Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi was shown clasping both of his hands around those of Vladimir Putin as the two men chatted heartily. They were then shown walking together, smiling, with Mr. Modi holding the hand of the Russian president. The two leaders, who were later seen carpooling, were in the northern Chinese city of Tianjin to attend the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) Summit held last week.

Several thoughts ran through my mind as I watched those images on television. The one thing that I kept asking myself was this: Did Mr. Modi forget that the Russian president is a war criminal on whose orders Russian forces have committed various heinous crimes in Ukraine? How could he though, after what he and the whole world witnessed in Bucha, Mariupol, and elsewhere in Ukraine.

Although India proclaimed neutrality on the Russia-Ukraine war and has helped keep Russia’s economy afloat by buying its oil, Mr. Modi was always careful about being seen as cozying to Putin. The last thing he wanted was to anger Western leaders by being chummy with someone the West had designated a pariah. That caution was thrown to the wind just in the last couple of weeks, after President Trump infuriated India by imposing punitive tariffs on the country for continuing to buy Russian oil.

It is highly doubtful that Mr. Modi would have been in Tianjin had President Trump not imposed that additional 25 percent tariff on his country. Border disputes have generated so much bad blood between India and China over the years that Chinese President Xi Jinping couldn’t bring himself to attend the G20 Summit in India in 2023. In spite of that history, Mr. Modi was shown at the SCO Summit engaging in what appeared to be friendly group conversations with Mr. Xi and the Russian president.

Curiously, Mr. Modi was a no-show at the massive military parade that took place in Beijing the day after the SCO Summit. Among the many heads of state in attendance were Mr. Putin and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. My sense is that although Mr. Modi is extremely upset at the U.S. and wanted to get even by getting close to America’s archnemesis, the parade was a street he didn’t want to cross.

As a rising economic power, India must be wary of a heavily militarized China calling the shots in that neighborhood. Mr. Modi was well aware of what was going to be on display in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square, and perhaps didn’t want to be seen as legitimizing China’s regional military supremacy with his presence. That worry about China is also why India has, for the past three decades or so, carefully cultivated a close relationship with the U.S. and its allies.

India is a member of the Quad, a group of four democratic countries that includes the U.S., Japan and Australia. One objective of the Quad is to take measures to counter China’s increasingly aggressive behavior in the Indo-Pacific. The four countries’ navies participated in a joint exercise in November 2020.

Mr. Modi is clearly caught in a difficult situation. He may be a strongman, but he presides over the world’s largest democracy. Ideologically, he will probably be uncomfortable camping with the autocrats whose main purpose appears to be elimination of democracy as a governing model. The hope is that President Trump hasn’t taken just a couple of weeks to destroy the U.S.-India relationship that took decades to develop. We need India as much as it needs us, because China happens to be a common adversary.