Shift in its foreign policy from nonalignment to multi-alignment has seen 21st-century India building partnerships in as many sectors, with as many countries, as possible. This hyper-action and resultant enhanced stature — undergirded by India’s political stability and its largest young population promising to make the Indian economy the world’s third largest by 2030 — had made India increasingly welcome with all major and emerging powers as well as with developing and least developed nations. It is this rapid transition that is seeing India increasingly engaged with its extended Asian neighbourhood.
Geographically and also historically, this extended neighbourhood of Asia has been India’s primary karambhumi since ancient times. Heritage sites, rites & rituals and historical texts across Asian nations reveal crisscrossing of India’s enduring linkages. Guided by their shared heritage of Buddhism, Islam, and Hinduism and their shared strives for decolonisation they today see their shared aspirations crafting global trajectories. It is in this backdrop of Asian resurgence with global implications that this article locates India’s engagement with Asia in their collective metamorphosis that reinforces the critical connection of India’s future with the future of Asia.
Before we begin with India’s recent growth story, it is important to underline how India has been the centre of gravity since ancient times; attracting scholars, pilgrims, traders and invaders from across Asia and beyond. While scholars, pilgrims and traders enhanced India’s civilisational wisdom, imperial onslaughts of the last millennium could not destroy that civilisational continuum. Successive leaders of India have since been rediscovering India’s own past as also its Asian linkages though this resurgence has become especially noticeable in recent times.
This recent story of India reconnecting with Asia begins with India’s Look East policy from the early 1990s when it opened up and built partnerships with tiger economies of Southeast Asian nations. The last decade saw this Look East policy expanding into Act East and Act Far East policies, and India became the founding member of various regional initiatives, from East Asia Summits to Quadrilateral Security Dialogue. Likewise, in its Western neighbourhood, India has evolved closer partnerships with Egypt, Israel, Saudi Arabia, Iran, and UAE — nations that often do not see eye to eye with each other and yet have equally strong ties with New Delhi. This explains why the United States’ second Quad, for West Asia from July 2022, includes India along with Israel and the United Arab Emirates.
What makes it instructive is that India remains equally integral to the forums of Russia and China e.g. Shanghai Cooperation Organisation and BRICS Plus. These two have come to be the leading forums for the rapidly transforming Eurasian landscape and are often viewed in terms of their anti-Western reflexes. In this emerging geopolitical divide between the United States and its allies on the one side and China-Russia and their friends on the other, India remains equally welcome. For sure, India’s growth rate of 8 percent — the fastest among major economies — makes it attractive for both sides.
Amongst India’s game-changing contribution to building partnerships with its expanding aid, trade and investments, India has become especially visible for sharing of its digital public infrastructure (DPI). CoWin platform during the pandemic and unified payment interface (UPI) platforms since then have earned goodwill amongst Asian nations. This is part of India’s liberation drive that had once seen it playing a leading role in Asia’s de-colonisation. For instance, India had convened the Asian Relations Conference during March-April 1947 i.e. before its own independence. The same spirit today guides India’s efforts for shared prosperity. Accessing advanced technology has always involved heavy financial or political costs which India’s DPIs have defied by sharing these platforms with no strings attached.
But India is also conscious of its limitations. Protecting its micro, small and medium industries and seeking equal opportunities for its skilled manpower saw India in 2019 stepping out of Asia’s largest 15-nation regional comprehensive economic partnership (RCEP). But this has not deterred India from focusing on innovations and skill building at home making it the world’s fourth largest for startups and unicorns that promise to catapult India’s economic rise. Also, while it has stayed out of RCEP, India has signed bilateral free trade agreements with many nations including ASEAN and it is the founding member of 14-nation Indo-Pacific Economic Framework that was launched in July 2022. India is today seen among the fastest-growing partners for most Asian nations’ trade, investments and infrastructure building.
Economic partnerships have also contributed to India’s emerging as a net security provider for the Asian region. This comprises of India’s expanding collaborations in non-traditional security sectors like climate crisis, terrorism, cybersecurity and humanitarian assistance and disaster relief. India’s initiatives like the International Solar Alliance, Global Coalition on Biofuels, and Conferences on Disaster Resilient Infrastructure have become global movements. In traditional security sectors as well, apart from a series of joint military and naval exercises, training and exchanges with Asian nations, India’s defence exports have also expanded with BrahMos cruise missile supplies to Manila and potentially to Hanoi making headlines. Likewise, India’s refurbishing and Indian Navy having access to ports from Indonesia, Singapore, Sri Lanka, Maldives, Seychelles, Iran and UAE reveal India’s deepening strategic connections across Asia.
To make these inter-state ties enduring and effective, India has also focused on reviving its inter-societal linages thereby building domestic constituencies for this pan-Asian resurgence. Rising India has been investing resources to showcase its heritage of these cultural connections — especially Buddhist and Ramayana circuits — to reinforce Asia’s regionalisation. Other initiatives include promoting yoga, Ayurveda, and traditional arts and crafts that connect India with Asian nations to help foster people-to-people exchanges thus enhancing mutual goodwill and trust. Indeed, most of the Asian forums are also increasingly prioritising it thus facilitating India’s holistic engagement and presenting an Asian brand of multilateralism.
From the very beginning, India has been the strongest votary of Asian multilateralism that was to be distinct from Western initiatives of creating military alliances like the Baghdad Pact and South East Asian Treaty Organisation of the 1950s. As a leading voice against imperialism, racialism and discrimination the founding fathers of the Indian republic were active participants in Asia’s anti-imperial struggles from the 1928 Brussels Conference of the League against Imperialism and Colonial Oppression. Indian freedom fighters have strong linkages with other Asian freedom movements. India was the founding member of the United Nations from 1945 and a leading voice in UN de-colonisation efforts during the 1950s. It initiated the Afro-Asian Movement in 1955 and the Nonalignment Movement in the 1960s.
Since the 1990s, India has been actively engaged with several ASEAN-centric forums including India-ASEAN summits. It has been consistent in promoting ASEAN-Centrality in regional dialogues. More recently, with SAARC summits becoming dysfunctional, India has sought to work through BIMSTEC, BBIN, IORA and such regional forums. India’s engagement with Asia today is characterised by a strategic spectrum of economic, security, and cultural partnerships. India aims to nurture these not only to enhance its own stability, peace and prosperity but also to contribute to a more secure and stable Asia. Especially, with a focus on the Asian century, India’s engagement with its extended Asian periphery has become pivotal for fostering regional stability amidst the evolving geopolitical divides that challenge the Asian century to become a reality.
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