India's Foreign Policy

A newly free India had to find its place in a world split by the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union. Rather than take sides, India charted its own course. It was guided by ideals of independence, peace and self-respect. Its foreign policy, above all non-alignment, became one of its most distinctive contributions to the world and is a key exam topic.

India's outlook on the world was shaped long before 1947. The roots of non-alignment lay deep in the freedom struggle's anti-imperialism.

• Early international presence: even under colonial rule India had a wide diplomatic footprint. At independence it was a member of 51 international organisations and a founding member of the League of Nations, the ILO (International Labour Organization) and the ICJ (International Court of Justice).
• First phase (1880 to the First World War): the nationalists opposed British expansionism and expressed anti-imperialism and pan-Asian feeling. They showed solidarity with Ireland, Egypt and Turkey and drew inspiration from Japan.
• Second phase (1920s–30s): Nehru's contact with European socialists and the League Against Imperialism, founded at Brussels in 1927, deepened this internationalism.
• Third phase (after 1936): the nationalists took a firm anti-fascist stand, supporting Ethiopia, Spain and China.

Nehru is rightly called the architect of independent India's foreign policy. He laid its foundations in his address to the Constituent Assembly on 4 December 1947. He stressed cooperation for world peace and the refusal to become a satellite of any power.

The cornerstone of India's foreign policy was non-alignment. Led by Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru, India refused to join either of the two Cold War blocs, neither the American-led West nor the Soviet-led East.

Non-alignment did not mean staying neutral or aloof. It was an active refusal to line up with either bloc. It meant keeping the freedom to judge each issue on its merits rather than following a superpower. The policy also suited a poor, newly free nation: India could seek help for development from both camps without becoming dependent on either. India helped build the movement that gave newly independent nations a collective voice:

• The intellectual ground was laid at the Bandung Conference (1955) in Indonesia, where Afro-Asian nations met and adopted ten principles of cooperation. The Panchsheel ideals fed directly into it.
• The Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) was formally founded at its first summit in Belgrade in 1961, hosted by Tito.
• Its founding fathers were Jawaharlal Nehru (India), Josip Broz Tito (Yugoslavia), Gamal Abdel Nasser (Egypt), Sukarno (Indonesia) and Kwame Nkrumah (Ghana).
• NAM has no permanent headquarters or secretariat. It works through summits, and its chair rotates to the country hosting the latest summit.

India's role in the movement did not end with its founding. India hosted the 7th NAM Summit in New Delhi in 1983. As the host country, India chaired the movement in that period. The Indian President linked with the NAM Secretary-Generalship at this time is Giani Zail Singh, who was President of India from 1982 to 1987. He is the answer examiners want, not S. Radhakrishnan, V. V. Giri or Shanker Dayal Sharma.

India tried to build international relations on moral principles. In 1954 India and China agreed on the Panchsheel, the Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence:

• mutual respect for each other's territory and sovereignty,
• mutual non-aggression,
• non-interference in each other's affairs,
• equality and mutual benefit, and
• peaceful coexistence.

The principles were first formally stated in the 1954 Agreement on Trade between the Tibet region of China and India. They were carried into the Bandung Conference (1955) and adopted by the Belgrade non-aligned conference in 1961. India promoted Panchsheel as a basis for relations between all nations, an expression of its faith in peace and dialogue.

The Nehru years were dominated by two neighbourhood relationships, both of which began with hope and ended in conflict.

• The Kashmir issue: Pakistan refused to accept Kashmir's accession to India (26 October 1947) and sent raiders into the state. India responded with military action. Nehru then took the matter to the UN Security Council in January 1948. A ceasefire followed on 1 January 1949. India's offer of a plebiscite was withdrawn in 1955.
• The Indus Waters Treaty: after years of dispute over sharing the Indus rivers, India and Pakistan signed the comprehensive Indus Waters Treaty in Karachi on 19 September 1960, under the auspices of the World Bank.
• Recognition of China: India was among the first countries to recognise the new People's Republic of China in 1949. It championed China's admission to the United Nations.
• Tibet: the Chinese army entered Tibet in 1950. To keep the peace, Nehru concluded the 1954 Panchsheel agreement, which formalised China's position in Tibet. The friendship the two nations then celebrated would sour by 1962.

India's idealism was tested by wars:

• The war with China in 1962 was a serious setback. The clash was over the disputed Himalayan border (Aksai Chin in the west, the North-East Frontier Agency in the east). China's attack came despite the warmth of the "Hindi-Chini bhai-bhai" slogan. India's defeat shattered Nehru's faith in diplomacy alone. It forced a rapid build-up of defences.
• The war with Pakistan in 1965 broke out under Prime Minister Lal Bahadur Shastri. It ended inconclusively. The Tashkent Agreement (January 1966), brokered by the Soviet Union, closed the conflict. Shastri died in Tashkent the day after signing it.
• The war with Pakistan in 1971 was fought under Prime Minister Indira Gandhi. It was triggered by the brutal crackdown on Bengalis in East Pakistan and the flood of refugees into India. India's decisive victory led to the creation of Bangladesh out of East Pakistan. The settlement that followed was the Shimla Agreement (1972) between Indira Gandhi and Pakistan's Zulfikar Ali Bhutto. It committed both sides to resolving disputes bilaterally and peacefully.

These wars shaped India's defence policy and its relations with its neighbours and the superpowers.

Not every dispute with a neighbour ended in war. India also settled boundary questions through negotiation, and two small territories are favourite exam traps:

• Kacchativu: a small uninhabited island in the Palk Strait. India ceded it to Sri Lanka under the Indo-Sri Lanka Maritime Agreement of 1974, which fixed the maritime boundary between the two countries. The island remains a sore point with Tamil Nadu fishermen.
• Tin Bigha: a narrow corridor of Indian territory in West Bengal. India leased it to Bangladesh in 1992 so that Bangladesh could reach its Dahagram–Angarpota enclave, a pocket of Bangladeshi territory otherwise cut off inside India.

The pattern to remember is the direction of transfer. Both Kacchativu and Tin Bigha were handed over by India: the first by cession of sovereignty to Sri Lanka, the second by lease to Bangladesh. Neither involved France, China or Pakistan.

India's approach to nuclear weapons combined principle with security. India long argued for global nuclear disarmament. It criticised treaties that let a few powers keep weapons while denying them to others.

At the same time, for its own security, India built and tested nuclear weapons:

• The first test, in 1974 at Pokhran (Rajasthan), was code-named "Smiling Buddha" and described by India as a "peaceful nuclear explosion". It was conducted under Prime Minister Indira Gandhi.
• The 1998 tests at Pokhran, code-named "Operation Shakti" (Pokhran-II), were carried out under Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee. After them India declared itself a nuclear-weapon state.
• India has refused to sign the NPT (Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty) and the CTBT (Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty), arguing they are discriminatory, freezing weapons in the hands of a few while denying them to others.
• India's doctrine rests on no-first-use (a pledge not to use nuclear weapons first), backed by a "credible minimum deterrent".

This balance of disarmament advocacy and self-defence remains the basis of its nuclear stance.

Staying outside the NPT did not mean staying outside all safeguards. India signed an Additional Protocol with the IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency) and ratified it in 2014. Its scope is precise and a favourite exam trap:

• What it covers: India's declared civilian nuclear reactors come under IAEA safeguards and broader inspection.
• What it does not cover: India's military nuclear installations stay outside the protocol.
• What it does not grant: the protocol gives India no privilege to buy uranium from the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG), and it does not make India an NSG member.

In short, the protocol is about transparency over the civilian programme, nothing more.

After the Cold War, India's foreign policy turned eastward and outward. The Look East policy, launched in 1991 under Prime Minister P. V. Narasimha Rao, had two aims: to establish India as an important regional player in East Asian affairs, and to restore its historical and cultural ties with Southeast and East Asia. Filling a Cold War vacuum was never one of its stated objectives. The policy was later upgraded to Act East.

This eastward turn ran through regional groupings:

• ASEAN: the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, a ten-member bloc. Its free-trade partners are Australia, China, India, Japan, South Korea and New Zealand. The USA and Canada have no FTA with ASEAN.
• RCEP: the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership, a free-trade agreement built around ASEAN and its FTA partners. India negotiated it but withdrew in 2019 over trade-deficit concerns.
• BIMSTEC: the Bay of Bengal Initiative for Multi-Sectoral Technical and Economic Cooperation, a seven-member grouping of Bay of Bengal states. It was created by the Bangkok Declaration of 1997 (not Dhaka 1999). The founders were Bangladesh, India, Sri Lanka and Thailand, joined later in 1997 by Myanmar and in 2004 by Nepal and Bhutan. The tourism sector is led by Thailand, not India.
• BRICS: the grouping of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa, since expanded. The 16th summit was held at Kazan in 2024 under Russia's chairship, with the theme "Strengthening Multilateralism for Just Global Development and Security". Indonesia has since joined as a full member.
• Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP): a comprehensive trade agreement among some Pacific Rim countries, covering goods, services, investment and intellectual property. It was not a maritime security alliance, and it never included all Pacific Rim states.
• Belt and Road Initiative (BRI): China's giant infrastructure and connectivity programme linking Asia, Europe and Africa. India has stayed out of it.
• India-Africa Forum Summit: India's summit-level engagement with Africa, begun in 2008 and held again in 2011 and 2015 (the third summit). It was not initiated by Nehru.

Connectivity projects give this strategy a physical shape:

• INSTC: the International North-South Transport Corridor, a roughly 7,200 km multimodal route connecting India to Central Asia, Russia and Europe via Iran and the Caspian Sea. India is a founding member. It bypasses Pakistan and cuts freight time compared with the Suez route.
• Chabahar Port: a port in Iran developed with Indian help. Its importance is that India gains access to Afghanistan and Central Asia without depending on Pakistan for transit.

A large Indian diaspora works across West Asia and beyond. When conflict breaks out, the government mounts military evacuation missions to bring its nationals home. The classic example is Operation Sukoon (2006). During the Israel-Hezbollah conflict in Lebanon, the Indian Navy, supported by the Air Force, evacuated over 2,000 Indian nationals, along with some Sri Lankan and Nepali citizens, from Beirut. Later missions followed the same template, such as Operation Raahat (2015), which evacuated Indians from Yemen during its civil war. These operations show foreign policy serving citizens directly, not just states.

Some exam questions test ideas and laws that shape global governance rather than any single treaty India signed.

• Right to the City: a concept promoted by activists and academics, originating with the French thinker Henri Lefebvre. It holds that every occupant of a city has the right to reclaim public spaces and to participate in decisions about the city, and that the state cannot deny public services to unauthorised colonies. It is not a formally agreed human right in international law, and no UN body monitors country commitments on it.
• General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR): the European Union's law on data protection and privacy. It was adopted in April 2016 and became enforceable from 25 May 2018. It set the global benchmark for data-privacy regulation and influenced India's own data-protection debate.