As India turns 79, its foreign policy reflects striking change anchored in an enduring strategic instinct. Non-alignment has given way to multi-alignment, while the guarded diplomacy of an earlier era has evolved into the more ambitious engagement of a country seeking a consequential role in world affairs. Realpolitik is no longer merely implicit but increasingly visible in how India navigates a more turbulent and competitive international order.
With more partners, more platforms and more choices than at any time since Independence, India’s diplomatic canvas has never been wider, nor has the challenge of translating these choices into influence more consequential.
Yet, the impulse underlying Indian foreign policy remains unmistakably familiar: preserving autonomy of choice in a world where materially stronger powers invariably seek alignment on their terms. India, therefore, seeks partnerships without permanent entanglements, convergence without conformity, and cooperation without compromising its agency.
At 79, the real test is whether this expanding geometry of partnerships and choices can be converted into something more consequential—greater regional influence and a stronger global voice.
No world for non-alignment
Non-alignment emerged as an operating lens of Indian foreign policy at a particular historical moment, when a newly sovereign India possessed limited material capabilities and confronted a world divided between two hostile blocs. Far from being a luxury of idealism, staying outside formal alliances was rooted in pragmatism: preserving diplomatic space, securing much-needed assistance from competing powers, and avoiding becoming an appendage of either camp.
It gave India a strategic vocabulary to reconcile limited capabilities with larger global aspirations. Yet, strategic autonomy through non-alignment faced severe limits in the hard realities of the Cold War. It neither eliminated dependence, prevented conflict, nor guaranteed international support in moments of crisis.
That international system has dissipated, and India has shed old skins in both substance and optics. A nuclear-armed state, major economy and military power, India now operates across competing platforms, from the Quad and BRICS to the SCO and G20. Strategic autonomy no longer demands equidistance but varying degrees of proximity with different powers.
India works with the US, Japan and Australia to shape the Indo-Pacific balance; deepens defence and technology ties with France; and retains Russia as an important defence and energy partner. Its engagement with BRICS and the SCO helps navigate China’s growing influence, while reinforcing India’s claim to bridge the Global South and the developed world.
Multi-alignment is neither neutrality nor equidistance. It seeks to multiply partnerships without allowing any one relationship to dictate India’s choices. However, greater choice does not automatically translate into greater influence. The real measure is whether these partnerships deliver favourable outcomes when India’s interests are tested.
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New partnerships for a brave new world
The India-US relationship captures both the promise and complications of this strategy. Over the past two decades, defence ties and military interoperability have deepened, while cooperation has expanded into critical and emerging technologies. The strategic logic is compelling. New Delhi and Washington share concerns over China’s growing power and coercive behaviour, and neither benefits from an Asia dominated by Beijing. Yet their threat perceptions are hardly identical.
The trajectory of US-China competition is global and largely beyond New Delhi’s control. For India, China is not a systemic competitor but a proximate power, with a disputed border, an asymmetric economic relationship and an intensifying contest for regional influence.
India’s ties with Russia and Iran also sit uneasily within American strategic frameworks. Russia remains consequential to India’s defence and energy interests, even as Moscow’s growing proximity to Beijing creates new dilemmas. Iran remains vital to India’s continental connectivity and access to Eurasia. Washington’s pressure for choices detached from India’s own interests will inevitably test the limits of bilateral convergence. China poses a harder structural challenge.
The unresolved boundary, military pressure, economic asymmetry, its partnership with Pakistan and expanding Indian Ocean presence constrain any durable stabilisation. Dialogue remains indispensable because geography cannot be wished away. But managing proximity cannot mean discounting asymmetry: tactical accommodation is no substitute for strategic preparedness.
Therefore, multi-alignment must become more than diplomatic choreography. Stronger maritime partnerships with France, Japan, Australia as well as the US, and deeper engagement with Southeast Asia and Europe must strengthen India’s external balance, even as dialogue with Beijing remains necessary.
Yet, as the Ukraine War and West Asian crises demonstrate, intensifying great-power competition narrows room for manoeuvre. Multi-alignment can spread risks, widen options and create leverage, but cannot eliminate difficult choices. In a turbulent world, India must assess more sharply which partnerships matter, on what issues, and at what cost.
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The price of foreign policy choices
Does autonomy translate into agency? That is the sharper test for Indian foreign policy in a world where multipolarity promises neither symmetry nor balance. Autonomy provides freedom of choice, but agency provides the capacity to make those choices count. India’s influence will ultimately rest on the economic, technological and military capabilities, underpinning its diplomacy.
Reducing dependence on external suppliers for critical defence platforms, advanced technologies, energy and essential components is, therefore, central to converting autonomy into agency.
The next phase of Indian foreign policy must forge stronger links between external partnerships and domestic transformation. Technology agreements must enable innovation and production; defence partnerships must move from procurement to co-development and indigenous capability; supply-chain initiatives must build competitive manufacturing ecosystems; and engagement with the Global South must deliver development outcomes alongside political solidarity.
Ultimately, India’s agency will depend not simply on preserving choices, but on acquiring the capabilities to shape outcomes and becoming a credible provider of regional and global public goods.
This requires an unsentimental assessment of strategic partnerships. How do partners respond when India faces territorial coercion, terrorism or economic pressure? How much sensitive technology will they share, and do they expand India’s choices or create new dependencies?
Strategic autonomy through multi-alignment is not about opposing one side to prove independence. It is a hard-nosed calculation of what serves India’s interests. If deeper ties with the US, Europe, Japan or Australia reduce strategic vulnerabilities, accelerating technological capabilities or strengthening maritime security with them enhance rather than diminish autonomy. Neither nostalgia nor ideology should determine how India practises autonomy or builds the agency to make it count.
At 79, India is simultaneously a balancing power, bridge, partner and aspirant pole, giving it greater reach but exposing it to competing expectations. As its weight grows, strategic ambiguity will become harder to sustain. Autonomy must therefore become a means to shape outcomes, not merely preserve choices. More partners and choices matter only if backed by the material capacity to act.
India’s journey from non-alignment to multi-alignment has not changed its core instinct: resisting external constraints on its choices. The next challenge is to move from preserving room for manoeuvre to acquiring the power to shape the strategic environment. That will determine whether India merely navigates a divided world or influences the shape of things to come.
Monish Tourangbam is a Fellow at the Chintan Research Foundation (CRF), New Delhi. Views are personal.
(Edited by Saptak Datta)