Obsession with China seems to have obscured the increasingly important role of India on the world stage. Already the most populous nation on earth, the largest democracy and with the second largest army, India is expected to become the world’s third largest economy by 2030 at the latest.
In power since 2014, Narendra Modi has come personally to epitomise the new India. Every other page in the newspapers carries his photograph, his face is on billboards and posters across the cities. The evidence of his impact is visible daily as he lays foundation stones for ambitious infrastructure projects - new metro systems, airports, bridges, tunnels and highways - celebrates a moon landing and the opening of massive new Hindu temples at Ayodhya and in the United Arab Emirates. Every government initiative seems advertised as a personal gift from Modi. There is an air of justified optimism as India’s economy grows at over 6% a year and great pride in her enhanced international standing. Meanwhile, the main political opposition, Congress, is in disarray, with weak leadership, stitching up dubious ‘seat sharing’ pacts with other parties, and barely able to respond to charges that it is more obsessed with nepotism than the common good. Modi seems very likely to sweep to victory in the General Election in May with an overwhelming majority.
None of this means that India is trouble-free. For all the economic progress, much of India remains poor with average per capita GDP at $7 a day. There is nervousness among Muslims and Sikhs about pursuit of Hindutva, the radicalisation of Hindu identity as the essence of India. Rather like continental Europe, farmers are violently protesting about poor prices and subsidies, confronting police barricades and taking their tractors to the capital. Insurgency and terrorism continue in India’s north eastern states, in Kashmir, and in the states of Chhattisgarh and Jharkhand where Naxalite terrorism persists. And India remains strategically vulnerable, particularly to the challenge of China, an aggressive neighbour whose GDP is at least three times greater than India’s.
Modi’s attention to foreign policy – his engagement and dialogue - is unprecedented. From the moment he became Prime Minister his aim has been to shape and drive events rather than merely be buffeted by them or just reacting. Ten years ago, in his very first months in office he engaged in what one observer has described as “speed dating”. Within a year he had visited 27 countries making the first Prime Ministerial visit to Sri Lanka in 28 years, to Australia in 28 years, to the Seychelles in 34 years, and to next-door neighbour Nepal in 17 years.
His initial aim was to establish Indian primacy in its immediate neighbourhood. In other words, a favourable power balance in the wider Indian Ocean area, including the littoral states, and constraints on the influence there of China. In the medium term, his aim is for India to be a power to be reckoned with on the world stage with a seat at the top tables, including on the UN Security Council.
Given India’s economic progress and enhancement of its military power, Modi has embraced Israel while maintaining strong relations with Gulf states, visited some 66 countries including eight visits to the USA, and seven to France, Japan and the UAE, and confidently presided over the G20 Summit, confirming his global standing with a successful invitation for the African Union to join the group. The “non-alignment” of the Nehru era has been replaced by a dynamic “multi-alignment” with the aim, according to Foreign Affairs Minister Jaishankar, of “advancing national interest by identifying and exploiting opportunities created by global contradictions”. Recognising that a reversion to ‘balance of power’ rather than ‘collective security’ will be the operating principle of the emerging world order, India will seek to underline its autonomous role as a vital element in that balance. It rejects a binary approach in its foreign relations and will not hesitate to make waves in order to advance its own national interests.
India’s relationship with Russia, “an insurance policy and an active contributor to India’s national strength”, is a case apart, seemingly impervious to Russia’s convulsions of the past thirty years. Years ago, when the West helped arm a hostile Pakistan, Russia stepped in to provide political, military and eventually nuclear and space cooperation for India. It remains India’s biggest arms supplier providing almost half its imported weaponry at a time when India is the world’s biggest importer of arms. Following its attack on Ukraine and Western sanctions on its oil exports, Russia has also now become India’s prime oil supplier at discount prices. This has proved to be a triple benefit for India with cheap energy, the opportunity to refine Russian oil and sell it on to other countries, and the likelihood that its huge oil payments to Russia in rupees can only be recycled back into investment in Indian industry.
India will not condemn or criticise Russia, which has been a steadfast ally over many decades. In the 2022 UN votes condemning Russia’s attack on Ukraine, India consistently abstained. This has created a moral and practical dilemma for India which attaches importance to the territorial integrity of nations and the international rules-based global order (notwithstanding its legitimate desire for changes in the system). At the same time, this intimacy with Russia has meant long-standing caution on the part of Western nations in its dealings with India.
In spite of the Russia connection, many would argue that India will inevitably be drawn more into the Western camp as a consequence of the West’s economic and technological superiority and the rising challenge of China with its threatening behavioural patterns. While the situation on the Indo-Chinese border, where encroachments into disputed territory in the mountains of the Himalayas and in Arunachal Pradesh to the Northeast, will determine the immediate state of India’s relationship with China, there are other strategic concerns. These include the increasing Chinese penetration and manipulation of Pakistan with a 3,000 km China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) from Kashgar in Xinjiang province to the Arabian Sea port of Gwadar, crossing Himalayan territory claimed by India, as well as massive military aid amounting to 77% of Pakistan’s arms imports in the period 2018-2022. Over the past decade there has been suspicion that China was developing the so-called “string of pearls” model of covert access to commercial ports to support a robust, combat-oriented Chinese naval presence in the Indian Ocean. Sites have been developed not just at Gwadar in Pakistan, but also at Hambantota in Sri Lanka, Chittagong in Bangladesh, and Myanmar's Coco Island.
There has been a complete turnaround in India’s relations with the USA in recent years. Previously “due to India’s ideological proclivities as much as strategic calculations” the US was long regarded with suspicion by India. In 2005 Modi, then Chief Minister of Gujarat, was misguidedly refused a visa to the USA. Eighteen years on he was being welcomed to the White House on a state visit. US-Indian bilateral trade has increased tenfold since 2000 - from $20 billion to over $200 billion today, making the US India’s biggest individual trading partner. There are over 4 million Americans of Indian descent, including the Vice President and a leading Republican presidential candidate.
Four years ago, President Trump and Prime Minister Modi vowed to strengthen a United States-India Comprehensive Global Strategic Partnership, reaffirming his pledge to support the transfer to India of advanced U.S. military and civil technology and support for India’s permanent membership on a reformed UN Security Council. Last October, President Biden reemphasised this commitment, with cooperative ventures in defence manufacturing and a whole range of civil high technology industries including semiconductors, advanced telecoms, AI, Quantum, biotechnology and civil nuclear.
Jaishankar, who had been India’s ambassador to Washington 2013-15 following his time in Beijing, readily admits that the hard realities of today’s world mean that the US is now seen as a key partner. While India’s multi-alignment and quest for strategic autonomy mean that it will not bind itself as closely as the US may wish there will be ever-closer mutual commitment in the years ahead. The Quad is evidence of this new alignment of geo-political outlook.
Raisina 2024 gave particular attention to this relatively new element in India’s complex tapestry of international affiliations. Originally proposed by Japan in 2006 but only acquiring substance after 2017, the Quad, the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue, has emerged as a significant platform for four Indo-Pacific maritime democracies – India, Japan, Australia and the United States. Undoubtedly propelled by changes in the global order and by China’s rapid rise as a maritime power, the Quad is very consciously not a military alliance, at least not yet. Instead, it focuses on topics such as maritime infrastructure, resilient supply chains including strategically important critical minerals, and response to climate change. Foreign Minister Jaishankar describes it as “here to stay, to grow and to contribute”.
France is India’s more surprising diplomatic discovery. In the eyes of the Modi government, It benefits, perversely, from not having been the imperial power in India (in spite of trying), but perhaps more importantly as a leading exponent of a third way in international relations – in the various clubs, but doing its own thing, emphasising strategic autonomy and self-reliance. France has provided several generations of military platforms and equipment for the Indian armed forces. It now provides 29% of Indian defence imports, second only to Russia, largely down to sales of its Rafale fighter and submarines. At the same time, French diplomacy has made great play of France’s territorial presence in the Indo-Pacific region and is now seen as “a major partner for India’s national security”.
Britain’s relations with India, at crucial times in the early 2000s, have been badly mishandled and recent events, for example in the Rochdale by-election, have further underlined Jaishankar’s observation that “British politics is often driven by vote-bank considerations”. One consequence of this was the ill-advised 10-year boycott of Modi when he was Chief Minister of Gujarat, belatedly corrected in 2012, but inevitably leaving a scar. In other words, much as today’s British government might wish to give precedence to its relations with India, it is constrained by the presence of a significant voter bloc of immigrant origin with other allegiances. In addition, Britain has also become a prime target of the distorted anti-colonial historic revisionism that has taken hold domestically, encouraged by one or two notable Indian academic politicians, and which feeds into international perceptions. Whatever privileged access Britain might have had in the past, this is now much diminished. Encouragingly, as Jaishankar has stated, India recognises that the UK still has global influence, sees British technology and capabilities as world class, appreciates the very successful Indian diaspora in Britain and sees the case “for building further on the convergence that the two countries may currently have” and for a more contemporary partnership post-Brexit.
The fact is, the EU as such barely features on the Indian radar screen. India still prefers dealing with individual nations, in particular France, the UK and Germany. For 2 years now, the Raisina Dialogue has had its keynote speaker from Europe – last year it was Italy’s Giorgia Meloni, this year Greece’s Kyriakos Mitsotakis – and neither mentioned the EU, instead preferring to underline their nation’s growing links with India and their common heritage as great civilisations.
Negotiations for an EU-India Free Trade Agreement were first launched in 2007, pursued with little enthusiasm, suspended in 2013 “due to a gap in ambition”, and started again in 2021. There is now a glimmer of hope in Brussels that an Agreement might be concluded before the forthcoming Indian elections.
India has come of age. It is already a powerful, influential and benign actor on the world stage but seeking primarily to enhance its regional security in South Asia and its essential Indo-Pacific sea lanes. Its military capabilities could help reinforce maritime security. It could become a manufacturing power house as the West seeks to reduce its reliance on China. In this increasingly transactional world, India will want to see what its friends bring to the table, what capabilities they have, and how reliable they will be. Instead of just talking about China, it is time that the West paid far greater attention to India and its growing capabilities. India is potentially the most vital ally of the West as the world becomes more clearly divided between old-fashioned, aggressive autocracies and the liberal democracies that seek peace with freedom and a better world.
