India's diplomacy reflects its rise as an independent global power, balancing strategic partnerships, and resisting external pressure. The meeting of the foreign ministers of the QUAD nations at Hyderabad House in Delhi was far more than a routine diplomatic gathering. It marked a public declaration of the shifting global power structure and the emergence of India's new foreign policy doctrine. When External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar stated before US Secretary of State M

A small object changed hands in Abu Dhabi earlier this month, and almost no one paused to consider what it meant. Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, the President of the United Arab Emirates placed a silicon chip in Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s palm. It was a Cerebras chip given to the Indian Prime Minister as part of a bilateral agreement – a working piece of one of the most powerful artificial intelligence machines money can build, soon to be installed on Indian soil. That gest

As the war in West Asia continues to drive up crude prices and fiscal pressures, India’s economic resilience is being severely tested. AI generated image It has been nearly three months since the West Asian conflict began, and its ripple effects are striking us harder than the scorching summer sun in the subcontinent. The unfolding situation has already shaken the government’s risk management framework. For years, India benefited from a prolonged “Goldilocks” phase of economi

As Turkey grows closer to Pakistan and the Mediterranean gains geopolitical weight, India has discovered an unlikely but useful partner in Cyprus. In diplomacy, small states frequently become the hinges upon which larger geopolitical doors swing. Cyprus, a divided island in the eastern Mediterranean with barely 1.3 million people, is increasingly acquiring such importance. India, whose foreign policy has traditionally looked east towards Asia or west towards the Gulf, now app

Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s five nation tour in May has shifted traditional diplomatic relations to a strategic approach, during major global developments such as the West Asia energy crisis, post Operation Sindoor geopolitical tensions and changing global trade dynamics. The UAE visit focused on protecting India’s energy security over possible disruptions in the Strait of Hormuz which is the main global oil route. The ADNOC & ISPRL agreement of storing up to 30 million ba

For nearly half a decade, the global geopolitical landscape has been stuck in a state of permanent turbulence. The protracted war in Ukraine, the protectionist tariff regimes of the Trump presidency, and the volatile escalation of hostilities between the United States, Israel, and Iran are no longer distant regional frictions. Their tremors have rewritten the global order and weaponized transnational supply chains. In today’s splintered global order, nations are ruthlessly pr

Mumbai: Cyprus President Nikos Christodoulides described cinema as a powerful medium that transcends borders, connects cultures and introduces people to a country even before they visit it, here. Arriving in Mumbai on a 4-day State Visit to India, President Christodoulides unveiled the first-ever Indo-Cypriot joint film venture which will be shot in his country. “Film locations are deeply linked to identity, emotion and storytelling. Cyprus is an ‘open studio’ offering di

Trump’s Beijing summit revealed less a thaw in Sino-American rivalry than a quiet acknowledgement that the balance of power is shifting eastward. When Donald Trump recently left Beijing calling his summit with Xi Jinping “fantastic,” the pageantry suggested a diplomatic breakthrough. Yet, the summit produced few major agreements, while exposing how sharply the balance between the world’s two largest powers has changed. For decades America approached China as the stronger powe

From Majapahit to Pancasila, Java has repeatedly defended Indonesia’s plural ethos The last article discussed the conditions, apparently threatening the survival of the Indic thread of Indonesia’s culture, responding to many triggers including a penchant for Arabization of the hitherto localized ‘Indonesian Islam’. Given the size of this wide-spread archipelago called Indonesia, along with the more or less equally well-spread Islamist outlook within the society as well as the

As China grows more assertive in Asia, India and Vietnam are discovering that shared anxieties make for a durable strategic partnership. In Asia’s crowded geopolitical theatre, few relationships have evolved as consequentially as that between India and Vietnam. Bound by ancient cultural ties and united by modern strategic anxieties, the two countries are steadily crafting a partnership that stretches from Buddhist monasteries to missile systems, from maritime security to semi

Caught in the crosshairs of global nativism, Indians abroad must confront both prejudice from without and pitfalls within. Over the past few years, tensions over immigration are intensifying, and today we Indians find ourselves at the very center of this storm- primarily across major English-speaking democracies. Last September—some of the largest anti-immigration rallies were organized in Indian immigrant heavy countries like United Kingdom, Ireland and Australia. Under the

India and Italy are rediscovering each other as partners in a more fractured, multipolar world Diplomacy often advances through the steady accumulation of modest alignments. The recent warming of relations between Narendra Modi’s India and Giorgia Meloni’s Italy suggests just such an incremental and pragmatic shift, one that is shaped by the pressures of a changing geopolitical order. An unremarkable bilateral relationship is now being recast as a partnership spanning defence

While India’s gamble has yet to choke Pakistan’s flows a year after the suspension of the Indus Water Treaty, the move has redrawn the rules and weaponised water diplomacy. One year has passed since the Pahalgam terror attack, an event that triggered a wave of fierce anti-Pakistan sentiment across the nation. In its immediate aftermath, India suspended the Indus Water Treaty (IWT), long regarded as one of the most successful examples of international cooperation, despite deca

From steel to submarines, Indo-German ties are moving from pure commerce to defence. Rajnath Singh’s recent visit to Germany signals a shift that has been long in the making between the two countries. From a relationship once defined by trade, the ties between India and Germany are finally moving towards defence. India wants German technology and co-production while the latter, newly alert to hard security after Russia’s war in Ukraine, is more willing to provide both. The tw

Austria’s chancellor visits India, signalling a pragmatic European pivot towards a rising Asian partner For a country often described as the quiet heart of Europe, Austria has chosen a moment of global flux to step outward. Its outreach to India, in form of Austrian Chancellor Christian Stocker’s recent visit this month, is marked by shifting alliances, economic anxieties and a search for reliable partners beyond the Atlantic. Austria’s geography has always endowed it with an

When sections of India’s self-anointed ‘liberal’ media cheer Pakistan’s fleeting diplomatic theatre, they reveal less about geopolitics than about their own reflexes. There is a peculiar reflex that grips a section of India’s self-styled ‘liberal’ media whenever the world tilts even slightly against the Bharatiya Janata Party-led Central government. It is not analysis, not even contrarianism in the noble sense, but a barely concealed thrill - an instinct to diminish India’s

After a period of drift, India and Bangladesh rediscover the logic of cooperation. In history and diplomacy, geography is destiny but memory often intervenes. For India and Bangladesh, two neighbours bound by history, culture and an unruly border, the past has a habit of intruding upon the present. Yet recent developments suggest that the bilateral relationship, strained by political transitions and mutual suspicion, may be entering a phase of pragmatic recalibration. The vis

Under China’s expanding shadow, the once-dominant Indosphere faces slow erosion born as much of external pressure as of India’s own long neglect. The term Indosphere, post its coinage around eight decades ago, was broadly understood to include the whole of Southeast Asia, except the northern or one third of Vietnam. It, by definition as well as by factual development, excludes the later born (2002) and newly admitted (2026) ASEAN member state of Timor Leste. A lot can be said

In the world’s most vital oil chokepoint, the elegant certainties of maritime law dissolve into a murky contest of power, risk and coercion. The Strait of Hormuz is, in the dry language of international law, a “strait used for international navigation.” In the less sterile vocabulary of geopolitics, it is a loaded gun pointed at the global economy. Barely 21 nautical miles wide at its narrowest point, this corridor connects the oil-rich Persian Gulf to the wider Arabian Sea.

It was seen in the last article as to how the Southeast Asian region or its parts were perceived as ‘further’ or ‘farther’ or ‘greater’ India by various European scholars and travelers, based on their observations of those territories’ cultural congruence with India. The most significant coinage in that journey of insights and nomenclatures was ‘Indosphere’, which not only did away with the possibility of allegations of Indians harbouring expansionist or revisionist ideas of