines how the Czech Republic’s
preoccupation with securing membership of the North Atlantic Treaty
Organization and the European Union left it with little time or polit-
ical interest for nearly a decade in cultivating relations with India.
It goes on to examine renewed efforts by the Czech Republic to
reach out to Asia in order to enhance trade and foreign direct invest-
ment and the broad contours of the relationship in the 2000s. It
discusses how Czechoslovakia/the Czech Republic figured in Lok Sabha)
debates/questions from 1947 to 2019 since the agitated debates over
the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia. After making a detailed examina-
tion of defence cooperation, the chapter discusses how Czechoslovakia
has been perceived by Indian scholars and the commentariat, Czech
4 R. K. JAIN
perceptions of India as well as cultural relations between the two coun-

tries.
Chapter 5 examines the vicissitudes of political and economic relations
between India and Hungary during the Cold War. It critically assesses
the changes in the relationship since the early 1990s and the upswing in
relations with Hungary’s ‘Eastern Opening Strategy’ (2011). It examines
parliamentary (Lok Sabha) debates since Independence and highlights
how Hungary figured in parliamentary questions and debates over the
years. It discusses Indian perceptions of Hungary in one of the leading
English national dailies as well as Indian scholarly literature. It makes a
detailed study of defence cooperation as well as cultural relations between
India and Hungary. In conclusion, the chapter assesses prospects for the
future.
The next chapter examines the initial Indian perceptions of Poland
during the 1930s and the 1950s and goes on to discuss the vicissitudes
of political relations during the Cold War and the perceptions of Poland
in Indian scholarly literature. The chapter assesses the transformation of
the relationship in the post-Cold War era. It discusses Polish efforts to
reach out to Asia at the turn of the millennium and the motivations and
impact of the Polish Strategy towards Non-European Developing Countries
(2004). It goes on to examine the relationship in the 2000s and how
Poland figured in the Modi government’s renewed re-engagement with
Central and Eastern Europe. The chapter examines Lok Sabha debates
from 1947 to 2019 to highlight how Poland figured in parliamentary
questions and debates since the Polish uprising of 1956. It critically exam-
ines the nature, problems and prospects of defence cooperation between
India and Poland. After evaluating Polish and Indian perceptions of each
other, the chapter discusses prospects for the future.
Chapter 7 examines Indian perceptions of the Velvet Divorce, which
led to the establishment of two separate states of the Czech Republic
and Slovakia. Politically, Slovakia has remained largely peripheral to Indian
foreign policy concerns because of its small size, low volumes of trade with
visits being confined to Deputy Ministers. It discusses the slow evolution
of the relationship in the 2000s and during the Modi years (2014–2020)
and presents a brief overview of economic and trade relations as well as
FDI whose high point is a £1 billion investment by the Tata Group’s UK
subsidiary in the ‘Detroit’ of the region. It examines Lok Sabha debates
1 INTRODUCTION 5
to illustrate now marginally Slovakia figured in the parliamentary delib-

erations since 1993. It discusses defence cooperation as well as cultural
relations between India and Slovakia.
After a brief historical review of economic relations between India and
Czechia, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia, Karina J˛edrzejowska and Anna
Wróbel examine the legal framework for current cooperation and assess
the salient features of their economic and trade relations over the past
decade. The lack of a more coherent Indian strategy, they argue, has
enabled China to surpass India in the region. In conclusion, the chapter
identifies potential areas for enhanced trade.
Given its population of over 60 million, highly developed human
capital with relatively cheap cost of labour, and its strategic location,
Central Europe presents itself as an attractive location for Asian invest-
ments. In Chapter 9, Karina J˛edrzejowska and Anna Wróbel provide an
overview of Indian foreign direct investment in the four Central Euro-
pean countries as well as Central European FDI India. It discusses the
rationale for Indian economic engagement in the region and identifies
the key challenges faced by Indian investors and looks at prospects for
the future.
Based on the analysis of the secondary sources as well as new statis-
tical information, big data and qualitative research (including partici-
pant observations, in-depth interviews and a survey), Patryk Kugiel and
Konrad P˛edziwiatr analyse the origins and growth of Indian communities
in Central Europe and provide a detailed overview of the key features of
the Indian diaspora in each of the Visegrad 4 countries. They explore their
role in their new ‘homes’, assess their impact on India-Central Europe
relations and look at future trends and significance in India’s relations
with the region.
In the concluding chapter, Patryk Kugiel makes a case for greater
Visegrad 4-India engagement. As India’s global ambitions grow, he
argues, it requires more trusted partners in Europe to promote its
interests in relation to the European Union, the United States or in
multilateral fora like the United Nations Security Council or the Nuclear
Suppliers Group. Unlike many developed Western nations, the V4, he
adds, have similar views to those of India on a number of interna-
tional challenges from climate change to terrorism. New Delhi, Patryk
argues, should take greater cognizance of the fact that the V4 send 106
MEPs (out of a total of 751) to the European Parliament as well as
one non-permanent member to the UN Security Council. With growing
6 R. K. JAIN
recognition of India’s importance by the EU and the V4’s desire to

develop a more balanced approach towards Asia, he maintains, prospects
for improved India-Central Europe relations have improved.
The chapters are followed by a dozen appendices, which have been
painstakingly collected from diverse sources. These would be of immense
value to scholars, students and policy-makers as a ready reference. The
lists of bilateral visits (cultural, economic, political and military) as well as
agreements owe their present form to a determined scouring of diverse
sources, including periodicals, newspapers, official publications, journals
of India and the Central European countries as well as reports and publi-
cations of governmental ministries, Departments and agencies concerned.
I have sought to ensure the correctness of the details by cross-checking
them carefully with those appearing in official sources and have retained
only those that I have found reasonably accurate.
Economic Engagement
The low levels of trade and investment present an opportunity for both
India and the Visegrad Four to widen and deepen economic ties. The
V4 tend to be viewed by many Indian companies as a bridgehead for
investments in the much larger West European economies. Indian IT soft-
ware majors have been ramping up their operations in the region to tap
the intellectual calibre and language skill-sets of the engineering talent of
the region to tap West European markets. Indian entrepreneurs tend to
look to bigger markets in Western Europe and recognize that there are
structural limits to what is possible in Central Europe. As the storehouse
of niche technologies, Central European technologies are more attuned
to Indian conditions. As repositories of frontier technologies and exper-
tise in clean technology, skill development and education, the Visegrad 4
are complementary partners for many flagship programmes of the Modi
government. To a certain extent, the challenge is of overcoming lack of
information and simply making the connection.
The first India-Central Europe Business Forum (ICEBF) (now India-
Europe29) has not led to a structured business dialogue and continues
to face the perennial problem of lack of adequate follow-up. While the
idea is inherently good, it is too large a body bringing together 30 coun-
tries under the geographical scope of the Ministry of External Affairs’
Central Europe Division with diverse interests from very different regions
and with different expertise.
1 INTRODUCTION 7
Civil Society Linkages

Since the early 1990s, historical narratives have ceased to be relevant in
India-Central Europe relations because for modern young Indians, the
Cold War is largely forgotten. Traditional postwar linkages between India
and the Visegrad Four have long withered away; traditional sensitivi-
ties of history with India are no longer evident. The problem of direct
connectivity between V4 and India has been overcome to a certain extent
with the introduction of direct LOT Warsaw-Delhi flights in September
2019. Greater civil society linkages will contribute to removing traditional
clichés and stereotypes of post-communist societies of Central Europe and
foster positive images of a rapidly growing region.
Bollywood is being actively wooed. ‘All it needs is one film and that can
change the dynamics’ as the film ‘Kick’ did in the case of Poland. Some
years ago, one Central European embassy even had ‘a three-page rate
card’ for technical experts, camera hire, etc.1 A further fillip to tourism
can be expected since Bollywood films have now been shot in all V4
countries.
India-V4+ Engagement
Central Europe has not figured prominently in Indian foreign policy
priorities for decades even though it has become politically stable and
economically prosperous due to mutual indifference and neglect. As a
political grouping, the Visegrad countries have lost their earlier distinc-
tiveness and failed to get enough political attention in the capital. All of
them except perhaps Poland are political lightweights within the Euro-
pean Union. New Delhi tends to perceive them as having little impact
on EU foreign policy and of being of marginal importance in India-EU
relations since they tend to get submerged in EU structures. Observers
caution that the shared direction of the V4 within the EU is not ‘stable
or permanent’ and that ‘separate interests and issues disrupt the coher-
ence of the group and weaken it in terms of unified promotion of these
interests in the EU’ (Bauerova, 2018: 134).
The Slovak Presidency of the Visegrad Group in 2014 proposed a new
V4+1 format for India’s engagement with the region. This led to the first-
ever engagement at the Joint Secretary level with the V4 in Bratislava
1 Conversation with a former Joint Secretary (Central Europe), MEA.

8 R. K. JAIN
on 25 February 2015. This interaction was envisaged as a supplemen-

tary feature of bilateral and India-EU interactions. From the outset, it
was obvious that the periodicity of such an interaction was not likely
to be institutionalized, though there were many areas of mutual benefit
(Chhabra, 2015: 7). This format was not in response to the 16+1 (later
17+1) promoted by the Chinese. The two were ‘independent processes’,
with India seeking to do what it could in terms of its capabilities.2 The
initial V4+1 meeting was followed up in 2015 when the Minister of State
for External Affairs V.K. Singh met the V4 Foreign Ministers on the
sidelines of the eleventh GLOBESEC Security Forum in April 2016. No
meetings in the V4+ India format have been held thereafter.
A Prime Ministerial Visit

Central Europeans have often referred to the deficit in reciprocal visits
from New Delhi. A long-standing, genuine complaint of the CEECs
has been that there has not been a prime ministerial visit to the region
for 33 years, i.e. ever since Rajiv Gandhi visited Hungary in 1988.
Prime ministerial visits abroad are undoubtedly of much consequence
for the projection of foreign policy. High-level visits do make a differ-
ence and create much momentum in focusing attention on a country
and/or region. They also create institutional pressures to line up deliv-
erables for the visit. In the past, a prime ministerial visit to the region
was constantly pushed back apparently because of the inherent lack of
substantial economic linkages and the absence of any political imperatives.
A prime ministerial visit, MEA mandarins generally argued, generally takes
place when a relationship has reached ‘a particular level; one has to wait
for it to mature’. In fact, a prime ministerial visit is ‘the culmination of a
relationship; a PM does not go there to merely cut the ribbon’.3
The Ministry of External Affairs has only recently taken cognizance
of Central Europe as ‘a strong voice’ and the Visegrad Group as ‘a
robust force’ within the European Union (India, MEA 2020a: 25; 2021:
20). There is growing realization in New Delhi that a prime ministerial
visit to the region is long overdue. There was considerable expectation
that a prime ministerial visit to Central Europe would take place in the
2 Private conversation with a former Joint Secretary (Central Europe), MEA.

1 INTRODUCTION 9
second half of 2020, but the COVID-19 pandemic has pushed it to

late 2021 or even later. Alternately, a prime ministerial meeting with
V4 counterparts can also take place on the sidelines of the UN General
Assembly in the near future though a visit to the region would send
across a better message. A V4+ India summit at the prime ministerial level
would undoubtedly give the relationship a special focus and highlight the
region’s importance.
Towards a Strategic Partnership?

India does not presently have a strategic partnership with any Central
European country. After the conclusion of a strategic partnership with
China (December 2011), Poland had proposed a strategic partnership
with India. The MEA however felt that relations ‘had not yet reached
that level’. After all, a strategic partnership is ‘the last mile’, which is
often ‘the most difficult’.4 There was the problem of justifying a strategic
partnership to higher authorities as it usually gave rise to questions of
prioritization, human resource constraints, bureaucratic overload and the
quantum of trade.
For the first time, India recently concluded the fifth strategic partner-
ship in Europe with Denmark. Called a ‘Green Strategic Partnership’, it
has been described as ‘a mutually beneficial arrangement to advance polit-
ical cooperation, expand economic relations and green growth, create jobs
and strengthen cooperation on addressing global challenges and oppor-
tunities’ (India, MEA 2020b). This functional strategic partnership, with
an Action Plan yet to be worked out, envisages cooperation through rele-
vant Ministries, institutions and stakeholders is illustrative of New Delhi’s
efforts to make strategic partnerships more result-oriented.
India has also begun recently to explore new geographical spaces
and configurations. The MEA and the Confederation of Indian Industry
recently organized the first India-Nordic-Baltic Conclave (5 November
2020) with ministerial participation from Denmark, Estonia, Finland,
Iceland and Latvia on renewable energy and clean technologies and the
factories of the future, on Artificial Intelligence and blockchain-led trans-
formation, on supply chain and logistics, on fintech (Jaishankar, 2020).
This innovative engagement tends to improve prospects of a strategic

10 R. K. JAIN
partnership currently under discussion with the Czech Republic and

possibly Poland provided the right synergies and mutual benefits can be
identified with Warsaw.
Modi’s Re-engagement
India’s re-engagement of Central Europe by the Narendra Modi govern-
ment in recent years reflects how the region is slowly being gradually
recognized as a region of promise and potential. In view of a proactive
Chinese overdrive around the world, New Delhi has sought to show its
flag in a kind of competitive diplomatic engagement in consonance with
its resources and capabilities to reach out to various countries where few
ministers or senior officials had travelled for decades. Between 2014 and
2020, there nearly a dozen visits by senior Indian dignitaries, including
the President and the Vice-President, to Central and Eastern Europe took
place. These were not merely goodwill/ceremonial visits. They required
a certain degree of preparation and led to tangible results. The robust
engagement with the region could also have possibly been the result of
the fact that for the first time since Independence, S. Jaishankar is the first
Foreign Secretary/Foreign Minister to have spent two cycles in Central
and Eastern Europe—in Budapest (1990–1993) and as Ambassador to
Prague (2001–2004).
Central Europe is an important constituency for the reform of the
United Nations Security Council and support of the Indian candidature.
With the Visegrad 4 being members of all four export control regimes,
their support has been crucial to secure membership since decisions in
them are by consensus and a single negative vote can stop any move in
favour of India. While the V4 do not often form a unified bloc or vote
in unision in the EU or other global forums, they can be of interest in
raising India’s profile (Kugiel & Upadhyay, 2018: 138).
In the future, the primary focus will continue to be on economy and
trade. Different Visegrad Group countries will develop their relationships
with India at different speeds, with varying levels of engagement and
commitment, and with different trajectories and results.
1 INTRODUCTION 11
Further Research
For decades, India-Central Europe relations has been an under-researched
and neglected area of research. There are many gaps in existing schol-
arly research. There is a glaring lack of archival research on India-Central
Europe relations. The National Archives of India contain recently declas-
sified MEA documents, which primarily comprise monthly reports from
Indian Embassies, diplomatic cables, transcript of conversations involving
foreign leaders or interlocuters as well as policy memoranda by officials
based in Delhi and overseas embassies. No research has yet been done on
the archives of the Ministry of External Affairs, which have been recently
digitized, but access continues to be problematic. Similarly, archives of
the Central European countries have yet to be fully explored to provide
insights into V4 perceptions and approaches towards India.
Secondly, there is hardly any research on the making of India’s foreign
policy towards Central Europe and vice versa, including the role of various
ministries as well as the dynamics and constraints of inter-ministerial
interaction and coordination.
Thirdly, apart from a few studies of Indian perceptions of Poland
(Kugiel, 2019), there are no meaningful studies of how mainstream
Indian newspapers, electronic media and elites perceive Central Europe
and vice versa.
Fourthly, scholars continue to be seriously hampered by the lack of
primary source material on the subject. A comprehensive documentary
study on India-Central Europe relations would undeniably encourage
further research.
The editor and the contributors hope that this pioneering volume
would foster greater scholarly research of India’s relations with Central
Europe, which has been an orphaned subject for far too long.
References
Bauerova, H. (2018). The V4 and European integration. Politics in Central
Europe, 14(2), 121–139.
Chhabra, R. (2015, March 3). Keynote Address by Joint Secretary (Central
Europe), Ministry of External Affairs, at a seminar on ‘India and Central
Europe’ organized by the Centre for European Studies, School of Interna-
tional Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi.
Damodaran, A. K. (2000). Beyond autonomy, India’s foreign policy. Somaiya
Publications.
India, MEA. (2020a). Annual report 2019–2020. New Delhi.
12 R. K. JAIN
India, MEA. (2020b, September 28). Joint statement for India-Denmark green
strategic partnership. Retrieved 12 May 2021 from https://mea.gov.in/bilate
ral-documents.htm?dtl/33069/joint+statement+for+indiadenmark+green+str
ategic+partnership.
India, MEA. (2021). Annual report 2020–2021. New Delhi.
Jaishankar, S. (2020, November 5). Remarks by foreign Minister at the India-
Nordic-Baltic CII Enclave. Retrieved 12 May 2021 from https://mea.gov.
in/Speeches-Statements.htm?dtl/33165/eams+remarks+at+the+india++nor
dic++baltic+cii+conclave.
Kugiel, P. (2019). Indian perceptions of Poland. In R. K. Jain (Ed.), Changing
Indian images of the European Union: Perception and misperception (pp. 151–
154). Palgrave Macmillan.
Kugiel, P., & Upadhyay, D. K. (2018). India and Central Europe: Post-cold war
engagement. International Studies, 54(1–4), 127–143.
Sibal, K. (2019). India and the European Union: Perceptions and mispercep-
tions. In R. K. Jain (Ed.), Changing Indian images of the European Union:
Perception and misperception (pp. 61–78). Palgrave Macmillan.
CHAPTER 2
India and Central Europe: From the Margins

to the Centre in Three Stages
Pramit Pal Chaudhuri
Independent India’s relationship with Central Europe has undergone

three distinct phases. The first phase, during the communist period, was
a subset of India’s relations with the Soviet Union. The second phase
was a political and economic vacuum. It followed the collapse of the
Soviet bloc. New Delhi had almost no engagement with the newly demo-
cratic Central European states. Both India and Central Europe began a
process of reforming their socialist-oriented economies at this point that
continued through the 1990s but gave them minimal ability to engage
with each other. The early 2000s saw the beginnings of a third phase
centred around a new economic relationship with a few Indian firms
investing in countries like Poland. Today, Indian firms and their Euro-
pean subsidiaries are both large investors and have a footprint in almost
all the major Central European states. The combination of Brexit, the
P. Pal Chaudhuri (B)

Head, Strategic Affairs at Ananta Aspen Centre, New Delhi, India
Foreign Editor, New Delhi, India

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-2850-4_2
14 P. PAL CHAUDHURI
rise of China and India’s expanding geo-economic interests in Europe are

leading the Narendra Modi government to contemplate relations with
Central Europe through a more strategic lens. If these fructify, it could
mark a fourth phase in India-Central European relations.
The Soviet Era, 1947–1989

India’s Central European policy under its first prime minister, Jawaharlal
Nehru, was strongly coloured by his perspective of the Soviet Union.
For a number years, Nehru also looked to the Yugoslav ruler, Josip Broz
Tito, for insights on the region (Dixit, 1998: 324). In his first decade in
office, Nehru had a relatively benign view of communism and a suspicion
of the United States which skewed his understanding of the nature of
Soviet control over the Central European states. All of these contributed
to his weak response to the Hungarian uprising of 1956. His daughter
and later prime minister, Indira Gandhi, responded equally ambivalently
to the crushing of the Prague Spring of 1968 but by then the geopolit-
ical bond between New Delhi and Moscow had become much stronger
and overrode any other consideration. Overall, however, Central Europe
barely figured in India’s foreign policy calculations while the communist
governments of the region expressed much rhetorical support for India
as an echo of what was being said by their superiors in the Kremlin.
Nehru’s Autobiography, Glimpses of World History and letters all indi-
cate that he saw the Russian Revolution of 1917 that led to communist
rule as a point in a spectrum that went back to the French Revolution. In
one letter, he wrote that the popular demand for freedom in the French
and Russian Revolutions were an inspiration for India’s own slogan of
‘Inqilab zindabad!’ (Long live the revolution!) against British colonial
rule. In the late 1940s and the early 1950s, he often expressed his admi-
ration for communist ideology and theory of history, though over time
he began to separate this from the practice of Soviet communism per
se. Nehru was to become increasingly concerned about the fault lines
that kept erupting within the international communist system and their
impact on the Indian communist movement and the political stability of
India as a whole. But his theoretical admiration for communism meant he
was initially unconcerned about the Soviet occupation of Central Europe
and did not see it as an example of the colonialism that he had spent his
life opposing. After all, he argued, other countries recognized the Central
2 INDIA AND CENTRAL EUROPE: FROM THE MARGINS … 15
European communist regimes and small countries being dominated by a

larger power was common in other parts of the world (Nayudu, 2018).
Hungarian Uprising of 1956

Nehru’s uncertainty about the nature of Soviet rule in Central Europe
was reflected in his response to the popular revolt in Hungary against
Soviet occupation. This was the high watermark of nonalignment and
Nehru, if anything, still seeing much of the world in terms of the colo-
nial era and hence wary of Western views and actions. When the uprising
began, Nehru declined to support any initiative taken by the United States
making India the only democratic government not to criticize the Soviet
Union’s brutal suppression of the uprising. US President Dwight D.
Eisenhower privately said Nehru was ‘falling for the Moscow line—buying
their entire bill of good’ (Nayudu, 2015).
The Indian prime minister was hampered by the illness of Ambassador
K. P. S. Menon, who was based in Moscow and concurrently accred-
ited to Budapest, and delays in the arrival of Embassy reports about
what was taking place. Nehru expressed concerns that the uprising repre-
sented ‘fascistic elements’, worried that Moscow was being internationally
isolated, and corresponded mostly with Soviet Premier Nikolai Bulganin
and Yugoslavia’s President Tito. Bulganin obviously gave the Soviet line
on what was happening. The United States fretted that Nehru was so
much under the premier’s influence that they referred to the Indian prime
minister’s ‘Bulganinisation’. Having kept his country out of the Warsaw
Pact and free of Soviet control, Tito initially expressed support for the
Hungarians but later worried the unrest would spread and undermine his
own one-party system (Nayudu, 2017).
As Nehru became more familiar with what was happening in Hungary,
his position shifted. New Delhi became more critical of the Soviet Union
but declined to align directly with the statements and actions of the
United States. Thanks in part to telegrams from the Indian embassy sent
by the Charge d’Affaires M. M. Rahman, Nehru came to accept that the
Hungarian protestors were ‘nationalists’ rather than reactionaries. Indian
diplomats were allowed to join the international chorus demanding that
the United Nations be allowed to send observer teams to Hungary, along
with humanitarian supplies. But Nehru decided that nonalignment meant
he should avoid condemnation of the Soviet Union. India would be best
served by ‘leaving the door open’ to Moscow even while taking a prin-
cipled stand. It could be said that India’s response to the 1956 uprising
was to provide a template for Indian foreign policy reactions to other
16 P. PAL CHAUDHURI
Cold War eruptions in the decades to come (Nayudu, 2019). But the
aftermath of the Hungarian uprising did make Nehru more sceptical of
the Soviet Union.
Prague Spring of 1968

Indira Gandhi was prime minister at the time of the Soviet Union’s mili-
tary intervention against the reformist Alexander Dubcek Government
in Czechoslovakia. The prime minister was public in her criticism of the
intervention at home, declaring in the lower house of parliament, ‘The
right of nations to live peacefully and without outside interference should
not be denied in the name of religion or ideology’. At the UN and
diplomatically, however, India held back from attacking the Soviet Union,
abstaining from a UN vote against the military action.
Indira Gandhi was influenced by a number of factors. Unlike Nehru’s
confusion about events in Hungary, she does not seem to have any
doubts as to the nature of Moscow’s actions. Indira Gandhi was more
influenced by hard-nosed interests. One, India had a five-year defence
cooperation agreement with the Soviet Union to develop the country’s
military capacity following the defeat of the 1962 border war with China.
Two, Washington was mired in its war in Vietnam and signalled a broad
disengagement from South Asia by allowing Moscow to take the lead
in mediating the 1966 Tashkent Agreement between India and Pakistan.
Three, Indira Gandhi had shifted the country leftward both politically
and economically. She increasingly saw the Indian left parties as political
allies—though not all Indian communists were necessarily supportive of
the suppression of the Prague Spring (Nayudu, 2017).
In the coming decades, until the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1989,
India’s foreign and military closeness to Moscow only increased. This, in
turn, meant New Delhi came to see its Central European policy as little
more than a subset of its relationship with the Soviet Union. Economic
relations with the Soviet-led Council of Mutual Economic Assistance,
better known as COMECON, were frugal with minimal trade and negli-
gible investment, especially if the Soviet component was removed. As
COMECON members set artificial government-determined export and
import targets rather than basing their trade on demand and compet-
itiveness and payments were done through rupee-rouble exchange, the
economic engagement was wholly driven by government diktats. An
example of this was East Germany’s secret police, the Stasi, getting
involved in the promotion of trade with India (Tatke, 2017). The collapse
of the Soviet bloc wiped out the rupee-rouble payments system and took
the entire state-driven economic relationship between India and Central
Europe with it.
Reform Era, 1989–2001

The breaking of the Berlin Wall, subsequent end of the Soviet-backed
regimes in Central Europe and the disintegration of the Soviet Union
also ended India’s engagement with Central Europe. When Yugoslavia
came apart at the seams from 1989 to 1992, New Delhi was only further
isolated from the region. Having had little in the way of people-to-people
relations or economic ties with this region, India would have to rediscover
and rebuild relations with the swathe of countries ranging from Latvia to
Bulgaria almost from scratch.
But India and Central Europe shared a common economic experi-
ence during this time. Namely, they both began the painful and difficult
process of shedding the socialist economic policies they had followed since
the 1950s and 1960s and sought to become more externally oriented
and market driven. However, this meant the two sides had even less
capacity to invest in a set of relationships that were not seen as central to
the wrenching economic and diplomatic efforts being undertaken. The
former members of the Soviet bloc were single-mindedly driven by a
desire to join Western organizations like North Atlantic Treaty Organiza-
tion (NATO), the European Union and a plethora of new bodies created
to ease the post-Soviet transition of Europe. The government of Prime
Minister P. V. Narasimha Rao was consumed by the need to open up the
crisis-ridden Indian economy and find a new foreign policy path with the
end of the Cold War. Central Europe was not seen as contributory to
either of these goals.
Prime Minister Rao’s foreign policy had two pillars. One was to attract
foreign investors to put a bet on the struggling Indian economy. The
other was to find interlocutors who could help India to foster a new, post-
Cold War relationship with the United States. The first goal led him to
visit Germany, his first overseas trip as prime minister, and then later shift
to Southeast Asia and South Korea in what was to become labelled India’s
Act East policy. The second goal led him to upgrade India’s relationship
with Israel, a country he believed would be best suited to facilitate the
development of a new post-Cold War relationship with the United States.
18 P. PAL CHAUDHURI
‘Prime Minister Rao realised that the road to Washington DC ran through
Tel Aviv’, writes his biographer (Sitapati, 2015). Israeli diplomats say he
was also interested in Israel as an alternative source of weapons as Russia
slipped into disarray.1 Central Europe was simply not part of this world-
view. India was quick to recognize the newly democratized regimes of
the Central European countries but had no vision beyond this. Rao even
visited two Central Asian countries en route to Russia for a state visit
to kick-off a new era of relations with these ex-Soviet republics but gave
Moscow’s European satellite countries a miss.
Central Europe, for its part, was in the throes of its own economic
restructuring as it sought to purge itself of Soviet era planning and state
dominance. Most of the former Soviet satellites were completely focussed
on bringing their economies, security arrangements and political systems
in line with the standards set by the EU under the Charter of Paris for a
New Europe, membership in the Organization of Security and Cooper-
ation in Europe and the requirements for adopting the Euro (European
Commission, 2014). India and much of the world barely registered in
all this. The economic restructuring that many of these countries had to
undergo—the term ‘shock therapy’ was used to describe some of the more
drastic versions—was far more painful than the dislocation India endured
from its own economic reforms (see Blanchard, 1991). The collapse
of Yugoslavia and the ethnic wars that followed were another distrac-
tion. Much of the Central European membership, including many of the
spinoff nations born out of the former Yugoslavia, left the Nonaligned
Movement to join NATO. It says something about how distracted India
was that this barely registered.
Normal diplomatic relations began to be restored from about 1992
onwards. Indian diplomats who served or dealt with Central Europe
say there was minimal ill-will over New Delhi’s support for Moscow. It
was largely understood India had been a marginal player in that part of
the world. When Lech Walesa, leader of the Solidarity movement which
helped overthrow Poland’s communist regime, came to India in 1994 on
a five-day presidential visit he bluntly asked the then Minister of State
for External Affairs, K. Natwar Singh, ‘Tell me where was India all these
10 years?’ Singh responded by saying, ‘I want to talk to you about the
future, not the past’. Singh admitted India no longer had any contacts in
1 Private conversation with senior Israeli diplomat, New Delhi, December 2006.
the region and had been caught unawares by what happened (Rasgotra,
1998: 154). However, Walesa made it a point to visit Jodhpur to see
the palace murals in Umaid Bhavan painted by Stefan Norblin, a Polish
artist who fled to India during the Second World War and stayed there
for a number of years rather than live under Stalinist rule (Marek, 2017;
Hamilton, 2019).
Similar acts of support by individual Indians are still remembered.
For example, M. N. Rahman, the Indian Charge d’Affaires during the
Hungarian uprising took the initiative to intervene with Moscow to save
the life of one of the participants of the uprising, the intellectual Arpad
Goncz. Goncz was imprisoned for six years, but survived and later served
as Hungary’s president from 1990 to 2000. Goncz later expressed the
view he was saved by India’s diplomatic intervention and made it a point
to have a delegation to India personally meet Rahman, by then retired
(Mohan, 2013). Similarly, H. P. Singh, a second secretary at the Indian
Embassy in Prague resigned in protest against the weakness of Indira
Gandhi’s response to the Soviet repression and achieved minor folk hero
status.2
Investment Era, 2001 to the Present

India’s minimal trade relationship with the communist governments of
Central Europe more or less collapsed with the fall of the Berlin Wall.
The end of the rupee-rouble trade was the primary reason as well as the
economic disruption experienced by all the countries concerned at the
time. Local political upheavals such as the breakup of Czechoslovakia,
India’s main trading partner in the region during the Soviet era, and the
disintegration of Yugoslavia added to the economic malaise.
In the early 2000s, two companies with Indian connections arrived
in Poland with investments on their mind. One was ArcelorMittal, the
largest European steel maker but with an indirect Indian link through
the Calcutta origins of its owner, Lakshmi Mittal. ArcelorMittal bought
the newly privatized Polskie Huty Stali steel company in 2004 and today
owns about 70% of the country’s entire steel sector. The other firm was
Infosys, one of the largest Indian software firms, which set up a business
process outsourcing and information technology outsourcing centre in
2 Interview with Ronen Sen, former Indian ambassador to Russia and the United States,
who happened to be in Prague during the crisis, New Delhi, 2 August 2020.
20 P. PAL CHAUDHURI
Lodz in 2007. By the time it celebrated its first decade in Poland, Infosys
had 2,700 employees and was being praised by Lodz business leaders for
having established their city’s reputation as a centre for business services
(infosysbm.com, 2017). The two firms served as trailblazers for the third
and most recent phase in India’s relationship with Central Europe, one
that revolves around investment.
In the decade before the collapse of Lehman Brothers and the subse-
quent global financial crisis, there was a surge in Indian overseas corporate
investment. Indian firms, buoyed by double-digit growth at home and
hefty profits, began expanding overseas. The EU, India’s single largest
trading partner, was an obvious point of interest. Indian manufacturing
industries and information technology service companies, looking to
invest in countries that gave them access to the EU market but also
offered low taxes and low labour costs, began looking at Central Europe
(Pradhan, 2008).
The Czech Republic was the largest investment hub for India in
Central Europe, in part because of corporate relationships that went back
to the communist era and when Czechoslovakia existed. One well-known
Czech firm, the shoe firm Bata, has had a commercial presence in India
since the British Raj. Czech strength in machinery, engineering and auto-
mobile components and its close integration with German industry have
been major attractions for Indian firms. Indian investment to the Czech
Republic largely reflect this competitive edge and now include a number
of major Indian heavy industrial manufacturers. Today, Indian firms like
Motherson Sumi Systems, Lloyd Electric and Engineering, and Ashok
Leyland have plants there. Indian FDI totalled $4.1 billion in 2017, up
from $1.67 billion in 2012 (UNCTAD, 2020; India, Embassy in Czech
Republic, 2020).
In Poland, thanks perhaps to Infosys’s success there, has seen a more
diversified portfolio of investment with a substantial portion in the
service sector including other IT service firms like Wipro. In manufac-
turing, Indian investment includes firms like Videocon, Escorts, Strides
Arcolab, Reliance Industries, Essel Propack, Zensar Technologies and
Berger Paints. Indian FDI into Poland is in the region of $3 billion (India,
Embassy in Poland, 2020a).
The second chapter in the investment story was the spread of Indian
firms into Hungary, Slovakia and to a lesser extent Romania, Bulgaria
and Croatia. Hungary has been a remarkable investment story for Indian
firms with Indian FDI rising from $9 million in 2012 to $1.5 billion in
2018. In 2014, India was the largest greenfield investor in the country.
Hungary has seen the entry of a large number of Indian IT service compa-
nies and specialized industrial acquisitions by Indian firms. Indian IT firms
who have set up in Hungary include Tata Consultancy Services (TCS),
Tech Mahindra, Genpact and Cognizant. The industrial investors include
Crompton Greaves, Apollo Tyres, SRF and Bakony Wipers. There have
been other, smaller stories of success including Indian small-scale agri-
cultural investments in Bulgaria and two-way pharmaceutical investments
with Croatia (India, Embassy in Hungary, 2020; Business Standard, 2019;
India, Embassy in Slovakia, 2020).
One set of Indian firms that have developed a footprint throughout
Central Europe were the pharmaceutical companies, many of which had
a presence dating back to the Soviet era. All of the major Central
European countries have Indian pharmaceutical investments with Sun
Pharma/Ranbaxy and Glenmark Pharmaceuticals having the largest pres-
ence.
The most recent accelerator for Indian investment has been the Brexit
referendum, the 2016 vote by the British public in favour of having their
country leave the EU. Britain has traditionally been overwhelmingly the
favourite destination of Indian corporate investment to Europe. Before
the Brexit referendum, Indian firms invested more in Britain than they
invested in the rest of Europe combined. This was despite trade relations
between India and Britain being relatively weak. Indian firms used Britain
as their gateway to the rest of the EU, a role threatened by the Brexit vote
and the uncertainty about the future trade relationship between Britain
and the EU. Many new Indian investors began to consider relocating to
the European continent. At the very least, the larger Indian firms began
adopting a ‘Britain plus one’ strategy: even if they retained their offices
or factories in Britain they would set up alternative centres of economic
activity in another EU member-state. The most prominent consequence
has been the decision of Jaguar Land Rover to build its newest factory in
Slovakia, reflecting the country’s emergence as a major automobile manu-
facturing hub. The $1.6 billion factory opened up in Slovakia in 2018. As
it is carried out by the British firm, the investment is tabulated as British
FDI into Slovakia even though Jaguar Land Rover is a wholly-owned
subsidiary of Tata Motors (Deutsche Welle, 2019).
There has been some Central European investment in India as well,
albeit on a smaller scale than the flow of investments in the other direc-
tion. Much of this has been by Czech firms, reflecting its advanced
22 P. PAL CHAUDHURI
industrial sector. Skoda Auto and Skoda Power have high brand recog-
nition in India. Vitkovice Machinery Group, ZKL Bearings, Bonatrans
and Tatra are among the other prominent Czech firms that have invested
in India. A variety of Polish firms, representing about $600 million in
investment, operate in India (India, Embassy in Poland, 2020b).
Two decades after the communist era, Central European govern-
ments now see India primarily as a major source of investment and, to
a lesser extent, trade in their countries. The larger more advanced coun-
tries of the region, Poland, the Czech Republic, Hungary and Slovakia,
have become aggressive about wooing Indian companies and developing
people-to-people exchanges. The largest Indian chambers of commerce
have released studies about the potential of business in Central Europe
(FICCI, 2015; Deloitte-CII, 2014).
Indian students, businessmen and tourists are actively wooed and a
number of airlines now have direct flights between Central Europe and
India. Ambassadors from countries like Poland and Hungary which have
seen the rise of nativist, right-wing governments privately stress that none
of the anti-immigrant sentiment in their countries has ever been directed
against Indians. Some of these countries have also seen a minor resur-
gence in the study of Indian culture and language, an echo of the strong
academic tradition of Indology that has existed in Central Europe for
centuries.
Strategic Era?
Indian foreign policy under Prime Minister Narendra Modi has made a
deliberate attempt to reach out to parts of the world that have tradition-
ally received little attention from the Indian Government. This outreach
has included part of the Indian Ocean littoral region, the Pacific islands,
segments of Africa and the smaller countries of continental Europe. This
reflected the Modi government’s view that India’s interests had reached
the point the country needed to engage beyond the same 20 or so
countries that dominated New Delhi’s worldview.
The Brexit vote and Britain’s imminent departure from the EU has
also led to a re-evaluation of India’s overall European policy. Until the
Brexit vote, India was satisfied in having Britain serve as its primary inter-
locutor in Europe with subsidiary relationships with France and Germany.
London having removed itself from the picture, New Delhi began to
contemplate a European policy in which it maintained several points of
engagement. Modi signalled as much, and India officials confirmed that

this was the intent, when he visited France, Germany, Spain and Brussels
during his first major European tour.3 He also held a Nordic summit that
incorporated the three Scandinavian countries, Finland and Iceland.
The evidence points to Modi planning a similar regional outreach for
Central Europe, probably built around the four Visegrad countries plus
a few other Southeast European countries. India had started moving up
the diplomatic escalator towards that goal with simultaneous state visits
by Indian President Ram Nath Kovind in 2018 to Bulgaria and the Czech
Republic and Vice-President Venkaiah Naidu to Serbia and Romania,
followed by Foreign Minister S. Jaishankar visiting Hungary and Poland
in August 2019 (Roy Chaudhury, 2018).
The joint communique issued after Jaishankar’s visit to Poland stated
that ‘he conveyed India’s readiness to engage more actively in the region
of Central Europe, which should have a positive impact on the overall
EU-India cooperation. He also expressed India’s desire to engage with
Poland in the Visegrad format’ (India, Ministry of External Affairs, 2019).
The COVID-19 pandemic that broke out in early 2020 put a hold on
any further movement in this direction and it remains to be seen whether
the pandemic’s economic and political consequences will allow the Modi
government to pick up the baton again.
There has been considerable commentary on Indian interest in coun-
tering China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) in the Balkans and Central
Europe in general. While the Modi government has been active in
opposing the BRI and other Chinese strategic moves in the economic
and technological space, India has preferred to concentrate on providing
alternatives to BRI projects in the Indian Ocean and parts of the Maritime
Silk Road, the seaborne element of the BRI. It has announced plans for
joint infrastructure projects with Japan, for example, in the Bay of Bengal
area, Africa and the Indian Ocean island states. But India has treated the
BRI in Central Asia and Europe as beyond its scope of activity and best
left to other countries to handle. India may eventually carry out invest-
ments that thwart the ability of China to expand its influence in Central
Europe and the Balkans, but this will be a secondary goal of any such
activity in that region (Jaishankar, 2018; Roy Chaudhury, 2018).
3 Private conversations with senior Indian diplomats, New Delhi, June 2017.
24 P. PAL CHAUDHURI
Any Indian interest in working with a Visegrad plus formula in Central

Europe would be primarily driven by its desire to develop new points
of influence in Europe and within the EU. The Polish Foreign Minister,
Jacek Czaputowicz, made this implicit in the 2019 joint communique
where he ‘affirmed Poland‘s commitment to actively shape the EU-
India agenda to the benefit of both parties’ (India, Ministry of External
Affairs,2019). A secondary interest would be to garner support for some
of its multilateral goals including a permanent seat in the UN Secu-
rity Council and expanding its climate-oriented programmes like the
International Solar Alliance and the ‘One Sun, One World, One Grid’
proposal.
The Modi government’s strongest advocate for a more strategic
approach to Central Europe is believed to be Foreign Minister Jaishankar,
a person who began his diplomatic career in Hungary and Czechoslo-
vakia, is fluent in Russian and has a working knowledge of Hungarian.
India will also remain unwilling to adjust its strong, if waning, relation-
ship with Russia because of Central European concerns. New Delhi’s
response to the Russian occupation of Crimea4 had echoes of its response
to the Hungarian uprising. Nonetheless, the Modi government represents
the first attempt by New Delhi to conceive of a larger relationship with
Central Europe that treats the region as an autonomous element within
India’s foreign policy rather than a footnote of its relations with other
great powers.
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process’. Indeed, Modi has also referred to nations who ‘want to give advice’ and has
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CHAPTER 3
Indian Perceptions of Central Europe
Rajendra K. Jain
The foreign policy choices and behaviour of actors are considerably

influenced by images. The ‘reputation, the reflection of the reality of
power in the mind of the observers’, Morgenthau points out, can be ‘as
important as the reality of power itself. What others think about us is
as important as what we actually are’ (Morgenthau, 1965). Perceptions
in fact determine behaviour. In turn, perceptions are also ‘influenced by
behavior’ (Sridharan, 2001: 86–87). Images and perceptions of other
nations provide ‘the basic framework within which the conduct of inter-
national relations and conflict resolution takes place’. Thus, international
perceptions and attribution function as ‘a justificatory mechanism for the
rationalization of many foreign policy decisions or actions taken in favour
of or against another nation’ (Movahedi, 1985: 19).
This chapter examines Indian perceptions of Central Europe during
the Cold War and from the 1990s to the present. It begins with a
discussion of the genesis of the term ‘Central Europe’ and discusses how
Jawaharlal Nehru used it during and after the interwar period. It exam-
ines Indian efforts to establish diplomatic relations and embassies in the
region. It traces the evolution and the gradually expanding geographical
R. K. Jain (B)
Centre for European Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, India

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-2850-4_3
30 R. K. JAIN
scope of the Central Europe Division in the Ministry of External Affairs to

comprise 30 countries at present. The chapter provides a broad overview
of the scholarly literature on India-Central Europe economic and political
relations as well as the evolution and current state of teaching of Central
and Eastern Europe as well as languages at Indian universities. It criti-
cally evaluates post-Cold War perceptions of trade and economic ties with
Central Europe in the 1990s and deals with Indian reactions to the 2004
eastward enlargement of the European Union. It discusses how Central
Europe figured in parliamentary debates and discussions from 1947 to
2019 and assesses the changing perspectives of the region by the two
prominent corporate chambers. It assesses the proactive engagement of
Central Europe under Prime Minister Narendra Modi as well as Indian
perceptions of the Chinese inroads in Central Europe, especially the Belt
and Road Initiative and the 17+1 format.
Defining Central Europe

The states of Central and Eastern Europe were described by a Czech
novelist as the ‘kidnapped continent’: geographically in the middle,
culturally in the West and politically in the East. A clear demarcation
of Central Europe has been somewhat difficult because its borders have
changed considerably in the past with the result that the ‘cultural borders
do not completely coincide with the political ones’ (Agh, 1998: 3). The
idea of Central Europe has been one that is ‘more political and cultural
than geographic in origin. It is a region that does lie in the middle of
Europe...but [its] geographical form has not been its most important
characteristic’ (Lewis, 1994: 8).
The term ‘Central Europe’ was first developed by Metternich and
subsequently by Friedrich Naumann in his book Mitteleuropa (1915)
(Ash, 1990; Judt, 1990: 24). This was generally perceived as ‘a code
word’ for a German sphere of influence from the Rhine to the Danube.
The Poles associated it with the German Drang nach Osten (Drive to the
East) (Rupnik, 1990: 256–257).
During the Cold War, there was no ‘middle’ and the term fell
into disuse. The term most commonly used during the postwar period
was ‘Eastern Europe’ to denote Central European as well as Warsaw
Pact countries. With the end of Communist regimes in East Europe
in the 1980s, the term ‘Central Europe’ again came into vogue, and
the Hungarians, Czechs and Poles started calling themselves Central
3 INDIAN PERCEPTIONS OF CENTRAL EUROPE 31
Europeans (Roskin, 1994: 11). The main dividing line between Central
(Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary) and Western (Bulgaria, Romania),
according to a Polish scholar, was determined by their allegiance to either
the Roman Catholic or the Orthodox cultural sphere (Stepanovsky, 1992;
75). For nearly 45 years after 1945, the term ‘Central Europe’ was almost
‘entirely absent from the political parlance of Europe’; the Cold War
division into East and West obliterated it (Ash, 1999).
In the post-Cold War era, some scholars ‘used the term “East Central
Europe” to cover all countries between Germany and Russia, but this
term is neither geographically precise nor politically self-evident’ (Hyde-
Price, 1996: 6). East Central Europe is ‘more usually defined as the
four countries of Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic/Czechia and
Slovakia’ because it denotes ‘a common regional identity which distin-
guishes them from their many neighbours’, but the fact remains that
geographically, culturally and historically, it not possible to give a precise
geographical definition of the region (Hyde-Price, 1996: 7). The ‘myth
of the pure Central European past is perhaps a good myth’ (Ash, 1986).
In the 1990s, the term was used in a somewhat divisive way to distance
the Visegrad states from other countries which were viewed as laggards in
implementing neoliberal reforms, which were politically and economically
unstable, often defined religiously by Christian Orthodoxy, and located
further east than Poland and the Baltic states, and south of Hungary and
Slovenia (Buchowski & Cervinkova, 2015: 2–3).
The ‘negative stereotype’ of Eastern Europe, two Central European
scholars argue, was invented by Western Europe during the Enlighten-
ment and was used time and again thereafter. With the 2004 eastward
enlargement of the European Union, the border of the Union moved
further to the east. As a result, that ‘previous East—now Central—Europe
ceased to denote the otherness of the West. In other words, that otherness
moved further to the East’ (Moskalewicz & Przybylski, 2018: 3–4).
Belief in the idea of Central Europe has generally been considered
to have been a key factor in the establishment of the Visegrad Group
(V4) though a considerably more important one was the conviction that
a smaller, more homogenous group would expedite EU membership. In
recent years, V4 countries seem to have different notions about the idea of
Central Europe.1 The initial goal of the V4 was to create ‘a new Central
1 For Poland, it was ‘a kind of a balance’ between Russia and Germany. For Slovakia, it
was ‘a chance to abandon political isolation’ and to become a full-fledged member of the
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they were arranged with loving care on the shelves on either side of
the room. Many of them were of great value, gifts from the wealthier
patrons who had learned to appreciate him or owed him a debt for
consolation that could never be repaid. Some of these gifts were
splendid specimens of the bookbinder’s art, and rich in clasps of
gold and silver. It was told of Père Antoine that one of the princes of
the blood had sent him a worldly book bound with great
magnificence and set with jewels, and the good priest had returned it
with the quotation of St. Jerome’s words: “Your books are covered
with precious stones, and Christ died naked before the gate of His
temple!”
To this room came daily little Péron, the clockmaker’s adopted child,
to learn his lessons out of Père Antoine’s primer, and to spend a
laborious hour copying from the Gospels, that he might learn his
Bible and his penmanship at the same time. It was a pretty sight to
see the rosy-faced, dark-eyed boy sitting by the pale, studious priest
and taking his lesson soberly. Péron was a good scholar, and willing
enough except on occasions when the shouts of children at play
made his ears tingle and his heart throb; but he had never been
allowed to join in those rough sports, so he bore the ordeal with
patience, and only sighed more heavily at the task. He loved his
teacher, as many other people loved Père Antoine, and he had a
quick mind. The surroundings, too, were an incentive; he longed to
be able to read all those books, those beautiful books which he was
allowed to look at and to handle with a care that had been instilled by
constant teaching and example. By the time he was ten years old he
could read both French and Latin fairly well, and by spelling out the
longer words could gather the meaning of most of the books which
he especially loved to look at. These were the older volumes, with
gayly decorated borders, some of great beauty and a few having
miniatures en camaïeu or en grisaille after the fashion of the time of
Charles VI. There was one, the “Heures de la Croix,” which was
curiously bound in white silk with sacred emblems upon it, and
encased in a red “chemise,” a kind of pocket in which books were
kept, and which was made of silk, velvet, or sandal-wood, as
occasion might require. Naturally, the books which attracted the boy
were those most gorgeously bound or emblazoned with pictures of
saints and martyrs, such as the “Livre d’Heures,” “Les Miracles de
Notre Dame,” the illuminated antiphonaries and missals. He had
even tried to spell out the “Commentaries of St. Jerome” and “Boèce
on Consolation,” this last because it was bound in green “Dampmas
cloth” and very beautifully embroidered. He was familiar, too, with
every printer’s and bookseller’s mark, and these were then curious
enough, from the two leopards of Simon Vostre to the six-oared
galley of Galliot de Pré, bookseller of Paris in 1531, nearly a hundred
years before Cardinal de Richelieu. But it was these old books,
whose capital letters had been decorated by the illuminator in many
colors, which pleased Péron, and not any of the more modern
volumes. Solid and somewhat dreary books for a child to spell a
lesson from, but none the less helpful in the struggle; and so faithful
was the pupil that there was seldom a day that Père Antoine did not
send him away with some word of commendation. And praise from
the priest meant more than the wondering admiration of Madame
Michel, who regarded the boy as a marvel of erudition for his years;
and so he was, for a child of his condition in the world. So ready was
he to learn, and so prone to meditation, that Jacques des Horloges
occasionally grumbled out a fear that he might be made a better
priest than a soldier, for strangely enough the clockmaker never
seemed to entertain a thought of training Péron as an apprentice at
his own trade.
It was the child’s custom to talk more to the priest than to any one
else. In the shop on the Rue de la Ferronnerie he confined his
confidential communications to M. de Turenne, but on the Rue de
Bethisi he found his tongue, and many times Père Antoine turned his
face aside to hide a smile, too wise to wound the boy’s feelings. This
was the secret of his power, for a child both dreads and hates
ridicule. It was therefore to the priest that he carried the doubts and
the curiosity awakened by his visit to the Château de Nançay. Père
Antoine knew nothing of the journey to Poissy, and was unprepared
for the sudden questions which his pupil propounded. The boy had
been reading laboriously from “Les Petites Heures,” guided by his
teacher’s pencil, when he stopped and turned his large eyes upon
him.
“Père Antoine,” he said slowly, “who died in the room next the tower
at the great château near Poissy?”
The priest leaned back in his chair, an expression of intense
astonishment crossing his face, instantly followed by one of sorrow
so sharp that the pupils of his eyes contracted as if with pain.
“Who told you of Poissy?” he asked quietly.
“I have been there,” Péron declared with an air of conscious pride;
“Maître Jacques took me on horseback. We rode a long way and
saw the fair in the forest.”
“The fête at St. Germain-en-Laye?” said Père Antoine. “Did you like
the green fields and the flowers, Péron?”
The child looked down; he was thinking of the bunch of violets which
he had brought home surreptitiously and hidden in his cupboard; he
was ashamed to keep anything that had been thrown at him as if he
were a beggar or a vagrant.
“I should like to live always in the green fields,” he said; “they are so
much prettier than the stone walls of the Rue de la Ferronnerie.”
Père Antoine sighed, laying his hand softly on the bent head with
one of his rare caresses.
“Poor child,” he murmured sadly; “our paths are not always easy, the
stones cut our feet; but fret not for a different condition of life;
discontent is a cankerworm which eats the heart. The streets of
Paris are narrow and dingy, yet you may learn here to walk the
narrow way of life eternal. You grow to be a big boy, Péron;
presently, instead of spelling with me, you will begin to learn the
lessons of existence. Some of us can have green fields and flowers,
but many, my child, have only the flint-paved way, and are shut in by
walls as grim as those of the Châtelet. See to it that you crave not
that which is another’s; verily, there is no more cruel sin than envy.”
“Why do the rich say rude things to the poor?” asked the boy sharply.
A slow flush crept up to Père Antoine’s temples and his sensitive lips
tightened.
“It is the way of the world, Péron,” he said softly, “not God’s way.”
“It is a very mean way!” the child declared promptly; “I will never
stand it.”
The priest looked at him in surprise; for some time he had been
conscious of the development of a new characteristic in his pupil, but
he was not prepared for the fire of the boy’s resentment. He shook
his head gravely.
“You must not harbor thoughts of malice, Péron,” he said; “I have
labored to teach you the lessons of Christian humility.”
“I do not see why some people are so rich and others so poor,”
Péron remarked, unmoved.
“You are not very poor,” Père Antoine replied soothingly, “you have a
comfortable shelter, and the care of good Maître Jacques and his
wife.”
He was endeavoring to quiet the child, but his words only called forth
another question.
“Are my father and mother really dead?” Péron asked, leaning his
elbows on the table and gazing earnestly at his teacher.
Again the older face clouded and the kind eyes dwelt sadly on the
rosy countenance of his interrogator.
“Both dead, Péron,” he answered softly. “Your mother when you
were a baby, your father when you were three years old.”
“Did you know my mother, Père Antoine?” the child asked, a longing
in his tone which may have caused the spasm of pain that passed
over the priest.
“I knew her all her life,” he answered, “and I was with her when her
spirit passed into Paradise; she was a very noble, gentle, Christian
woman.”
He bent his head as he spoke and crossed himself, seeming for an
instant to forget the child.
“Do I look like her?” the boy asked, with eager interest.
“You have her eyes, my child,” Père Antoine said tenderly, “but you
grow daily more and more like your father.”
“Of what did he die?” Péron inquired; his mind seemed fully roused
at last, and he was not inclined to spare.
The priest’s pale face grew even more grave than it had been; he
laid his hand on the neglected book before his pupil.
“He died suddenly,” he said; “but come, child, you neglect your
lesson.”
But he was not to evade the persistent little questioner.
“What was my father’s name, what is mine?” he asked; “other boys
have always two names—or three, sometimes even four—but I am
only Péron.”
The priest spoke severely now. “My child,” he replied, “you have no
name but Péron now, nor can I tell you your father’s name; neither
can Maître Jacques. Be content, my boy, to bear the name we have
given you and to do your duty, since you may not know more than
we can tell you. See here rather this sentence which you left half
read.”
Péron followed his guiding pencil for a few moments, and then he
looked up again, fixing his eyes on his instructor.
“You have not told me who died in the room at the château at
Poissy,” he said.
The priest passed his hand over his eyes; he was thinking
prayerfully, although the boy did not know it. A long, sad vista
opened before Père Antoine’s mental vision; the questions of love,
duty, necessity, beset him. He was a wise man as well as a good
one, but sometimes a child may confound a sage. He loved Péron
too, with the tenderness of a woman, and he felt that with him lay the
chief responsibility, since he was the most intelligent as well as the
most deeply concerned of his guardians. After an instant’s pause, a
pause so slight that the eager interrogator scarcely noted it, the
priest answered him in his usual calm tone.
“The Marquise de Nançay died there, Péron,” he said gravely. “A
very good woman.”
This answer did not satisfy the boy.
“Maître Jacques said she was like a saint,” he remarked curiously.
Père Antoine drew a deep breath, his luminous eyes looking over
Péron’s head into space.
“We cannot judge,” he said, in a low voice, “but I have never known
a better woman.”
“Was she as good as my mother?” asked the child bluntly.
“She was as good as your mother,” replied the priest slowly.
“Maître Jacques made me say my prayers there,” remarked Péron
gravely.
The sad shadow in Père Antoine’s blue eyes cleared, as sometimes
the clouds break in the eastern sky and let the sun shine through.
“It is well,” he said, and there was a reverent pause.
But this was not the end of it.
“Is that her little girl who lives at Nançay?” was the next question.
Père Antoine started, and the sensitive flush came again.
“No!” he replied sharply.
“Is that tall man, who wears such wonderful lace ruffles, her
husband?” pursued Péron, unmercifully.
“A thousand times, no!” cried Père Antoine.
“Then,” exclaimed Péron in triumph, “how can she have been the
Marquise de Nançay? I heard them call him the marquis.”
Père Antoine wiped his forehead with his handkerchief, and rose and
opened the casement.
“It is warm,” he said, then he turned to the child with the manner
which his pupil knew how to interpret. “We have wasted much
valuable time,” he remarked gravely. “I wish you to learn from the
Psalter to-day. You should not ask so many questions; there may
always be several people of the same name. It is more important for
you to read well than to know so much of unprofitable matters. I
notice that when the letters are colored in blue, you more easily
mistake them than those in red; this is not as it should be, and shows
either a want of application or inattention to your lessons.”
For the next hour and a half Péron found Père Antoine a harder
taskmaster than he had ever been before, and many times, in the
interval, the child sighed as he thought of the green fields and
flowers between Paris and St. Germain-en-Laye.
CHAPTER VIII
PÉRON’S FIRST VICTORY
WHEN the boy was twelve years old, a great change came into his
life. The Prince de Condé, coming into the shop one day, saw him,
noticed his strength and beauty, and offered to receive him into his
household to be trained to the profession of arms. This opportunity
was joyfully embraced by Jacques des Horloges, who had long been
in despair of placing the child as he desired. Père Antoine had
trained him well in reading, and he was a fair scribe, but he had had
no one to teach him to wield a weapon or ride a horse, and the
clockmaker desired to see him a soldier rather than a priest.
Condé’s offer was therefore the subject of many debates in the room
behind the shop; Jacques Michel being eager to send him into the
household of a prince of the blood, and Père Antoine and Madame
Michel half inclined to put obstacles in the way, mainly because they
could not endure the thought of parting with the boy. But the
opportunity was too brilliant to be lost, and in the end the clockmaker
prevailed.
So it was that madame washed and pinned out the best lace collar
and brushed the black taffety suit with many secret tears, and the
day came at last for Péron to leave, for a while at least, the humble
shelter of the shop at the sign of Ste. Geneviève and go with his
adopted father to his great patron. The boy was too proud to weep,
but he covertly kissed M. de Turenne and wiped his eyes
surreptitiously behind the jacquemart before he left the familiar
quarters to begin a new life. His heart swelled with pride, however, at
the thought of being trained for a soldier, and he walked as if he
already felt a sword at his side.
The change from a shop on the Rue de la Ferronnerie to the house
of a prince was marvellous enough, but it was not all. Péron had
attracted the attention and fancy of Condé, and was an
acknowledged favorite in the household. He was handsome,
straight-limbed, and large for his age; and he was not only trained for
the camp, but also for three or four years he served as a page to the
princess. It was a happy and uneventful period in his life, and he
improved in person and manners. He received his first lessons in
sword play from Choin, an expert fencing-master employed by
Condé to train his men, and Péron was an especial favorite with the
maître d’armes. He was an apt pupil, his lithe, active figure seemed
made for sword practice, and he had a wrist like steel. He was
destined to serve as a musketeer, but he was thoroughly trained in
all military exercises, and became a fine horseman before he was
sixteen. He not only enjoyed the advantages of a soldier’s education
in the great establishment, but he became accustomed to the
manners and fashions of the court circle. In the Hôtel de Condé he
could see all the great personages of the day, from the king and
Monsieur to Richelieu; for the Bishop of Luçon was now a cardinal. It
had been his privilege also to attend upon the princess when she
stood in her grand salon to receive her guests, and to follow her
when she went to the Hôtel Rambouillet, where Catherine de
Vivonne received all the wits of the day, and where, at a later period,
the Cid was read to the chosen few of madame’s coterie.
But it was not Péron’s fate to remain long with Condé; another
change was to come into his life, and, like the first, it came suddenly
and unsolicited. It was the custom of Choin, the fencing-master, to
train the boys and young men of the household in the tennis court at
hours when it was unvisited by the prince or his guests. One
afternoon they were assembled there as usual, the maître d’armes
and his pupils, some dozen lads about Péron’s age, in various
employments in the establishment, and all given the advantages of
military exercises, then so essential to every young man. Choin was
a merciless tutor: a blow was apt to follow a rebuke or accompany it,
and he showed no favor. The lads were taught to use both pistol and
sword, and many of them were already expert. It was, however, a
high compliment to receive a challenge from Choin to single combat,
and but few of the boys could defend themselves at all against the
fencer. He was a short, thick man, with a neck like a bull’s, and much
the same kind of wide nostrils. His small bright eyes glittered like the
points of stilettos, and his shock of black hair hung in a straight bang
across his low forehead. He was half an Italian, he was one of the
most expert swordsmen in Europe, and he bore no love to Richelieu
since the edict which had struck such a blow at duelling. He was in
no very amiable mood when he called his pupils together, and more
than one lad had received a box on the ear before the first hour was
over. It was his way, when out of temper, to challenge one of the
boys and vent his rage by inflicting a humiliating defeat on the
unfortunate. It happened that he selected Péron, perhaps because
the lad had shown a daring indifference to his teacher’s mood and
yet had, so far, escaped a blow. Choin did not know the lion that was
sleeping in the boy’s heart; he had made a favorite of the
clockmaker’s son, and had never before tested his skill in any of his
fits of passion. The two engaged now, to the intense interest of the
others. Both were stripped of coat and waistcoat, and Péron’s lithe,
slender figure presented a strange contrast to the bulky form of the
maître d’armes. The spectators, a group of half-grown lads and
hostlers, drew back in a circle large enough for the encounter, and
challenger and challenged faced each other. Choin was not only in a
bad temper, but also contemptuous of his adversary’s skill; he forgot
how intelligent and apt a pupil he faced. Péron watched him with
heaving breast; he looked for defeat, but was determined that he
would not be disarmed at the first stroke, as the others always were.
He was, of course, no match for the fencer in strength, but he had
the activity of a cat and he was not angry; moreover, he was sharply
conscious of the gaping interest of the onlookers, in the expectation
of his failure. The foils were blunt, happily for him, and there was no
cause to fear the uncontrollable fury of the maître d’armes. There
was a momentary pause; then, at the signal, their swords crossed,
and Choin made the pass which always disarmed the boys, though
they had seen it a thousand times. But Péron was not to be taken
unawares; he sprang aside and parried to the amazement of his
instructor. There was another short play, and again the maître
d’armes failed to win and was even annoyed by his adversary’s skill.
Then the sparks flew; Choin began to put out his full powers, and
yet, miraculously, as it seemed to him, his youthful opponent held his
ground. The perspiration began to stand out on the broad forehead
of the fencing-master, and his short neck grew red across the nape.
He was furious, and his anger made his strokes a trifle less
dexterous than usual, while the boy, who had expected defeat, was
so elated by his successful resistance that he redoubled his efforts.
A grin, first of amazement and then of delight, began to broaden on
the faces of the spectators. Two or three slapped their comrades
with boisterous mirth, and there was a growing desire to applaud.
Choin felt it, and he glared around him fiercely.
“Ventre Saint Gris!” he cried, “if you asses do not hold your tongues,
I’ll whip every one of you, and spit you besides!”
This threat had the effect of slightly suppressing the enjoyment of the
spectators, but they could not refrain from their delighted interest as
another round commenced and still Péron kept his weapon. So
intent were they upon their amusement that no one noticed the quiet
approach of a small party of cavaliers, who halted at the sight of the
fencers and stood observing the scene. Choin was now fairly
enraged, and he was keeping his antagonist hotly engaged, the two
dancing around the circle; for as the maître d’armes thrust, Péron
dodged and leaped from side to side, parrying or avoiding every
blow. Suddenly one of the hostlers looked up and saw the group on
the terrace; instantly there was a murmur which reached the ears
even of the fencing-master. “The cardinal,” they cried, “and M. le
Prince!” Choin started and looked up, and in that instant Péron
struck his foil from his hand and sent it flying over the heads of the
spectators.
“Bien!” cried the Prince de Condé, clapping his hands, “good hit!
good hit!”
Péron glanced up in amazement, and saw Condé and Cardinal de
Richelieu with several others looking down at them. The boy’s face
turned scarlet. A storm of applause burst forth at the prince’s
approving words, and the victor found himself a hero, while the
maître d’armes stood discomfited, fully aware that he had not only
been defeated, but had displayed too vicious a temper before his
patron. Condé enjoyed the whole situation.
“You are fairly whipped, Choin,” he said, laughing; “you are too
excellent a teacher.”
“I ask your excellency’s pardon,” stammered the fencing-master; “I
shall not make the same error twice.”
“By St. Denis! ’tis no error to instruct so well,” retorted the prince; “at
this rate, I shall have to engage your pupils to teach you.”
“Who is the lad?” suddenly asked the cardinal. He had been a silent
spectator of the scene, his keen face showing no sign of his
thoughts.
“A protégé of mine, the son of a clockmaker,” replied Condé, not
without some pride in his selection.
“Of Jacques des Horloges,” said Richelieu, deliberately. “What is the
boy’s name?”
The prince called to the victor, who had retired among his comrades.
“Come hither, Péron,” he said, “and salute Monsignor.”
His face still suffused with blushes, his curls disordered, and with an
air of deep embarrassment, Péron advanced. The summons
overwhelmed him with confusion; the shy, proud boy had always
shrunk from the presence of this august personage, and he was
awkward and agitated now that he felt those piercing black eyes
upon him. It was not the trembling obsequiousness of the sycophant,
but the shrinking of pride, and the cardinal read him like an open
page.
“This is Péron, monsignor,” said Condé, as the lad made his
obeisance.
“Péron?” repeated Richelieu, thoughtfully. “What is the last name?”
he added, addressing the boy abruptly, as he looked searchingly at
the blushing and ingenuous face.
“I have no other,” replied Péron, with a simple dignity of manner,
rousing himself from his embarrassment.
“Ah!” ejaculated the cardinal, his eyes still fixed on the boy, “you are
then only the adopted son of the clockmaker of the Rue de la
Ferronnerie?”
“That is all, monsignor,” was the reply.
“You do not know who were your parents?” continued Richelieu,
while Condé listened surprised at his interest.
“If I knew my father, monsignor,” Péron said, “I should bear his
name.”
“A trite answer,” remarked the cardinal. “Be not over-ambitious, my
son; serve the Prince de Condé and strike your good blows for
France, not in private brawls or secret conspiracy—and France will
reward you.”
With these words he turned away and proceeded along the terrace,
accompanied by Condé and followed by an escort of gentlemen.
“I became interested in the boy at the clockmaker’s shop,” Condé
said, by way of explanation; “he has, as he says, no name but
Péron.”
The cardinal made no immediate reply. He walked on deliberately;
the resolute, inscrutable face showed no sign of his secret thoughts.
At last, however, he spoke, a slight, sarcastic smile on his lips.
“Péron,” he said; “nay, rather Jehan François.”
“Your pardon, my lord cardinal,” replied Condé, “I do not think I heard
you aright.”
The cardinal smiled again. “M. de Condé,” he said deliberately, “give
me the boy.”
Condé looked at him in surprise.
“Is it possible that you also see the charm of the lad’s face and
manner, monsignor?” he asked in an amused tone; “he is but a
clockmaker’s boy, yet he interested me.”
“And he also interests me,” said Richelieu, calmly. “Frankly, M. le
Prince, may I have the boy?”
Condé shrugged his shoulders.
“Certainly, your eminence,” he said pleasantly; “he is not so precious
to me that I cannot part with him. His guardians, Jacques des
Horloges and a priest, Père Antoine, made much ado about his
coming to me, but doubtless they will be proud to give him to you.”
“That is soon settled,” Richelieu answered; “with your permission,
therefore, M. de Condé, I will take the lad with me to Ruel.”
So it was that, to Péron’s surprise and dismay, he found himself
riding that night to Ruel in the train of the man who had fascinated
his childish fancy, and whose figure had moved in every vision of his
boyhood. He could not decide whether he was pleased or not, but it
was a change which excited his fancy and flattered his youthful
pride. Not many boys of his years had had the good fortune to attract
the interest of Richelieu. It seemed to impress even Jacques des
Horloges and Père Antoine as a stroke of luck, for they made no
objection to the sudden change; it may have been that they dared
not. In any case, all went smoothly, and the fatherless boy took his
place in the cardinal’s house, watched, though he knew it not, by that
keen eye which could not be deceived.
CHAPTER IX
THE CARDINAL’S CLOCK
TIME passed, and there were changes in state and at court. The
trouble between the Huguenots and the Catholics had reached a
climax, and France had once more beheld a religious war. The
gallant Duke of Rohan had made his fight and lost. The famous
siege of La Rochelle was now a thing of the past; vanishing in the
distance as the white sails of Buckingham’s fleet vanished from
before the starving city and left it to the mercy of the cardinal.
Richelieu had triumphed in war and peace, though still beset by
constant plotting and counterplotting at home. The queen-mother,
who had at first supported and patronized him, had become jealous
of his increasing influence with the king, and was now intriguing to
overthrow the minister. She was seconded in her efforts by her
second son, the Duke of Orleans, who, led on by his mother, had
openly rebelled against his brother the king, and invoked the aid of
Spain. His defeat at Castelnaudary had ruined the gallant
Montmorency, and Monsieur was ever ready to desert those whom
he had involved in his own dishonor. Marie de’ Medici had been
defeated at every point in her struggle with Richelieu, and finding
herself in danger of being shut up by the cardinal at Moulins and
stripped of the last vestige of authority, she fled at night, attended by
only one gentleman, and took refuge in Brussels. There she
continued to hatch innumerable conspiracies, determined to
overthrow Richelieu and regain her own place in the councils of her
son. The struggle between mother and son which Henri Quatre had
predicted, was only to terminate with her death. Unhappily she lived
long enough to keep affairs in a constant turmoil during most of her
son’s reign, and at her death there was still left the Duke of Orleans,
who inherited her temperament. However, it was during the early
years of the queen-mother’s exile at Brussels that the greatest
number of plots were constantly springing up under the feet of
Richelieu, and it was at this time that he made the most use of his
followers and tried the merits of all those in his service.
Thus it happened that the years made many and swift changes for
Péron, while they made but few at the shop on the Rue de la
Ferronnerie. The boy had grown to be a tall young man in the
cardinal’s household, and wore now the dress of Richelieu’s
musketeers, having served his patron faithfully and on several
occasions with distinguished courage and skill. He stood high in the
cardinal’s esteem, and there seemed no reason to regret his change
from the service of Condé.
As for Jacques des Horloges, he showed little sign of increased age;
the clockmaker’s hair was gray now, and there were lines on his
brow, but he bore himself with the same appearance of muscular
strength, and Madame Michel did not look a day older. Her broad
brown face was as smooth as ever, and her glossy black hair was
still put back under a large white cap. M. de Turenne was dead, but
a lineal descendant still sat in the corner by the great jacquemart.
Since Péron entered the household of Richelieu, there had been
much recourse to the shop at the sign of Ste. Geneviève, and when
the Palais Cardinal was built it was Michel who furnished the clocks.
It was from the Rue de la Ferronnerie that the cardinal obtained the
huge clock which stood in one of the smaller salons of the palace;
and a famous clock it was, made for Catharine de’ Medici and
especially framed to serve the secret purposes of the Italian queen.
The dial was of silver, inlaid with gold, and it was surmounted by a
silver angel with a trumpet which sounded the hours. The case of the
clock was so tall and so broad that a man could stand within it
without interfering with the working of the machinery. It was of
polished wood inlaid with brass, and there was a small aperture in
the door, which could be closed or not, at will, by a slide, so
cunningly contrived that it seemed but part of the pattern of brass-
work which ornamented the clock,—a strange clock, which had
served a double purpose, telling the time and concealing spies, both
in the Louvre and the Hôtel de la Reine. It had a strange history: it
struck the hour for the bell of St. Germain l’Auxerrois to toll the signal
for the Massacre of St. Bartholomew; it counted the minutes before
the murder of Henri de Guise, and it was throbbing out the measure
of time when Henri Quatre was dying. Through Jacques des
Horloges it came to stand at last in an apartment of the Palais
Cardinal; not in the salon where Richelieu held his court, not in the
anterooms crowded with the eager clients of the great minister, but in
a long, narrow room overlooking the Rue des Bons Enfants, which
was reached by a gallery leading to the entrance of the eastern wing;
a room where the cardinal received persons of all conditions who
came to him, voluntarily or involuntarily, on secret missions. Here the
sting of many a traitor was drawn, the key of many a plot was
disclosed, the secrets of the queen-mother were drawn skilfully from
her agents. The room was hung with crimson velvet; the chair of the
cardinal stood facing the clock of Catharine de’ Medici, and his
visitor either stood or sat directly in front of the clock. Only one door
to the apartment was visible, and that opened into the gallery; there
was another, but it was hidden by the hangings, and it closed the
way to the private rooms of Father Joseph la Tremblaye.
It was in this room that Péron stood, waiting the orders of the
cardinal. He had been summoned there at an early hour to wait until
Richelieu gave him some personal instructions. He had been
employed on many missions by his great patron, and he did not
regard the occasion as unusual. He stood looking up at the clock, for
it recalled many recollections of his childhood on the Rue de la
Ferronnerie. He had been a handsome boy and he was a handsome
man, with a strong, lithe figure and a face of unusually regular
beauty. His glossy hair was parted in the middle and fell in curls to
his shoulders, after the fashion of the day. He wore the rich uniform
of the cardinal’s musketeers, a wide collar of heavy lace around his
throat and ruffles of lace at his wrists. Many thoughts of his humble
and lonely childhood, of his training under Condé’s patronage, of his
sudden transfer to the household of Richelieu, were passing through
the young soldier’s mind. He remembered how the figure of the
Bishop of Luçon had fascinated his childish mind; he remembered
the beauty of the Princesse de Condé, and the face of Leonora
Galigai, the wife of the hapless Maréchal d’Ancre.
He was walking up and down the room when the hangings were put
aside, and Richelieu entered alone. His musketeer saluted and came
to an attitude of attention not far from his chair. Time had wrought
changes in the ruler of France. The pale Italian face had lost none of
its keenness, its inscrutable calm; his moustache and chin tuft were
still black, but the years had touched his hair with white. He wore his
red robe with a cape of priceless lace, and a small red cap on his
head; and he moved slowly to his seat. He did not speak for some
time after he sat down, but folded and endorsed some papers on the
table at his side; then he put them away, and looked up at the young
man who stood waiting his pleasure. His first question, though asked
in cold and deliberate tones, startled Péron.
“Are you fully armed?” he asked.
“I have my dagger and a pistol, as your eminence can see,” Péron
replied, laying his hand on his weapons.
“It is well,” said the cardinal, and he glanced at the clock; “in an hour
I shall have a visitor, and I shall receive him alone,—alone, mark
you, though I know him to be a violent and dangerous man. There
will be no guards in the gallery nor on the stairs; but you see the
clock, and doubtless you know its secret. It is my wish that you
conceal yourself in that clock; from where it stands you can see
every motion of my hand: if I raise it thus to my chin, seize and
disarm the visitor; if, however, he makes a sudden attack upon me,
before I have time to signal, you know your duty.”
“I know it, monsignor,” Péron said quietly, casting a strange glance of
interest at the great clock.
Richelieu saw it, and for a few moments his stern dark eyes studied
the young musketeer, and then a slight smile flickered on his
inscrutable face.
“You have been with me now many years,” he remarked, speaking
slowly; “I remember that you told me you had no name but Péron.”
“I know of no other, monsignor,” Péron replied, his face flushing.
The cardinal looked out through the window toward the Rue des
Bons Enfants.
“More than twenty years ago,” he said in a cold tone, “a gentleman of
France was beheaded for complicity in a treasonable plot against the
state, against the king. He was convicted and sentenced through the
testimony of his best friend; his estates, being confiscated, went to
the accuser. His guilt, however, was never fully established, and
more than ten years ago I found evidence which proved him
innocent. The man—the friend—who bore witness against him would
have removed his only child so that no claimant to the estate could
ever be produced; would have done away with the child, a boy of
four years old, if he had not been baffled by the fidelity of a servant
and a priest. They spirited away the boy, and bred him up in
concealment, under a false name, in a shop on the Rue de la
Ferronnerie.”
“Mère de Dieu!” cried the young musketeer, below his breath, “is it
possible that your eminence speaks of me?”
Richelieu looked at his startled face and smiled,—a strange
expression in those wonderful eyes.
“I have told your history, Péron,” he remarked coolly. “I recognized
you in the tennis court of Condé by your likeness to your father.”
“And my father died that death innocent?” cried Péron, forgetting the
presence in which he stood, forgetting all but this wonderful
revelation.
“He died innocent,” replied Richelieu, “and doubtless M. de Bruneau
died without cause also. He was the nephew of your father; he made
a claim to the estates; the king was inclined to listen, but there was
again a charge of treason, this time, however, with some sort of
drunken confession. M. de Bruneau went to the Châtelet, and from
thence to the block, and the man who had ruined both uncle and
nephew still possessed the estates and the title.”
“I remember,” said Péron, thoughtfully, “hearing Père Antoine speak
of M. de Bruneau. Monsignor, what is my name?”
The cardinal smiled. He had watched with interest the storm of
emotion which showed itself in the pale face of the soldier.
“Your name is Jehan François de Calvisson,” he replied, “and but for
the strange vicissitudes of destiny, you would be to-day Marquis de
Nançay.”
“Mon Dieu!” cried Péron, with passion, “and that man, whom I have
seen and passed a dozen times, is my father’s murderer!”
“Your father’s accuser,” corrected the cardinal, quietly. “His name is
Pilâtre de Marsou, Sieur de Briçonnet, but he bears your father’s title
and holds his estates at the pleasure of the king.”
Péron took two short turns across the room, his breast heaving and
his lips compressed. Richelieu watched him narrowly; doubtless his
purpose would be accomplished.
“I beg your pardon, monsignor,” Péron said, pausing before him, “but
a man can scarcely hear such a tale with composure.”
The cardinal glanced at the clock.
“In a quarter of an hour now,” he said, “M. de Nançay comes here to
see me on a secret summons. You will take your place, therefore, in
the clock, and remember your instructions.”
The fire leaped up in Péron’s eyes, and he laid his hand on his
dagger.
“Pardieu!” he cried, “I pray your eminence to make the signal!”
Richelieu looked toward the door; his quick ear had caught the
sound of a footstep in the gallery.
“M. le Marquis is early,” he said coldly; and then he pointed to the
clock, his face as immovable as stone. “Take your position yonder,
Sieur de Calvisson, and do your duty.”
Without a word Péron turned with a white face, and stepped into his
strange place of concealment. As he did so, the clock struck eleven,
and the silver angel sounded the silver trumpet, a sweet clear note,
more penetrating than a bell.

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India and Central Europe: Perceptions,

Perspectives, Prospects 1st Edition

India and Central Europe Perceptions Perspectives

Specific Relief Act Law India by A K Jain 2nd Edition

Cambridge IGCSE and O Level History Workbook 2C - Depth

Illiberal and authoritarian tendencies in Central

Primary Mathematics 3A Hoerst

Drug-induced Neurological Disorders Kewal K. Jain

Asymmetrical Threat Perceptions in India China

Diversity of Migration in South East Europe

India and Central

ISBN 978-981-16-2849-8 ISBN 978-981-16-2850-4 (eBook)

9 Indian Foreign Direct Investment in Central Europe 285

Appendix A: India-Czechoslovakia Visits, 1947–1992 343

Rajendra K. Jain was formerly Professor and Chairperson at the Centre

Anna Wróbel is Assistant Professor, Department of Regional and Global

AAI Airports Authority of India

FRY Federal Republic of Yugoslavia

SMEs Small and Medium Enterprises

Graph 9.1 Outward Indian FDI in V4 Countries, 2006–2018 294

Map 10.1 Indian Citizens in Poland in 2014 (Green) and 2019

Table 3.1 India’s Trade with Central Europe 39

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 1

or to Indian leaders for ‘speaking plainly, though in guarded language, on

Delhi with almost no points of engagement with the newly democratic

perceptions of India as well as cultural relations between the two coun-

to illustrate now marginally Slovakia figured in the parliamentary delib-

recognition of India’s importance by the EU and the V4’s desire to

Civil Society Linkages

1 Conversation with a former Joint Secretary (Central Europe), MEA.

on 25 February 2015. This interaction was envisaged as a supplemen-

A Prime Ministerial Visit

2 Private conversation with a former Joint Secretary (Central Europe), MEA.

second half of 2020, but the COVID-19 pandemic has pushed it to

Towards a Strategic Partnership?

4 Private conversation with a former Joint Secretary (Central Europe), MEA.

partnership currently under discussion with the Czech Republic and

India and Central Europe: From the Margins

Pramit Pal Chaudhuri

Independent India’s relationship with Central Europe has undergone

P. Pal Chaudhuri (B)

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 13

rise of China and India’s expanding geo-economic interests in Europe are

The Soviet Era, 1947–1989

European communist regimes and small countries being dominated by a

Hungarian Uprising of 1956

Prague Spring of 1968

Reform Era, 1989–2001

Investment Era, 2001 to the Present

engagement. Modi signalled as much, and India officials confirmed that

Any Indian interest in working with a Visegrad plus formula in Central

Indian Perceptions of Central Europe

The foreign policy choices and behaviour of actors are considerably

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 29

scope of the Central Europe Division in the Ministry of External Affairs to

Defining Central Europe

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