It should not be a surprise. Countries will always act in their best interest unless forced to do otherwise by a stronger force. The Indian foreign minister has often lashed back at journalists questioning him on why India buys cheap Russian oil (the answer is in the ‘cheap’). It would be folly for a country to stop buying a key national resource that they do not have domestically simply because of a war they have nothing to do with.
He also often retorts that European countries continued to purchase Russian oil after the war started as they had not yet gotten proper replacements, and only started pressuring India when their (the Europeans) stock was more adequate. It comes across as hypocrisy, and in all honesty, it is.
So, not really surprising.
It would be like India expecting the United Kingdom not to purchase basmati rice from Pakistan simply because India is not cordial with Pakistani, and UK purchases of Pakistani rice will mean more funds that Islamabad can purchase to potentially use against India.
The whole UK would laugh hard at India and find their request foolish.
Replace Pakistan with Russia, and simple rice with cheap oil, and you can see why India would rather face 50% tariffs from the US (especially when they can trade elsewhere) than sabotage themselves from an energy perspective.
Not surprising, and it is not meant to be anti-Trump (in the same way the UK laughing at the Pakistani-rice example would not be anti-Modi).
And crossing The U.S. may not be in India’s best interest. India hanging out with Russia and China as both countries are trying to make a statement of unity against The U.S. is what surprised me.
At the end of the day India will always act in what they believe to be their best interest. Of course, they could find out that they were wrong.