When Samuel P. Huntington theorized the world after the end of the Cold War in 1993, he envisioned a multipolar international order dominated by eight civilizations, each promoting their own cultural and religious identity. According to Huntington, Japanese civilization is limited to Japan, but China and India are also close to being civilizational states, where country and civilization coincide. 

Millions of Indians live outside India, but it is only in India and Nepal that Hindus form a clear majority and Hinduism can be said to have shaped the country’s civilization. It is, thus, a basic condition for India and for its foreign policy to be almost alone in representing Hindu civilization in an intergovernmental context. Apart from Nepal, India is without ‘natural’ civilizational friends. 

Unique, but alone 

According to a 2021 survey, virtually all Indians, including the Muslims, are very proud to be Indians. Almost three out of four are convinced that even if Indians are not perfect, Indian culture is the best in the world. This immoderate pride is increasingly reflected in foreign policy rhetoric. 

Indians have long expressed their dislike to be lectured by the West. On the other hand, they are open to India being the guru for the whole world. According to Home Minister Amit Shah, it will take 30 to 40 years for the ruling party BJP to turn India into Vishwaguru - 'Teacher of the World'. 

The Minister of Foreign Affairs Dr. S. Jaishankar believes that the world is already turning respectfully towards India under Modi. For India, it is no longer sufficient to assert its rightful place as an equal in the comity of nations. It is no longer enough to sit at the ‘high table’ with other nuclear powers. 

India's leaders now unabashedly portray Hinduism as the mother of all religions, India as the cradle of democracy and the country as Vishwaguru. At the G20 meeting in Delhi on 9-10 September, foreign leaders could see an exhibition about the country's democratic tradition from Vedic times (approx. 1500 – approx. 500 BC) to now. 

It takes a lot of both hard and soft power to credibly assert this status, but the top of the Indian power apparatus believes that India is now ready to reap the high-hanging fruit. The Indian Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) will play an important role in this ambitious self-staging. Not everybody outside, or within, India sees this coming. 

Relevant it is, however, to note that India is provided a central role in the geopolitical thriller 2034: A Novel of the Next World War. The book, co-authored by retired US admiral James G. Stavridis, ends with India emerging victorious from the showdown between the US and China, and the United Nations being moved to Mumbai.  

In what follows, I will present some of the regional and global contexts that have played a role in Indian foreign policy over a shorter or longer period of time. 

India's connections 

The Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) counts 57 countries, 49 of which have a majority population of Muslims. India was invited to the founding meeting in Rabat in 1969, but did not become a full member, even though the country has one of the largest Muslim populations in the world. Subsequently, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Bangladesh have tried to include India. 

The ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has previously indicated that they are not interested in cooperation on the basis of religion, including Islam. The main axis of Indian history goes west, especially towards Iran, but the civilizational fault line between Hinduism and Islam sets limits for both parties. 

Last year, this fault line became visible in India. One of the BJP party's most prominent spokespersons, Nupur Sharma, took part in a debate on a disputed mosque in Varanasi, which Hindu nationalists are trying to revert to a Hindu temple. Sharma provocatively poked at several of Islam's sore points, including that the Prophet, according to tradition, married a six-year-old and consummated the marriage when she was nine. 

It led to a diplomatic storm from the OIC and the Gulf states, home to around 9 million Indians. An economic boycott would be felt on the Indian economy, and in that situation the BJP pragmatically chose to strip Sharma of her position as the party’s spokesperson. She was labeled an isolated deviant, which was something of an understatement. Her outbursts against Islam are not that unusual. 

India is part of the South Asian Cooperation Organization (SAARC), which includes the countries closest to India all the way to the Maldives. The member countries are equal partners, but India's superiority in size often places the country in the role of a regional hegemon. The countries are historically linked, but the region’s religious and ethnic patchwork often reduces foreign policy to an extension of domestic policy. 

For example, India has supported the Tamils ??in Sri Lanka because there are many Tamils ??in India. Similarly, Pakistan makes the claims on Jammu and Kashmir in the name of their co-religionists across the border. Rohingya Muslims from Myanmar are housed by Bangladesh because of its status as a Muslim nation. 

Short-distance nationalism across civilizational fault-lines puts a damper on trade and coexistence, and this has made SAARC a weak organization economically, politically and culturally. India thus has a limited foreign policy leeway in the immediate region, but by the virtue of its size, has occasionally imposed its will by force. 

This happened most obviously in 1971, when India, without a UN mandate, intervened in the civil war in East Pakistan on the side of the Bengalis. This early humanitarian intervention cut Pakistan in half and created a South Asia, where India's Islamic challenge comes predominantly from one side, Pakistan. Bangladesh, incidentally, was the only neighbour invited to the G20 meeting in New Delhi. 

The Himalayas have for centuries restricted all forms of exchange between China and India though both have had access to Southeast Asia by sea. The countries of Southeast Asia are largely shaped by Hinduism, Buddhism and Islam, which often reached them by sea from India. After neglecting Southeast Asia for a long time, India has in recent years pursued a conscious ‘Look East’ policy. 

Here India meets China, which for decades has been a greater power factor in the region than India. 

China's ongoing ‘rise’ is increasingly determining India’s foreign policy. The war between the two countries in 1962 left India with a sense of betrayal because in the previous years, India had supported China on the Taiwan issue and had helped China into the United Nations. The openness with which the West has met China until very recently became a thing of the past in India as early as 1962. 

Today, the war has left the two countries with an unresolved border although the situation on land is relatively stable. Beijing has recently published a new map of China which illustrates its claims in both the east and west. New Delhi strongly disagrees, but what matters on a day-to-day basis is whether the two countries agree on where they can patrol and expand their positions. Disagreement about this has several times led to minor clashes. 

At sea, the situation is more fluid. For many years, India has sought to remain neutral in great power conflicts by placing itself at the head of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM), which today includes 120 countries. But the end of the Cold War and the rise of China have weakened the movement. 

As China builds up its navy, which is now considered the world's largest, India has chosen to cautiously follow in the wake of the USA, Japan and Australia. Together, on the initiative of Japan, they have established a loose alliance called ‘The Quadrilateral Security Dialogue’, or Quad, in order to continue to project supremacy in the Indian Ocean and the Pacific. 

India has thus become a co-player in this multi-civilizational strategic partnership, but does not really like to encircle other Asian civilizations. 

Regardless of whether India is led by the BJP or the Congress Party, the horror scenario is that China should succeed in turning India’s neighbors against them and putting a corresponding multi-civilizational ring around India. This is something India will see as an existential threat. 

China and Pakistan have long been strategic partners or “all-weather friends,” as they themselves like to call it. So, if China puts a heavier emphasis on Myanmar, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka than is already the case, India will come under a pressure, which Pakistan will seek to exploit. The question is how far India will go to build up its navy and become a maritime superpower. 

In 2010, Indian analyst and journalist C. Raja Mohan advocated re-establishing the control British India once had over the Indian Ocean. Here it must be remembered how during the First World War 950,000 Indian soldiers fought in a large number of countries, and during the Second World War 2.5 million Indians fought voluntarily on the side of the Allies. 

Raja Mohan proposes that India pursue a “neo-Curzonian” policy (Lord Curzon was Viceroy of British India from 1899 to 1905, when the empire was at its height) that will re-establish India's power and influence all the way from East Africa to the Western Pacific through commercial, energy, political and military cooperation. Thus, Indian soldiers could once again be deployed overseas at short notice. 

US bets on India, but will India deliver? 

It is Washington that drives the Quad cooperation to balance China’s rise. This implies that the Americans and other Western countries are willing to go to great length to get the otherwise non-aligned India into the Quad League.

Their benevolence has been visible during Prime Minister Modi’s visits to the West – most recently in France, where Modi attended the Bastille Day parades on July 14. In addition to the French troops, a large contingent of Indian soldiers marched down the Champs-Élysées. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh was awarded the same honor already in 2009, but Modi was also awarded the Grand Cross of the Legion of Honor. Days later, the Indian Ministry of Defence announced that India will buy another 26 French Rafale fighter jets and three Scorpene submarines.

Similarly, Modi’s June visit to the US reinforced their partnership which would span from the seas to the stars. This means, for example, that the US now gives the Indian company, Hindustan Aeronautics Ltd., the right to produce very advanced F414 fighter jet engines from the American technology group, General Electric.

At sea, India is slated to maintain the American fleet, and the Indian company Larsen & Toubro, which was created by two Danish engineers, set to play a key role in this development. In space, NASA is increasingly collaborating with the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO), which recently completed a historic moon landing.

The month before, Modi was in Australia. Here, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese called Modi “The Boss,” because the Indian leader received a greater welcome from the Australian-Indians in attendance than Bruce Springsteen when he performed at the same arena in Sydney. Jawaharlal Nehru was a celebrity in his time. Now, it is Modi.

In other words: India is feted these years. But will India live up to the present expectations? What are the consequences of investing in a common future with India as a strategic partner? 

It is possible, as the Indian-American analyst Fareed Zakaria said on CNN, that the threat from China for decades to come will motivate India to strengthen its relations with America. But, as another Indian-American analyst, Ashley Tellis, wrote in an article in Foreign Affairs entitled “America's Bad Bet on India,” one should not believe that India will come to the aid of the United States in the event of a war against China over Taiwan. 

Rather, the partial convergence of interests between India and the US will give New Delhi a very long leash.

As the Indian historian Ramachandra Guha put it in an interview with the Indian-American analyst Ravi Agarwal: “For all the lip-service that the State Department pays to human rights, they will never really question the abrogation of human rights in India so long as Modi seen as a reliable steadfast ally against a threatening and overwearing China led by Xi Jinping.”

It is true that India is given a long leash, but the analysis tends to write Pakistan out of the equation. Pakistan, it is said, more and more often, is a state in crisis, and is now just a footnote in grand politics that only counts two great powers, the United States and China, that India and others have to deal with. But the world is multipolar and multi-civilizational, and even if the world’s attention is turned to the Far East, Pakistan cannot be written out of the equation.

When India tested nuclear weapons in 1998, its then defence minister, George Fernandes said that China – not Pakistan – was the biggest threat to India. It will not be disputed here, but the tests were very much part of the endless conflict with Pakistan. India's rapprochements with the West and Japan are therefore hardly just a reaction to China.

The ruling BJP is not an anti-China party, but rather a party that wants to prevent Muslim dynasties from once again ruling the sub-continent as they did when the Europeans came. Chinese emperors have never ruled over Hindustan, but Afghans, Arabs, Mongols, Persians and Turks have. 

Strategic autonomy or double game? 

In 1971, when East Pakistan was about to secede from West Pakistan, India and the Soviet Union entered into a friendship pact which gave India back cover when it intervened in the Pakistani civil war on the side of the Bengalis. The pact did not make India a client state of the Soviet Union, but it did mean that India’s status as a non-aligned country was eroded.

Later, when the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan in Christmas 1979, India kept a low profile, although it had long sought to keep the region free of outside troops. Interestingly, the BJP, then in opposition, saw the invasion as a violation of Afghanistan's sovereignty, which could not be justified by referring to the Soviet Union’s spheres of interest.

Today, the BJP is in power and the party is “neutral” towards Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. India thus nurtures its own strategic autonomy in what in the West looks like an unprincipled double game. India helps Russia sell its oil. Not to avoid poor Indians paying a high price for oil, but because it is good business for India. 

Some people call it “Ultra-realism.” Others talk about the Indian laundromat, which makes it possible for India to buy Russian oil at a reasonable price, refine it and export various products not least to the European Union (EU).

A large part of these products is shipped from the port city of Sikka in the Indian state of Gujarat, where one of India’s richest entrepreneurs, Mukesh Ambani, owns the world’s largest refinery, the Jamnagar Refinery. Modi, who is also from Gujarat, is also an ardent proponent of this neo-liberal Gujarat model, and it is here that it unfolds in full bloom.

In the current situation, Indian Foreign Minister Jaishankar freely admits that India sees no reason not to profit from Russian oil. It is just the way it is. Or is it? You must know your friends in times of need. In the current crisis, India appears more as Russia’s tactical friend than as the West’s strategic partner.

The South African political scientist Hussein Solomon has taken a closer look at Indian non-alignment. In his opinion, India already abandoned its ideals of non-alignment when it realized that the non-aligned countries did not come to India's rescue during the war against China in 1962.

Instead, India discreetly asked the US for military help. It also did not help India to be non-aligned in the wars with Pakistan in 1965 and 1971, which is why the country instead turned to the Soviet Union. This close relationship meant that India supported the Soviet Union when Warsaw Pact forces invaded Czechoslovakia in 1968.

India has long supported the Palestinian struggle – but that did not stop the Indians from seeking military help from Israel in the war against China. Further, India’s and Israel’s intelligence services had long cooperated before the two countries normalized their diplomatic relations.

Finally, India was, for decades, a great opponent of the apartheid regime in South Africa – but that did not prevent South African diamonds from finding their way to Mumbai and Surat, where the diamonds are traded and cut.

India’s non-alignment is created by having a foot in each camp. And the country's historic strategic autonomy is still evident in the BRICS cooperation, which unites the world’s rising nations, and also in the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, which both have China and Russia as core members. As a BRICS member, India is an advocate for the Global South and a critical corrective to the West on par with Russia and China.

That India is here part of a network that includes dictatorships and theocracies may seem inappropriate, but India's own once exemplary democracy is itself becoming increasingly illiberal. As a Quad member, on the other hand, India appears in the role of standard bearer for the liberal democracies and an international legal order on par with Japan, the USA and Australia.

India’s relationship with Japan is close, since the Japanese, among other things, plays an important role in the development of Indian infrastructure. India’s relations with the US were cool in the last few decades. In recent years, however, it has developed into a win-win party, where there is no need to talk about hangovers.

G-20 Summit: All eyes on New Delhi 

For the just concluded G20 summit in New Delhi, India was the host, which should try to reconcile the contradictions that India otherwise actively plays on. It is a somewhat unusual role. At climate summits, India has several times come close to overturning a consensus by demanding major concessions at the last minute.

Here, India's official position for decades has been that the West bears the historical responsibility for climate change, which is why the West should therefore assume the financial obligations – even if India and China contribute massively to climate change and pollution. During the G20 summit, India was forced to take a more constructive approach to ensure that the summit in New Delhi ended with a joint document.

The document refrains from condemning Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, thus India has managed to back its old friend. According to reports in the Indian media, the EU accepted this to ensure the G20’s continued status as a relevant grouping. In addition, the African Union has been admitted as a new member, and India has thus strengthened its role as a mouthpiece for the Global South.

At the same time, some agreement has apparently been reached on financing in the climate area. In addition, plans have been presented for an economic corridor between the EU and India via Saudi Arabia and Israel. Both the BRICS countries and Japan have played a significant role during the process, but it is India’s understaffed Ministry of External Affairs and the country’s political leaders who will be credited with creating consensus on a wide range of issues.

Ukraine believes that the omission of Russia in the document is nothing to be proud of, but from the perspective of New Delhi, there is much to be proud of.

Huntington saw the post-Cold War world as multipolar, and he expected the major players to enter into multi-civilizational alliances. But it is unlikely that he had imagined how many of these partnerships were in store. The word “partnership” does not appear in the index of his book on The Clash of Civilizations.

People-to-people cooperation may have stagnated, but strategic partnerships at the inter-governmental level are growing strongly. In that picture, India appears today in a wide range of international contexts, which do not necessarily harmonize.    

It is the lot of the Vishwaguru to enter into multiple more or less pucca partnerships - even if Hindu nationalism is really enough on its own.

(The views expressed are the author's own.)