The Geopolitics of India: The Civilizational State’s Goal for an Independent Foreign Policy

Stemming from the ancient Indian warfare, Arthashastra, by the strategist and philosopher Chanakya, the geopolitics of India revolves around its identity as a civilizational state.

India promotes its interests and carefully evaluates its strengths and weaknesses and those of its partners and adversaries.

In the collection of essays in, India and the Cold War, the editor, Manu Bhagavan, explained how India forged an independent path in global affairs, choosing neither the West nor the East.

During his leadership, Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru strategically and methodically placed his country equidistant between the Soviet Union and the United States.

Michael Kugelman is an expert on India, Pakistan, and Afghanistan’s relations with the United States. As the Asia Program Deputy Director and Senior Associate for South Asia at the Woodrow Wilson Center, Kugelman has closely observed India’s global affairs strategy.

“If we go back to the early years of India’s post-independence existence, it put itself at the forefront of the efforts to empower post-colonial states,” he explained. “Essentially to carve out areas of influence for newly independent countries like India, separate and away from the poles of power dominated by the United States and the Soviet Union.”

More than half a century later, India has successfully built partnerships to further national interests. Strategic autonomy is essential to India’s national sovereignty and national independence. But some of its partners, such as the United States, view its strategic autonomy as ambiguous.

Across the political spectrum, from the Communist Party to the Bharatiya Janata Party of Prime Minister Modi, the tradition of choosing partnerships over alliances is firmly held and constantly reinforced.

“The word alliance implies, to some degree, a mortgaging of your freedom to make your own decisions,” said Congress Party Member of Parliament Shashi Tharoor to the German international broadcaster Deutsche Welle in June 2022. “We are a country that has been under 200 years of foreign rule where a foreign country was making our security decisions and our geopolitical postures for us. Having won our sovereignty just 75 years ago, for us, it’s too precious to compromise and surrender we want to be the ones deciding our own faith.”

Instead of forming alliances, India uses groups and multilateral partnerships further its geopolitical goals and increase its influence.

India has mainly leveraged three organizations to sustain its role as a civilizational state: the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (QUAD), Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa informal group of states (BRICS), and the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC).

Leveraging QUAD and resisting anti-China alliances

In 2007, the then Prime Minister of Japan, Shinzo Abe, was invited by the Indian government to give a speech to Parliament during his first term as Prime Minister. His historical speech, Confluence of the Two Seas, called for a mission of freedom and prosperity in the Asia-Pacific Region.

The late Japanese Prime Minister said that a ‘broader Asia,’ which defies geographical boundaries, is beginning to form as the Pacific and the Indian Oceans bring about a “dynamic coupling as seas of freedom and prosperity.”

“Our two countries have the ability, and the responsibility, to ensure that it broadens yet further and to nurture and enrich these seas to become seas of clearest transparence,” he then explained.

The significance of the Pacific and Indian Oceans sparked the formation of QUAD in 2007.

This group includes India, Japan, Australia and the United States, and is also known as the ‘democratic security diamond.’

However, QUAD’s initiatives were limited until former US President Donald Trump’s presidency when he leveraged QUAD in his geopolitical confrontation with China.

In 2017, QUAD member countries’ relations with China fell to the lowest level in a decade, which prompted member countries to take on more initiatives.

For India, tempers flared, and political hostility increased in May 2020 when the Chinese military crossed the Line of Actual Control into the Ladakh region of India. According to the Lowy Institute, this invasion killed 20 Indian soldiers and an undisclosed number of Chinese soldiers.

The QUAD is not a military grouping, even though these four countries hold regular naval exercises. China strongly condemned the 2020 Malabar Naval Exercise.

India aims to protect itself from Chinese aggression by remaining careful and mindful of the two countries’ mutual economic and trade interests and not participating in an anti-China alliance.

“It’s interesting that until fairly recently, India itself was reluctant to embrace the QUAD fully because of the fear that China would perceive the QUAD as some type of alliance position against Beijing,” Kugelman said.

As India leverages QUAD to modernize its military and naval industry, it’s reinforcing its relations with Japan, the United States and Australia. It also avoids hostility with China and Russia by forming ties with them through the BRICS initiative.

The benefits and uncertainties surrounding BRICS

BRICS countries make up 16 per cent of global trade, 24 per cent of the world’s GDP, and 41 per cent of the global population.

These statistics are impressive, but unlike the G7, BRICS requires more political and economic alignment to achieve a shared vision.

When BRIC held its first formal summit in June 2009, its vision was to improve the global economy and international monetary systems. They aimed to develop an economic model that differs from the Bretton Woods structure favoured by Western nations.

According to Kugelman, the goal of contradicting Western economic structures has made it difficult for BRICS countries to improve their economies.

“All five countries have, on many levels, benefited from the very US-led economic model that they seek to counter,” he explained. “India is perfectly happy to engage in heavy degrees of commerce and trade with the US and other Western countries. So is China.”

Each nation within this group uses the forum to advance their national interests.

Brazil emphasizes economic and financial cooperation amid the pandemic and defends multilateralism.

Amid Russia’s war with Ukraine, President Putin has used the BRICS platform to denounce the “ill-conceived and selfish actions of certain states, which, by using financial mechanisms, are actually shifting their own macroeconomic policy mistakes onto the rest of the world.” He also emphasized the importance for BRICS and countries in Latin America, Africa, and Asia to pursue an independent policy.

BRICS provides South Africa with tools to help resolve domestic challenges, such as poverty and unemployment.

China sees BRICS as an important lucrative market.

India focuses on establishing rules of maritime spaces and amplifying the importance of sovereignty for all countries in the Indian and Pacific Ocean Regions. However, it also balances its relationships with the East and West and resists any anti-US moves.

The use of SAARC in regional matters

 SAARC is an intergovernmental organization formed in 1985, and includes Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka.
India’s goal in joining SAARC is to facilitate political and economic relations with neighbouring nations.

South Asia faces a variety of challenges and turmoil. The economic crisis in Sri Lanka has had a political impact, leading to President Gotabaya Rajapaksa’s ousting from the role. Pakistan also faces a severe political crisis, while Afghanistan grapples with the Taliban’s poor governance and mismanagement.

Amid these issues, India has been a reliable source of help to its neighbours. It financially aided Sri Lanka and provided social support to Afghanistan. It also congratulated the new Pakistani Prime Minister Shahbaz Sharif when he was sworn in.

Relationships with neighbouring countries

 As a core policy in its foreign relations strategy, India strives to maintain good relationships with its neighbours.  However, tensions have risen with some of the SAARC countries.

“India has tended to pride itself on having close relations with just about all of its South Asian neighbors from Sri Lanka and Nepal and Afghanistan and many countries in between,” Kugelman explained. “But it’s true that some of these smaller neighbors have resented India for what they perceive to be heavy handed behaviour, not doing enough to understand the interests and concerns of local partners.”

Tensions with Bangladesh are notable, as the country has reacted negatively to India’s new citizenship law. The Bangladeshi press and the political and intellectual elites believe this law targets Muslims by making it easier for non-Muslim’s from neighbouring countries to gain Indian citizenship.

Bangladesh and India also have long-standing tensions over the Teesta River. Bangladesh has pushed for a water-sharing agreement with India, but India has not agreed.

Conclusion

According to the World Bank, India has the sixth-largest economy, with a GDP of $3.17 trillion in 2021.  Its population was estimated to be 1.4 billion people in July 2022, and The United Nations estimates that by 2026, India’s population will surpass China’s.

India’s population and economic power makes the civilizational state a powerhouse in global affairs. Its membership in QUAD, BRICS, and SAARC contributes to the increase in India’s global influence.

However, the United States’ push to create an alliance to combat China’s intimidation presents challenges for India’s foreign policy and geopolitical strategy.

TAN

@TheAfroNews