India's presence amid a broken template of geopolitics

The Hindu

a day ago

It is time for India to punch its weight and enhance its global presence at a time when global geopolitics is being reset. But, as of now, it is not moving India's way.
Operation Sindoor was a reality check when many of India's strategic partners were not willing to call out Pakistan for harbouring United Nations-sanctioned terrorist groups and terrorists. It is now known that three of the perpetrators of the Pahalgam attack (April 22, 2025), who were eliminated recently, were Pakistanis belonging to the Lashkar-e-Taiba. While India's retaliation against terror camps in Pakistan was decisive, it struggled to get this narrative out in the face of United States President Donald Trump repeatedly claiming that it was he who had brought about a ceasefire using trade as a weapon — a claim contradicted by the Government in the recent parliamentary debate. In an unkind twist, Pakistan's Field Marshal Asim Munir was invited to lunch with Mr. Trump after Operation Sindoor. However, the U.S. designated The Resistance Front (TRF), which claimed responsibility for the Pahalgam attack, as a Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO) and Specially Designated Global Terrorist (SDGT). And in a welcome recognition, the report by the UN Security Council's Monitoring Team also named the TRF for the Pahalgam attack.
A path with Trump-created hurdles
But all is not well. On a historic day when the NISAR satellite (India-U.S. collaboration) was launched, Mr. Trump hit India with a 25% tariff. However, he made a purely trade issue, which could have been resolved in negotiations, into a geopolitical issue, threatening India by 'substantially' raising tariffs for its importing Russian oil when Ukrainians are being killed by the 'Russian War Machine.' India was being trumped especially when Mr. Trump himself is a strong votary of U.S.-Russian rapprochement. While one can dismiss this as typical Trump-style last minute pressure, he has already called on U.S. companies not to invest in India but only in the U.S., and hire only Americans.
This comes on the heels of the U.S.'s lopsided security and trade deals with its Indo-Pacific allies and the European Union (EU). American tech giant Nvidia has been permitted by the U.S. to resume sales of its H20 AI chips to China, stopped earlier due to national security concerns. More time has been given to China to get the deal done. After getting bogged down in Ukraine and West Asia, the U.S. has less focus on East Asia. Consequently, if a broader geopolitical understanding between the U.S. and China on East Asia was to come about, it would constrict the space for India. East Asian countries are already hedging their bets.
The U.S.'s posturing on South Asia has not helped either. Growing U.S.-Pakistan relations have again become an irritant. Even if this is a reset in bilateral relations, the U.S. has displayed astonishing insensitivity to India's security concerns by praising Pakistan for counter-terrorism efforts, and regional stability. In Bangladesh, the U.S. had gone against Indian interests in supporting the ouster of Sheikh Hasina. In Myanmar, U.S. and European support for forces opposing the military government is destabilising India's north-east. After Galwan and Pahalgam, India's hope for better understanding and coordination with the U.S. on regional security interests has been belied. Mutual trust is being rapidly eroded.
Acting in concert with the U.S., the EU is targeting India's import-led energy security at a time when India is negotiating an India-EU Broad-based Trade and Investment Agreement. The EU has sanctioned India's Vadinar Refinery, where Russian Rosneft has a large stake, knowing full well that stopping Russian oil into India will lead to huge pressure on oil prices. On the other hand, Hungary, Slovakia, Belgium, Spain and others are importing Russian oil, through pipelines and as LNG, by securing exemptions or under existing contracts. Europe receives 51% of Russian LNG exports. The EU's carbon border tax and digital and other trade barriers on India remain. India hopes that the recently concluded India-U.K. Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA) will force the EU to climb down from its asks in its trade negotiations.
China's moves
All this has given China an opportunity to, once again, become active in India's neighbourhood. China has proposed new groupings and new deals to keep India out. For example, China's meeting with Pakistan and Bangladesh in Kunming on June 19, 2025 proposed formalising a trilateral initiative, but Bangladesh has not agreed. China is also helping Bangladesh revive a Second World War airbase at Lalmonirhat which is close to the Siliguri Corridor. China's support to Pakistan during Operation Sindoor was extensive. China has also standardised Mandarin names for locations within Arunachal Pradesh. And it wants to seize the future of the institution of the Dalai Lama from India. Riding on a huge trade surplus with India, China is squeezing India's crucial supply chains such as rare earths, fertilizers, Active Pharmaceutical Ingredients, tunnel boring machines and technical personnel. More worrying is the planned construction of China's largest dam in Tibet on the Yarlung Zangbo (Tibetan name for the Brahmaputra), which is near the Indian border. Prime Minister Narendra Modi's recent visit to the Maldives has been timely given China's influence.
To counterbalance an unpredictable, and even unreliable, U.S., an unresponsive EU and an aggressive China, India is carrying out a tightrope act. It has prioritised accelerating the current thaw in relations with China to reset equations after the Galwan conflict — despite there being no move towards de-escalation on the border after the initial disengagement in October 2024.
Further, India should seriously rethink its stand to remain on the margins of global conflicts. India has been largely silent, if not openly pro-Israel, on the ongoing Israel-Gaza war — an unfolding multidimensional human tragedy. India was also largely silent on the recent Israel-Iran conflict and American bombings, despite important relations with both warring parties and huge stakes in the Gulf. Though it rightly abstained on the UN votes on the Ukraine conflict, its overall approach of not taking a proactive stand on world conflicts may hurt its larger interests and diminish its geopolitical clout as long as it remains on the sidelines. Operation Sindoor has shown India that if it seeks a greater engagement of its partners with its conflicts and issues, India needs to engage more with their conflicts and issues.
Some argue that India should keep its head down and focus on becoming the third largest economy and that a larger geopolitical role may hurt its economic growth. The contrary is true. In a fragmenting world order, geopolitics, coercion and threats and protectionism are determining economic and technological outcomes — not most favoured nation or free trade or multilateral World Trade Organization-led trade norms. Therefore, to get its economic and technological trajectory right, India needs to get its geopolitics right.
The road ahead
Realising that the geopolitical space is shrinking, India is finally breaking free and has objected to the 'targeting'. It has called out the double-speak of the U.S. and the EU under the guise of safeguarding their economic interests — the EU for larger trade in goods and services with Russia than India in 2024, and the U.S. for importing Russian uranium, palladium, fertilizers and chemicals. India's call for a ceasefire in Gaza (it abstained on a similar UN General Assembly resolution two months ago), is a realisation that it needs to be assertive in global conflicts to preserve its strategic autonomy. Facing an erosion of trust with the U.S. and a U.S.-China deal, India needs to clinch an India-U.S. trade deal soon to prevent a further deterioration of relations and to persuade Mr. Trump to travel to India for the Quad summit (India-U.S.-Japan-Australia).
After Mr. Trump's outburst, it is a moot point whether India will revive the RIC (Russia-India-China). However, greater engagement with BRICS (2026 summit in India), the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation and with East Asia (having missed the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership bus), will only reinforce India's policy of multi-alignment and push back those who constrain it. No more can India just put our head down, mind its own economic business and expect to grow. That template is now broken.
T.S. Tirumurti is former Ambassador/Permanent Representative of India to the United Nations, New York and former Secretary, Ministry of External Affairs, New Delhi