India’s central challenge is not the existence of contradictory partnerships. Great powers routinely manage competing relationships. The deeper problem is the absence of a clearly articulated geopolitical vision capable of reconciling those relationships with India’s claims to defend multipolarity, sovereignty, and a Global South leader.
India’s real challenge isn’t juggling conflicting partnerships, as major powers do that all the time. The problem is the lack of a clear vision that connects these relationships to India’s stated goals of multipolarity, sovereignty, fairer world order, and a Global South leadership. This gap is most visible in India’s neighbourhood, deepening ties with Israel, and its positions in BRICS, although I was surprised with its some new positioning in the group at the BRICS summit a few days ago in New Delhi. I read it as geopolitics imposing itself. This piece as written before the BRICS summit, and therefore, some inconsistencies might be possible regarding India’s foreign policy.
Regional Power Without Regional Leadership
India’s size, economy, and military strength give it influence in South Asia, but influence doesn’t equal leadership. True leadership also needs legitimacy, trust, active institution-building, and a willingness to address neighbours’ interests.
The region is growing more complex. Pakistan is deepening defence ties with Saudi Arabia, Turkey and China, while Bangladesh is working more closely with Beijing and Pakistan. These moves aren’t an anti-India coalition, but they show that neighbours are seeking options beyond India, not simply accepting its dominance.
India often reacts to these developments with anxiety, framing Chinese activity in the region as encirclement. Yet, when India partners with the US, Israel, Europe, or the Quad, it frames these ties as legitimate strategic choices.
A fairer approach would ask if smaller countries have the same right to diversify ties, recognizing their sovereignty just as India expects its own choices to be respected.
Regional credibility takes more than military power. Issues like border disputes, water-sharing, migration, and political interference have strained India’s ties with neighbours. If India wants to lead the Global South, it can’t treat its neighbours as mere strategic buffers.
The Contradictions of Strategic Flexibility
India’s multi-alignment makes sense, as New Delhi wants access to Western technology, Russian oil and defence ties, stable China relations, and influence in the Global South. Dropping any of these isn’t realistic.
But problems arise when strategic flexibility is treated as a principle, not a tool. India can’t claim to defend multipolarity and sovereignty for the Global South while deepening ties with Israel and the US, yet remaining silent when those partners’ actions hurt other Global South countries.
This doesn’t make Indian policy illegitimate, but it does make it selective, transactional and constrained. Serious analysis should focus on these limits, not simply celebrate diplomatic balancing as I mostly see with Indian analysts.
The BRICS debate shows this tension. India is praised for keeping BRICS from turning anti-Western, but it may also be using BRICS to boost its own influence while protecting ties with the West and Israel.
Both views matter: one highlights India’s moderation, the other its limited commitment to real change. The real issue isn’t whether India should be anti-Western, but whether it can support a more independent world order without letting Western ties set its limits.
Analytical Asymmetry and the Politics of Neutrality
A common issue in discussions of Indian foreign policy is not so much factual bias as it is analytical asymmetry. The idea of India adopting a policy of multi-alignment is seen as an expression of strategic autonomy; while similar behaviour by other states is more easily examined using ideas such as influence, dependency or opportunism.
India’s ambitions are seen as legitimate reactions to its size, its history, and its security concerns. By contrast, the ambitions of other powers are more generally regarded as threats to the regional order. This results in a double standard, being historically been applied asymmetrically, as put by Indian scholar Raja Mohan, and a truly impartial analysis would consider whether India’s actions would be judged differently if they were being carried out by China, Russia, Iran, the United States, or some other regional power.
It is especially pertinent when Indian analysts regard New Delhi’s diplomatic decisions as proof of neutrality. Multi-alignment is a strategy and not a demonstration of impartiality. It is possible for India to keep up relations with several countries while at the same time supporting certain political results. The country can oppose some kinds of Western dominance yet accept other forms of hierarchy if they align with its national interests.
The analysis should therefore not aim at celebrating diplomatic flexibility, but rather at identifying its costs, contradictions, and limitations. Strategic autonomy must be evaluated not only as a goal but also in relation to the actual dependencies and asymmetries which restrict its implementation.
Israel Exposes the Limits of Strategic Autonomy
India’s recent elevated diplomatic relationship with Israel is not merely a technical defence partnership. It increasingly involves intelligence cooperation, surveillance, drones, cybersecurity, counterterrorism, military technology, and political affinity between sections of the Indian and Israeli right. This relationship has become an important component of India’s security and technological strategy.
Some Indian analysts describe this as a normal example of multi-alignment: India can cooperate with Israel while maintaining ties with Iran, the Arab world, Russia, and the Palestinian cause. That is partly true, but it is incomplete.
The real questions are about the political and moral impact: What when Israeli actions bluntly clash with India’s stated support for international law and India’s support for the United Nations? Can India stand with the Global South while sidelining Palestinian rights of self-determination or being complicit with a brutal colonial regime, and even a genocide? Is India truly balancing partners, or is it drifting closer to a US-Israeli strategic orbit while keeping the language of autonomy?
There is a substantial difference between saying that India has interests in cooperating with Israel and claiming that this cooperation is automatically consistent with strategic autonomy. The first is an empirical observation; the second is an ideological conclusion.
Critical Indian scholars, such as Achin Vanaik, have disputed the idea that India’s relations with Israel can mainly be seen as a strategic or transactional partnership. Vanaik has pointed out that the relationship also shows an ideological similarity between Hindutva and Zionism, especially in regard to nationalism, territory, identity and state power, i.e., a deeper convergence between Zionism and Hindu nationalism.
The issue is not whether India must sever relations with Israel. Such a demand would ignore legitimate Indian security and technological interests. The issue is whether those interests can be pursued without weakening India’s credibility on Palestinian rights, international law, and the sovereignty of other Global South societies.
India’s caution regarding Israeli and US actions against Iran and its non-condemnation has also exposed the limits of its balancing narrative. Iran is not simply another partner in India’s diplomatic portfolio. It is a neighbouring regional power, a BRICS member, with which India has longstanding economic, civilisational, and connectivity interests. When New Delhi appears unwilling to criticise actions that threaten Iran, its claim to equidistance becomes less convincing.
BRICS and the Global South Test
BRICS provides the clearest institutional test of India’s geopolitical ambitions. The organisation does not need to become an anti-Western alliance. Its potential lies in creating mechanisms through which emerging and developing countries can gain greater autonomy in finance, trade, technology, development, and international representation with a stronger voice for the Global South.
The most important areas are not necessarily a common currency, which India hinders the discussions – some critics say, because of Washington. They include more efficient cross-border payment systems, greater use of local currencies, development finance, supply-chain cooperation, technology standards, institutional reform, and alternatives to excessive dependence on Western financial infrastructures.
India has the diplomatic capacity to contribute to this agenda. It can promote South-South trade, support reforms of the International Monetary Fund and World Bank, strengthen development cooperation, and help establish more inclusive technological and financial systems. Still, this would require moving beyond the management of contradictions.
If BRICS is treated primarily as a platform through which India can enhance its influence without challenging existing hierarchies, its transformative potential will remain limited. If it becomes an institutional pillar of a more plural and autonomous international order, India will need to accept that its partners—including China, Russia, Iran, Brazil, South Africa, and other members—may pursue priorities that do not always align with New Delhi’s preferences.
India’s dilemma is therefore not whether to choose between the West and the Global South. It is whether to define the kind of international order it wants to help construct. Strategic autonomy cannot consist only of avoiding formal alignment. It must also involve active initiatives, consistent principles, and a willingness to accept the political consequences of institutional change.
An Incomplete Geopolitical Vision
India rise is real, and it is an influential power, but it is not the uncontested leader of the Global South. Its diplomatic convening capacity, development partnerships, defence cooperation, digital infrastructure, and political symbolism are significant. However, China possesses greater economic, manufacturing, infrastructural, financial, and trade capabilities across much of the developing world. The competition between Beijing and New Delhi is therefore not simply a contest of diplomatic narratives.
India’s strongest contribution would be to develop a foreign policy that combines national interest with a more coherent conception of international justice and institutional reform. This would require greater consistency in its treatment of sovereignty, intervention, sanctions, occupation, and the rights of smaller states.
Multi-alignment remains an impressive diplomatic technique. But tools are not vision. Multi-alignment can protect national interests and prevent dependence on a single great power. But it cannot substitute for a geopolitical vision. Without such a vision, India risks becoming highly transactional, effective at balancing competing powers while remaining uncertain about the international order it seeks to shape.
The central issue is not if India can pursue strategic autonomy. It is if that autonomy is just a tool for maximising national advantage or become a broader political project of leadership and vision for the Global South. Until New Delhi resolves this, its claims to Global South leadership will remain credible in rhetoric but incomplete in practice. For the Global South, India’s deeper alignment with Israel has damaged its leadership quest.
Ricardo Martins – Doctor of Sociology, specialist in European and international politics as well as geopolitics
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