The saga of ‘Blue Helmets’: India’s glorious legacy as ‘Peacekeeper’

India’s legacy as a UN peacekeeper needs greater commemoration as much as the imperative of reforms that will enable its role in the decision-making high tables

Statecraft
By Ravi Shankar Raj
Jun 16, 2025

Like many of its humanitarian roles, the significance of United Nations-led peacekeeping is also increasingly being understated, overlooked and finding lesser appreciation in global security debates. Conflicts, though, continue to rage with people being displaced in large numbers and fragile peace prevailing over strife-torn regions. While the UN Security Council continues to call the shots on decisions pertaining to UN peacekeeping missions, it is countries in the Global South, notably India, which keep these missions afloat. The time has now come to not just recognise and commemorate the peacekeepers and the contributing nations, but also to expand the role and space of decision-making at the high tables.

On the 29th of May, flags were lowered to half-mast and wreaths were laid at the United Nations (UN) headquarters in New York. The occasion was to honour two legendary Indian peacekeepers, Brigadier General Amitabh Jha and Havildar Sanjay Singh, who were endowed with the Dag Hammarskjöld Medal, posthumously.

Peacekeeping as a concept preceded the formation of the UN. While there is no universally accepted beginning, some attribute its origins to the delimitation commissions of the 1920s following World War I.

The United Nations Truce Supervision Organisation (UNTSO), however, founded in June 1948 and stationed in Palestine to supervise a truce in the Arab-Israeli War, is officially recognised by the UN as the first peacekeeping operation, consisting of unarmed military observers. Soon, it was accompanied by a similar mission in Kashmir.

These operations provided the foundation of later peacekeeping missions, with the first armed mission – the United Nations Emergency Force (UNEF) – deployed in the 1956 Suez Crisis.

Since 1948, the UN has had 71 peacekeeping operations worldwide, of which there have been a total of 4,433 deaths of peacekeepers since 1948. As of 28 February 2025, the UN has sent 68,536 personnel in 11 active peacekeeping operations, and 121 countries are contributing to maintaining peace and security in conflict-driven areas.

India as a proactive contributor

India has been a founding member of the UN and has been one of the largest contributors to UN peacekeeping operations since its first commitment to Korea in the 1950s. India had lost more than 180 Indian peacekeepers while on the Korean mission. These losses embody the challenges involved in peacekeeping missions and the responsibilities that come with this international commitment.

For that matter, India’s presence in the field of UN peacekeeping is not incidental. Rather, it is structural, historical, and philosophical. India’s commitment towards peacekeeping has been historically shaped by the ideals of nonviolence, and by a foreign policy long rooted in moral internationalism.

Peacekeeping, thus, represents a unique synthesis of principle and practice.

Over the last seven decades, India has participated in more than 50 operations in many nations on four different continents, sending more than 290,000 troops. This level of involvement is noticeable not only because of the quantitative numbers but also due to qualitative measures such as leadership, training, sacrifice and innovation.

At its core, peacekeeping counts on the hopes of success – of peace and reconciliation, as the missions are in conflict zones between the end of a war and the start of a reconciliation process, which will often be long, violence-prone, and tenuous.

India’s postcolonial character grew from practising non-violent resistance, deploying troops not to fight or conquer but to keep peace, and following its original and foundational values. The idea can be seen in the Indian concept of Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam – the world is one family.

UN peacekeeping is very different from traditional military deployments because it happens in a legal, political, and cultural multiverse. Peacekeepers are involved in much more than just maintaining or enforcing peace but also play a key role in building peace. Accordingly, Indian missions have long appreciated the fact that perception about the mission and the peacekeepers is as important as what they pursue in the mission.

Thus, UN peacekeeping also involves a wide array of operations, particularly those pertaining to confidence-building measures and seeking goodwill with the protected population. These include activities like providing medical aid, setting up engineering works to build social infrastructure, providing a lifeline to the veterinary stock, coordinating with local civil-military authorities and much more.

Their wide functional variations show that the interactions with local communities are not transactional but relational.

Indian peacekeepers have been generally stationed in volatile regions, which is not a coincidence, going by their formidable reputation as unbiased, dedicated and passionate men on the ground.

Indian soldiers have worked in Congo’s battlefields, the borders of South Sudan, the unstable lines of the Golan Heights and Lebanon and many more. They have helped stabilise situations and, at times, acted as mediators and even helped in healing communities long subjected to violence and displacement.

In places such as the Democratic Republic of Congo, marked by long years of sectarian strife and domination of militias, Indian troops continue to assist the population by acting where the official state-assured security has disappeared. In South Sudan known for its unending ethnic violence, engineers and medical teams from the Indian peacekeeping force are helping in building infrastructure and facilities for medical care.

The Indian peacekeepers consistently act as a counter to disorder and uncertainty.

While peacekeeping is noble and important, the task of pursuing and implementing peace is a dangerous task. In war, soldiers fight as combatants with goals given within a set period; in peacekeeping missions, troops may stay for an uncertain amount of time and need to be prepared for all contingencies.

Under these circumstances, the safety of both the defender and the protected is extremely tenuous – it is hard to decipher if a person is a protector or one who also needs protection.

The names of Brigadier General Amitabh Jha and Havildar Sanjay Singh were added to the long list of 182 Indian peacekeepers who died for global peace. The deaths of UN peacekeepers are not anomalies; they are representative of the risks absorbed every day by peacekeeping contingents stationed in active conflict zones.

That countries like Nepal, Rwanda, Bangladesh, India, Pakistan, and Indonesia, among others, are among the top troop-contributing nations in peacekeeping operations are rarely discussed in the international media. The global asymmetry is stark as key decisions about strategy and funding continue to be taken by wealthy countries. Despite the countries of the Global South contributing over 80 percent of UN troops, they have limited influence over mission design and mandate.

As a result of this skewed power structure, missions may not receive the right resources, essential equipment, or good strategies. India has consistently advocated the need for troop-contributing countries to have greater inclusion in the planning, execution and assessment of peacekeeping missions – a demand not derived out of prestige, but of accountability.

The chapter on gender inclusivity has been a major turning point in India’s efforts in peacekeeping that began with the deployment of Indian women as part of the Republic of Congo’s peacekeeping operations in the 1960s in medical roles. In 2007, India made history by placing the first all-female Formed Police Unit (FPU) in Liberia, which changed perceptions about how female participation in peacekeeping was seen, from being secondary to being vital.

Since its initial mission till now, India has sent 5375 women peacekeepers to different missions.

Indian women peacekeepers brought unique advantages to peacekeeping missions by providing greater access to local women, protecting UN personnel and maintaining order amid civil unrest. The deployment of women peacemakers has drastically helped in preventing gender-specific violence in the conflict zones.

The presence of Indian women peacekeepers has also inspired local women and girls to join the security forces, especially in deeply patriarchal societies, and enhance gender security and mobility in the security operations in these conflict zones. Their effect went far beyond just a symbolic level. Indian women peacekeepers challenged traditional gender roles and demonstrated that security is not limited to one group and that women can also be part of its delivery.

The individual recognition of Indian women peacekeepers, such as Major Radhika Sen, Major Suman Gawani, Kiran Bedi, and Shakti Devi, indicates that their participation in peacekeeping can transform not just the military sphere of security but society at large.

India’s contribution to UN peacekeeping is not limited to the boots on the ground, it extends to training the peacekeepers also. New Delhi’s Centre for United Nations Peacekeeping (CUNPK) is a leading training centre for peacekeepers worldwide. In addition, India has regularly given funds for peacebuilding and supplied force commanders and senior advisers to the UN.

The need to expand the high tables

As conflicts evolve from larger state-focused wars to violence from non-state players and weak governments, it has become much harder for peacekeeping models to maintain stability. India has always urged that mandates be made to fit the actual situations countries face and that peacekeeping and peacebuilding should always work together in practice.

Being on the Organizational Committee of the Peacebuilding Commission and frequently advocating for community-led solutions in peacebuilding shows that India sees peace as something that must be homegrown, not enforced from the outside.

For this vision to work, global governance must be reformed!

The United Nations Security Council (UNSC) needs to go beyond symbolism and ensure that countries that always provide troops for UN peacekeeping are given a proper and influential role in setting the policies for those missions. All these measures are necessary to avoid a structural injustice that weakens the trust and success of international peace activities.

Today, peacekeeping missions are facing major challenges and their credibility, usefulness and the results of their work are regularly questioned. Despite this, people who have been suffering because of conflict in their regions view UN peacekeepers in blue helmets as a ray of hope that will put an end to their long struggle.

In the Democratic Republic of Congo, for a child struggling from violence, and in South Sudan for a displaced woman, the presence of blue helmets is what separates despair from peace, conflict from safety.

India’s active involvement in UN peacekeeping missions is not only limited to national or strategic concerns but also comes from a strong sense that establishing peace through global collective efforts is still possible, despite many problems and conflicts going around the world.

India’s commitment in this evolving landscape to maintain world peace by contributing to UN peacekeeping missions will always stand firm despite the loss of 182 Indian peacekeepers, as India does not seek any kind of reward or recognition, but believes strongly that standing for peace and human security is essential and ethically right to achieve a peaceful global order.

As the world becomes more and more riven by war and crisis, UN peacekeepers are the silent keepers of hope, the unsung heroes, without whom the world would be a much more convulsed place. The future of peacekeeping will not be based only on funding and political will, but the will to eagerly recognise that those men and women are not only soldiers and observers, but they are the human face of international solidarity.

The maintenance of peacekeeping operations is not only a duty of the UN but also a moral duty of the whole world. The contributions of nations, especially from the Global South, need to be duly recognised and commemorated.