“India’s current foreign policy marks significant qualitative shifts from that of the previous regimes.” Discuss. (2018, 10 Marks)
For decades Indian foreign policy rested on non-alignment, Panchsheel and a declared preference for peaceful settlement, voiced through moral standing more than material power. Since 2014 the change has been one of kind, not just degree, in posture and method, though less so in purpose.
The qualitative shifts
- From non-alignment to issue-based alignment: Foreign Secretary Vijay Gokhale told the Raisina Dialogue (January 2019) that India had “moved on from its non-aligned past”. Narendra Modi skipped the 2016 NAM summit, the first Prime Minister to do so since Charan Singh, a caretaker, in 1979.
- From rule-taker to rule-shaper: the International Solar Alliance (2015), UN endorsement of International Yoga Day, and a consensus G20 declaration (2023).
- De-hyphenation: the first Prime Ministerial visit to Israel (July 2017), detached from the Palestine question, which India still formally upholds.
- Neighbourhood First: SAARC leaders at the 2014 swearing-in, with connectivity, power trade and credit lines as the tools of regional policy.
- Link West: the 2015 visit to the UAE, the first by a Prime Minister in 34 years, opened strategic partnerships with the UAE and Saudi Arabia.
- The Indo-Pacific turn: a Special Strategic and Global Partnership with Japan (2014), Act East, and the Quad revived in 2017.
- Appetite for risk and force: S. Jaishankar argues that “a low-risk foreign policy is only likely to produce limited rewards” (2019); the strikes after Uri (2016), Balakot (2019) and Operation Sindoor (2025) broke the older habit of restraint.
- The diaspora as an instrument: mass events abroad turned overseas Indians into a constituency.
The case for continuity
- Strategic autonomy remains the objective: no alliance, the S-400 deal with Russia (2018) despite sanctions risk, and refusal to join Western sanctions after 2022.
- Several shifts began earlier: Look East (1992), relations with Israel (1992), the US opening (2005–08). Ian Hall (Modi and the Reinvention of Indian Foreign Policy, 2019) finds the reinvention stronger in Hindu-nationalist framing than in the basic settings of policy. Jaishankar himself calls each phase an overlay on the last, not a negation.
- The neighbourhood still swings with elections in small states, as the Maldives and Bangladesh showed.
Conclusion
The shift is qualitative in style, posture and comfort with power: issue-based alignment, open use of force and institution-building are new. The purpose, autonomy for a rising power, is old, even if it now carries the larger ambition of a Vishwaguru that leads rather than balances.