India doesn't seek a multipolar world — it's already here

Indian Express

30-06-2025

This is a response to Ashley Tellis's article 'India's great-power delusions: How New Delhi's grand strategy thwarts its grand ambitions' (Foreign Affairs, July/August 2025). Briefly, the article alleges that India seeks to fabricate a multipolar world and asserts that its pursuit of strategic autonomy risks weakening its relationship with the US to the detriment of India's security concerns over China. The article claims that India aims 'to restrain not just China — the near-term challenge — but also any country that would aspire to singular, hegemonic dominance, including the United States'.
India does not 'seek' a multipolar international system; the world is already multipolar. It is pragmatism that necessitates that international systems evolve to reflect this reality, not the foreign policy ambitions or 'grand strategies' of any particular state. As S Jaishankar put it in his book, The India Way, '… what appeared then (the end of the Cold War era) as permanent was a transient moment of American unipolarity, as it was with other powers in history before. Larger competitiveness and political contestation proceeded to return the world to a more natural diversity.' India does not seek to 'restrain' anyone but to safeguard its own sovereignty and territorial integrity — the distinction is paramount.
India's pursuit of strategic autonomy is not because it will help India become a 'superpower'. Strategic autonomy offers the space to optimally navigate an increasingly uncertain and fragmented world, which India is not alone in valuing. Moreover, it is reasonable for large and civilisational powers to seek as much freedom as possible while aligning, broadly, with like-minded nations.
The article also makes the bold claim that 'New Delhi, despite its often-confident rhetoric, is skittish about confronting Beijing unless pressed, even when it is backed by Washington'. There is a fine line between being skittish and being deliberate. New Delhi's holistic response to the Galwan clashes – both military and diplomatic – and its categorical rejection of China's efforts to challenge its territorial integrity hardly qualify as 'skittish'. Even US administrations have adopted a calibrated approach to China. In a speech in April 2023, Jake Sullivan, the former national security advisor in the Biden administration, said that America was for de-risking and diversifying but not for decoupling from China. Was he being skittish?
Tellis also criticises India for 'pushing against the United States on climate policy, data sovereignty and global governance', among others. That is strange. India faces the unenviable task of delivering a better tomorrow for 1.4 billion people while transitioning to cleaner sources of energy. High-income countries of today did not face the energy transition constraints that India does. Yet India is investing heavily in renewable energy while focusing on adaptation and energy demand management. It is worth noting that the current US administration has made providing Americans with cheaper energy its priority, and stated that global warming was a price to pay for delivering better lives to people.
Global governance has not kept pace with the economic performance and prospects of nations and, therefore, has become unfair and unbalanced. India is not alone in recognising the need for reappraisal of global governance institutions. This is not to impose its brand of hegemony but to enhance the capacity of such institutions to build consensus and act in the shared interests of all.
As far as data sovereignty is concerned, India is not acting against the interests of America but of a few American corporations. Data — personal and non-personal — of a country's citizens, assets and transactions are and should be sovereign unless there is express consent provided by the owner(s) of the data. The EU is asserting its digital sovereignty through the GDPR Act, the Digital Services Act, and the Digital Markets Act. The US has its own patchwork of state and federal laws, like California's CCPA, HIPAA for healthcare, COPPA for children's online privacy and the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act for financial data to protect the privacy and safety of its citizens.
Lastly, the article bemoans the rise of 'Hindu nationalism' in India. It asserts that internal discontent in India, fuelled by Hindu nationalism, 'could also spill over into India's neighbourhood, as the ideological animus against Muslims exacerbates tensions with both Bangladesh and Pakistan'. Regarding internal discontent, an assumption has been framed as a conclusion. Until recently, India maintained excellent relations with Muslim-majority Bangladesh. India's relationship with several countries in the Persian Gulf has never been better. The recent multi-party delegations from India that went around the globe to explain what happened in Pahalgam and its aftermath featured members of all political and religious persuasions. This is a more effective response to the charge of 'illiberal nationalism' than any we can muster. Therefore, if there is a risk of aggravated tensions in the neighbourhood, it is far more likely to come from outside India's borders than from its embrace of its civilisational heritage.
There are some statements in Tellis's article that we find agreeable. As he states, 'with China on one side and an adversarial Pakistan on the other, India must always fear the prospect of an unpalatable two-front war'. However, such a prospect only strengthens the case for India to move forward with caution and flexibility. In the final analysis, the emergence of a multipolar world is simply a case of history marching to its own rhythm, as it always does.
Vyas Nageswaran is pursuing his undergraduate studies in economics; Anantha Nageswaran is the Chief Economic Advisor to the Government of India. Views are personal