How the rivalry is read

• Rajesh Basrur (India—Pakistan Relations Between War and Peace) — antagonism with Pakistan has occupied front stage for the best part of India’s history since 1947.
• Sumit Ganguly and T.V. Paul — an ‘intractable rivalry’: a string of wars and crises that leaves little room for optimism.
• R. Harshe — contrasting conceptions of national identity are deeply embedded in the hostility. Torn apart at independence, the two states set out to build very different kinds of nation-state.
• Shyam Saran — the estrangement established at partition still governs the relationship; overcoming these psychological and ideological divides requires visionary statecraft.
• C. Raja Mohan — structural constraints (religious nationalism, disputed territory, militant groups held as strategic assets) produce a recurring cycle of crisis and reconciliation.

Chronology, 1947–2025

Level one — the system

Three levels of analysis

International Relations reads a conflict at three levels: the system, the state and the individual. All three are needed here — no single level explains why this rivalry survives every attempt to end it.

The same relationship, read three ways

The structural position

• Both are relatively weak states in the global system. At the regional level India is a major power while Pakistan is much smaller in size, population, economy and military capability.
• Mandelbaum — strategies are shaped by relative position in a system, which gives a strong state vs weak state reading:
• India (strong state) → seeks political and economic engagement; prefers bilateral negotiation, which places India at an advantage; pressed for higher trade, granted MFN status in 1995, welcomed Pakistani cultural figures.
• Pakistan (weak state) → prefers political and economic distancing to reduce vulnerability; prefers multilateral frameworks that let it draw on outside support; builds military strength for internal balancing and seeks allies for external balancing.
• Stephen P. Cohen — the Pakistani military held an exaggerated perception of its relative strength, which produced the false optimism behind two wars. In 1947–48 Pakistan secured about a third of Kashmir; confidence was reinforced by membership of the Cold War alliance system (SEATO 1954, CENTO 1955).
• India’s poor performance against China in 1962 emboldened the 1965 venture; the Tashkent Agreement (January 1966) confirmed the 1948 division.
• Early 1970s → India’s position became uneasy as the United States improved ties with Beijing via Islamabad. India signed the friendship treaty with the Soviet Union in August 1971 and helped create Bangladesh in December.

Two systemic changes of the mid-1980s

First — the advent of nuclear weapons

• Rajesh Basrur — nuclear rivals follow a pattern: tension rises, crises follow, fear of war then produces caution and negotiation.
• After acquiring nuclear deterrence, Pakistan turned to the low-cost option of asymmetric warfare and stepped up support to terrorist groups.
• Crisis sequence → Kargil (troops sent in the guise of mujahideen), the December 2001 Parliament attack and the threat of limited war, Mumbai 2008. Improvement stalled again after the beheading of an Indian soldier in January 2013.
• The composite dialogue of 2004 covered terrorism, nuclear risk reduction and Kashmir; both sides began to think beyond mutually exclusive claims and towards softening the LoC. Talks failed; cross-border terrorism continued.
• India then developed the ‘Cold Start’ doctrine. Pakistan responded with tactical nuclear weapons and cruise missiles.
• External powers remain a systemic factor: India chose non-alignment, Pakistan aligned with the United States, and from the 1980s drew nuclear materials, technology, weapons and aid from China. India’s closeness to Washington has pushed Islamabad tighter into Beijing’s embrace.

Cold Start

Rapid occupation of slices of Pakistani territory, to be held as bargaining material. The doctrine assumes a war fought below the nuclear threshold; Pakistan’s tactical nuclear weapons were designed precisely to deny that assumption.

Second — accelerating global economic change

• After the balance-of-payments crisis and the reforms, India needed foreign investment and the economic cost of instability became unaffordable. Friedman argued that globalisation and fast-moving information technology would not tolerate the uncertainty of regional tension and war threats.
• Positives of the 2000s → opening of trade across Kashmir (2008), the proposed Iran–Pakistan–India gas pipeline, Pakistan’s promise of MFN status.
• Cultural opening → Pakistan permitted Indian films and cultural troupes after more than four decades, while worrying about ‘cultural penetration’. After Pathankot the relationship went cold and India moved to a “SAARC minus one” approach.
• Economically and politically the gap has widened → India secured the NSG waiver (2008), the Wassenaar Arrangement (2017) and the Australia Group (2018), while Pakistan faces political instability and economic crisis.

Level two — identity and politics at the state level

• Rajesh Basrur — the two have contrasting conceptions of national identity, which makes the hostility hard to resolve. Under Jawaharlal Nehru India sought an inclusive identity rooted in secularism; Mohammed Ali Jinnah chose an Islamic identity based on Muslim separateness.
• Identity has an external component (separateness from other groups) and an internal one (belonging through participation). Where the internal component is weak, states reinforce it by opposing the external other.
• Kashmir and identity → Kashmir is the symbol of an incomplete parting and of mutually exclusive identity, each side claiming the land in its own image. Sovereignty over Jammu and Kashmir supports India’s claim that it can accommodate Muslims; Pakistan, weakened further by the loss of Bangladesh in 1971, remains vulnerable.
• Domestic politics → India moved from recurrent religious, linguistic and caste conflict into a relatively stable democracy [Pratap Bhanu Mehta], while Pakistan has remained ethnically fragmented, politically unstable and economically weak, producing Islamic extremism and a ‘culture of Jihad’ [J. Stern].
• A fractured polity is why Pakistan has not developed the inner confidence for a healthier, more practical approach to India and to Kashmir.

Level three — leaders, and what they could not do

Leaders are constrained by domestic politics, geography and the international milieu, yet on occasion they shape outcomes.

Early leaderships

• Jawaharlal Nehru determined the course of Indian foreign policy by personality, preference and decision. J. Bandyopadhyay — Nehruvian policy carried a considerable contradiction between idealist and realist elements; the ambition of a global role was not backed by hard power, as 1962 showed.
• More realist figures — Lal Bahadur Shastri in 1965 and Indira Gandhi in 1971 — used the military effectively.
• By the end of the twentieth century Indian power shifted to coalitions; leaders were too weak for major initiatives.
• Pakistan lost Jinnah and Liaquat Ali Khan early; the contest for power then prevented decisive direction. Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto’s populism yielded little.
• General Zia-ul-Haq recast Pakistan in an Islamic mould, developed the nuclear programme and kept India at arm’s length. It was the military as an institution, rather than individual commanders, that shaped the orientation towards India.
• Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif raised high expectations and did not meet them.

Leadership in the new millennium

• Atal Bihari Vajpayee travelled to Lahore in early 1999; the response was shallow and Kargil followed weeks later.
• Vajpayee and Pervez Musharraf → the Agra Summit, 2001, followed by comprehensive dialogue in 2004. Though considered the architect of Kargil, Musharraf showed a striking willingness to discard old positions.
• Manmohan Singh showed similar flexibility. As per Gilani, Hasan, et al., by mid-2007 both sides had obliquely signalled readiness to consider dividing Kashmir permanently; a ‘breakthrough’ was close before Musharraf’s standing collapsed.
• Manmohan Singh and Asif Ali Zardari maintained continuity; the process slowed with Pakistan’s internal troubles and the 2008 Mumbai attacks. Nawaz Sharif, returning in 2013, spoke of going ‘the extra mile’.
• State-level constraints curb leaders. L.K. Advani’s attempt to bridge the divide in 2005 drew accusations of going ‘soft’ from his own followers; Zardari’s criticism of ‘terrorists’ in Kashmir in 2008 caused a storm in Pakistan.

Kashmir — symptom, not cause

• A territorial conflict over the Kashmir region, primarily between India and Pakistan, with China claiming portions of PoK and Aksai Chin. Dates from 22 October 1947; on the United Nations agenda since partition.
• Both claim the entire region; three wars (1947–48, 1965, 1999) and repeated skirmishes.
• Rajesh Basrur — Kashmir is more a symptom than a cause; the main contradiction is a conflict of identity. It is a battle of identities, not only of territory.
• India is relatively status-quoist, Pakistan revisionist. Pervez Musharraf treated Kashmir as Pakistan’s jugular vein; for India the core issue is cross-border terrorism.
• Pakistan argues for self-determination and cites human rights violations while ignoring Balochistan.

Why each side holds on

• For India → strengthens secular identity; strategic location for security and for countering Chinese designs; freshwater availability.
• For Pakistan → part of Islamic identity; Muslim brotherhood; water resources.

Where it stands

• C. Raja Mohan — India’s August 2019 move is stuck in Pakistan’s political throat: it can neither swallow it nor spit it out. Pakistan’s current Kashmir debate is about finding a way out.
• Ashley J. Tellis — even if Kashmir were settled, Pakistan is unlikely to give up jihadi terrorism, since the Army’s grievances are too deeply rooted to forego its most effective instrument for bleeding India.

The other three territorial disputes

Thalweg Principle

Where a boundary is a waterway, it follows the centre of the principal navigable channel. India invokes it at Sir Creek; Pakistan’s reply is that the creek is not a navigable channel at all.

Siachen — possible solutions

• Shyam Saran — the two came close thrice, in 1989, 1992 and 2006, and failed each time over trust deficit. He favours a settlement: the glacial region is a most inhospitable theatre and the extraordinary human and material costs on troops would justify a review.
• Manmohan Singh proposed making Siachen a ‘mountain of peace’ with joint exploration; the Indian Army opposed it.
• Stephen P. Cohen considers the dispute futile and remarks that the conflict is like two bald persons fighting over a comb.
• Options discussed → a ‘glacier of peace’ occupied by neither side; mutual withdrawal without delineation (undesirable and unlikely); mutual withdrawal after jointly recording current military positions and exchanging them as an annexure without prejudice to stated positions, pending final settlement of the LoC and AGPL — the most workable, since Pakistan agreed to it in 1992; conversion into an international site for glacial research.

Terrorism and ceasefire violations

• David Scott — a constant refrain from India is its sense of Pakistan as a state sponsoring ‘terrorism’.
• Origins → support to Kashmiri and Sikh insurgents in the 1970s, part of Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto’s search for forward strategic depth, a substitute for Pakistan’s lack of depth and early warning after 1971.
• After the loss of East Pakistan, Pakistan turned to asymmetric balancing. General Zia-ul-Haq began the ‘thousand cuts, zero-option war’ policy. Pakistan has also aided Khalistani separatists.
• Despite the Ceasefire Agreement of 2003, cross-border violations continue and have risen since 2009. Repeated attacks such as Pathankot and Uri rendered SAARC ineffective; after the surgical strikes relations reached a point of no return.
• The dual burden → terrorism denies India a decisive victory and simultaneously limits India’s ability to achieve regional hegemony.
• Ashley J. Tellis — jihadi terrorism is the perfect instrument for continuously coercing India. It gives the “deep state” plausible deniability, avoids conventional confrontations Pakistan is certain to lose, and converts Pakistan’s nuclear deterrent into a licence to needle New Delhi without exposing itself to heavy retaliation.

Why terrorism became policy — the logic chain. 1971 (East Pakistan lost; no depth, no early warning) → BHUTTO (Search for forward strategic depth) → ZIA (‘Thousand cuts, zero-option war’) → 1998 (Nuclear cover makes it low-cost) → INDIA (No decisive victory; no regional pre-eminence)

India’s earlier approach, and the choice since

• Three decades of policy centred on stopping infiltration across the LoC, negotiating a mutually acceptable political settlement, reducing violence within Jammu and Kashmir and reinvigorating the political process. A series of popular elections followed, with violence at its lowest point in 2012.
• Vivek Chadha — option one: “more of the same”. Continued talks despite occasional strikes, an offensive-defence posture along the LoC limiting infiltration and retaining moral ascendancy, sustained in the hope that domestic blowback and international aversion would eventually change Pakistan’s calculation.
• Vivek Chadha — option two: premised on the Pakistan Army’s vested interests being immovable. Unless India could impose costs on the Army itself, terrorism would continue with only tactical adjustment; India therefore needed pressure points against the Pakistan Army. Recent years reflect this second option.

The Indus Waters Treaty

Indus Waters Treaty, 1960 — how the basin was divided

Background

• Signed in 1960 between Jawaharlal Nehru and Ayub Khan, brokered by the World Bank.
• Ramaswamy R. Iyer notes the original logic: irrigation networks then had to be developed in western Punjab, now part of Pakistan.
• Restrictions were also placed on the extension of irrigation in India.
• Institutional machinery → Permanent Indus Commission, with neutral expert determination and Permanent Court of Arbitration referral; data exchange on project operation and irrigated agriculture. Under Article V India paid approximately £62.06 million; international financial assistance went to Pakistan for irrigation works.

Contention

• Pakistan has objected to Indian projects on the western rivers, for example the Tulbul project.
• Indian resentment centres on having conceded about 80% of the water; Article XII says the treaty may from time to time be modified, but this requires ratification by both.
• Iftikhar A. Drabu — the treaty has withstood an acrimonious relationship and three wars, and is considered one of the most successful water-sharing arrangements in the world. It survived the wars of 1965, 1971 and 1999 and the standoffs of 1987, 2001–02, 2008, 2016 and 2019.

Options and considerations

• Brahma Chellaney → renegotiate to reflect changed geopolitical realities; India is disadvantaged as upper riparian.
• Using the treaty as a pressure point → suspend Permanent Indus Commission meetings; maximise use of the allocated share; contemplate withdrawal, particularly in response to Chinese dams on the Indus.
• TCA Raghavan → future negotiation is possible, including a joint river basin authority. UNDP has called on India to share the water deficit from the western rivers during lean seasons.

Is stopping the flow practical?

• Blocking flow means blocking the three western rivers, which carry more than 80% of the Indus basin’s flow — achievable only by storage or diversion.
• Diversion → Iftikhar A. Drabu: 117 BCM would inundate nearly 120,000 sq km to a height of one metre every year, or the whole Kashmir valley to seven metres in a single year. Diverting any one river needs a man-made river running hundreds of kilometres.
• Storage → a single Tehri-sized storage takes nearly a decade; even thirty simultaneous projects would impound water only around 2030.
• Either way Pakistan feels no impact for at least the next 30 to 50 years, and the environmental cost of both is catastrophic.

Arguments against manipulation

• Asma Yaqoob → the treaty is legally a “non-exit” partnership; denying Pakistan access would damage India’s global reputation and unsettle China and Nepal, with whom India is itself a downstream recipient.
• Maya Mirchandani → calls to abrogate are knee-jerk emotional responses; abrogation would alarm other countries with rights over rivers flowing from India.
• Sayanangshu Modak → by keeping to the treaty India strengthens its standing as a responsible upstream riparian when engaging China. Equally, since neither goodwill nor friendship — the preamble’s stated spirit — now exists, critics argue India has no obligation to continue.
• Without Pakistan actually feeling any impact, abrogation would only feed lobbies within Pakistan that want relations to deteriorate.
• Amit Ranjan → the widening supply-demand gap has produced water nationalism; militant groups have taken up the issue, with March 2010 rallies in Muzaffarabad and Lahore denouncing India’s “theft” of waters through “illegal dams”.

Blood and water can’t flow together. — Narendra Modi, after Uri, 2016. In 2019 India’s water minister threatened to let “not even a single drop of water” reach Pakistan.

The suspension of April 2025

• On 23 April 2025 India suspended the treaty, triggered by the Pahalgam attack.
• Legal basis → India invoked Article 62 of the Vienna Convention, arguing a fundamental change of circumstances caused by Pakistan’s support for terrorism.
• What India gains → the way opens to untapped hydropower on the western rivers, an estimated 18,000 MW, feeding energy needs and development in Jammu and Kashmir.
• Suspension, not revocation → this allows continued diplomatic engagement and possible renegotiation; India can halt data-sharing and pause dispute mechanisms without outright abrogation.
• Implications for Pakistan → threatens water security in Punjab and Sindh, deepening economic crisis and political instability.
• Diplomatic risk → international backlash, damage to India’s standing as a reliable partner in transboundary water agreements, and a precedent for future disputes.
• Environmental and technical constraints → ecosystem and sediment effects, and the geological difficulty of building in the seismic Himalayan region, requiring substantial investment and time.
• Pending Indian projects — the Shahpurkandi Dam on the Ravi, the Ujh Dam in Jammu and Kashmir and the Ravi–Beas link in Punjab — need to be expedited to feed the food bowls of India.

Abeyance — the word, the law, the capacity

The word India chose

• India said abeyance, not suspension and not termination — the choice was deliberate. Article XII(4) keeps the treaty in force until replaced by another ratified treaty; there is no exit clause, so a stated withdrawal would have been a plain breach.
• India’s letter of 24 April 2025 cited significantly altered population demographics and the need to accelerate clean-energy development, and accused Pakistan of refusing modification talks and of breaching the treaty through sustained cross-border terrorism.
• India is not a party to the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties, and the IWT predates it — which is why the two sides argue past each other on Articles 60 and 62.

The Indus Waters Treaty of 1960 will be held in abeyance with immediate effect, until Pakistan credibly and irrevocably abjures its support for cross-border terrorism. — Vikram Misri, Foreign Secretary, on the CCS decision, 23 April 2025

Is it lawful? Three positions

Intent versus capacity — the gap that decides the question

• The treaty allows India only 3.6 million acre-feet (about 4.4 km³) of storage on the western rivers, against some 182 km³ flowing to Pakistan yearly. India has built about 0.7 MAF of that entitlement.
• Permitted plants are run-of-river and hold little water; new large storage would take years, some to 2032. So the real pressure today is informational, not hydrological — halting flood data and technical exchange hurts Pakistan more than any dam can at present.
• Action since abeyance → sediment-flushing at Baglihar, Salal and Dulhasti on the Chenab without notifying Pakistan; fast-tracked Chenab hydropower — Pakal Dul (1,000 MW), Kiru (624), Kwar (540), Ratle (850), Sawalkote (1,856). J&K’s installed hydropower is set to rise about 46%, from 3,540 MW to 5,164 MW, by December 2026.
• No confirmed evidence yet that aggregate flows have changed; the shift so far is legal and procedural.

Unable for now to block water flows to Pakistan, India can, however, halt the flow of information. In some ways, this could be India’s most powerful current card.

David Michel, CSIS, 1 May 2025

The arbitration clash

• Pakistan’s Court of Arbitration case (PCA No. 2023-01), chaired by Sean D. Murphy, ruled on 27 June 2025 that abeyance does not remove the Court’s competence.
• India did not appear and calls the Court illegally constituted, while accepting the parallel Neutral Expert track (Michel Lino) that it had itself requested — two tracks running at once on the same dams.
• A further Maximum Pondage award (15 May 2026) went against India, which the Ministry of External Affairs dismissed as null and void.
• The clash is less about any single dam than about whether a party can walk out of a binding dispute system by relabelling its exit.

The text of the Treaty, therefore, does not provide for the unilateral ‘abeyance’ or ‘suspension’ of the Treaty. — Court of Arbitration, Supplemental Award on Competence, 27 June 2025

One year on — 2026

• Positions have hardened and diverged: India says the treaty is in abeyance, Pakistan says it is fully operational and effective. Home Minister Amit Shah has said it will never be restored; President Zardari objected on World Water Day, 22 March 2026.
• Pakistan raised the issue at a UN Security Council Arria-formula meeting on 30 January 2026.
• The basin lost about 24.8% of perennial snow and ice cover between 2001 and 2021 — the argument that climate stress leaves both states no real alternative to cooperation, whatever the treaty’s legal status.

Theory — how to frame it in an answer

• Amal Chandra → coercive treaty retaliation: a treaty becomes an instrument for imposing costs on a state accused of sponsoring terrorism — a move from liberal institutionalism toward realism.
• Medha Bisht → coercive diplomacy displacing strategic idealism, which had assumed that cooperation breeds stability. Her caution: this framing may make future cooperation harder, because it pushes aside the ecological view of shared rivers.
• Masha Tokas → securitization theory — India recast water from a technical matter into a security concern, ending the older habit of keeping the treaty apart from politics. Against this she sets regime theory, which the treaty exemplified for decades.

In such scenarios, power trumps principle, and realism supplants liberal institutionalism.

Amal Chandra, Global Policy Journal, 14 May 2025

Escalation risk

• Pakistan has drawn a red line, treating any real interruption of flows as an act of war — which raises the danger of miscalculation between two nuclear states.
• Dan Haines (UCL) → even symbolic disruption could hurt Pakistani agriculture, close to a quarter of the economy.
• David Michel → India’s upper-riparian advantage could rebound, since China sits above India on the same river system and may copy the tactic on the Brahmaputra; touching a settled water treaty may also unsettle smaller neighbours such as Bangladesh and Nepal.

Any attempt to usurp the water of the lower riparian, or to stop it, or to divert it would be an act of war against Pakistan and would be responded to with full force, including nuclear.

Muhammad Khalid Jamali, Pakistan’s Ambassador

Pulwama and Balakot

An assessment of India’s response by Zorawar Daulat Singh:

CPEC and the China factor

How Sino-Pakistan ties were built

• 1950s–60s → contacts at governmental, professional and intellectual levels, thin in political and economic content. Pakistan served as China’s main bridge to the Islamic world and helped bridge the communication gap between the PRC and the West.
• 1960s–70s → Pakistan’s disenchantment with the West coincided with trouble from India; the relationship was built in the aftermath of the 1962 border war. In 1963 Pakistan ceded the Shaksgam Valley to China, which then supplied arms, materials for the nuclear weapons programme and economic aid.
• 1965 war → of all Pakistan’s supporters China spoke loudest, linking the Sino-Indian and Indo-Pakistan conflicts and asserting a single Indian design of expansionism. In 1971 China treated events in Pakistan as an internal affair to be settled without foreign intervention.
• 1990s → Li Peng’s April 1999 visit defined a broad consensus on regional and international issues.

CPEC and its consequences

• CPEC, a flagship of the Belt and Road Initiative, passes through Pakistan-occupied Kashmir.
• Geostrategic → transforms China’s Malacca Dilemma into India’s Gwadar Dilemma.
• Geo-economic → undercuts India’s stance towards Pakistan, shifts Pakistan away from South Asian integration, and reduces the value of economic isolation as an Indian instrument.
• Manoj Joshi and P.S. Raghavan → India could consider participating in regional trade if Pakistan and China open cross-South Asian routes. Hardeep S. Puri → maintain resistance to CPEC to safeguard sovereignty.

The relationship raises the specter that India may, in the future, face a two-front war, a scenario that would have been implausible a decade ago.

Manjari Chatterjee Miller

Implications for India

• Jayadeva Ranade → with Chinese military power flowing into Pakistan, China straddles India on the northern, eastern and western borders, raising the prospect of a two-front war and positioning China to play a role in Kashmir. Since 2010 Pakistan is the only country with which China has an “all-weather strategic partnership”.
• Under Xi Jinping, China’s earlier practice of managing or deferring contentious issues has been discarded for a direct and aggressive approach.
• The ‘Rejuvenation of the great Chinese nation’ means “the recovery of territories that China feels it has lost through the imposition of unequal treaties by hostile foreign powers” — hence the framing of the border question as a colonial legacy, and claims to Aksai Chin, Ladakh, Jammu and Kashmir, Arunachal Pradesh and Sikkim, reinforced by stapled visas.
• The relationship is not problem-free → Chinese wariness about Islamist militants in Xinjiang and their Pakistani links, attacks on Chinese citizens in Pakistan, sporadic opposition to CPEC, and Chinese caution on Kashmir. It is nevertheless no longer a mere relationship but a genuine partnership.

Balochistan

• In the southwest of Pakistan, about half the country’s territory, rich in gas, gold, copper, oil and uranium, yet among its poorest regions. Gwadar port gives it strategic weight.
• Unresolved autonomy → the incorporation of Balochistan, including the formerly independent Kalat, has produced persistent grievances. Human rights abuses, economic exploitation without local benefit and ethnic nationalism against Punjabi dominance sustain the conflict.
• Pakistan accuses India of supporting Baloch nationalist activity; India generally maintains a non-interventionist stance but has occasionally highlighted the region’s plight.
• Suhasini Haidar → mentioning Balochistan puts pressure on both China and Pakistan, since CPEC depends on secure access through Gwadar.
• Sadanand Dhume → the reference reflects scepticism about productive dialogue with Pakistan in present circumstances.
• Kanwal Sibal → by raising Balochistan in his Independence Day speech, the Prime Minister put Pakistan on notice about its own internal vulnerabilities.

Why Pakistan is the hard case

• Pakistan is India’s biggest foreign policy challenge — a source of threats ranging from nuclear war to lone-wolf attacks and suicide bombings, and a proxy of China. Historically India has faced its bigger threats from the western front.
• China is a greater power but a comparatively more responsible member of world politics, with some shared interests with India. Pakistan is termed a ‘mad child with loaded gun’ and an example of a rogue state; hence India’s strategic restraint. Pratap Bhanu Mehta treats such restraint not as weakness but as a measured response.

The challenges, stated plainly

• Taliban takeover of Afghanistan → Jaish-e-Mohammed and Lashkar-e-Taiba now have a friendly regime that may look the other way or offer safe haven. M.K. Narayanan refers to Pakistan as the ‘patron saint’ of Afghanistan’s new regime.
• Right-wing Hindu nationalism in India → Pakistan signalled a desire to improve ties in its first-ever National Security Policy while remaining concerned about Indian “military adventurism”.
• Political instability and military dominance → a deep state with a weak political regime; the military’s interest lies in keeping the situation tense. Christine Fair, Ayesha Siddiqa and Hussain Haqqani hold that the Pakistani Army derives its sustenance from the Kashmir conflict; so long as it can sustain the perception of India as an existential threat and ideological antithesis, it continues to receive state largesse and political clout.
• The obsession with Kashmir → makes long-term peace impossible; since the abrogation of Article 370, Pakistan has tried every diplomatic means to be heard.
• Chinese interference → CPEC, Chinese presence on Pakistani soil, and Beijing’s better relations with the Taliban.
• India’s idealistic foreign policy → Rajiv Dogra argues that idealist Indian leaders made repeated concessions, after which Pakistan always found new means to undermine Indian interests; India has been “hopping in confusion” over non-state actors, without an effective deterrent response or a consistent security posture.
• Absence of an innovative counter-terrorism strategy → Kanwal Sibal notes India remains in a bind, caught between peace lobbies asserting “no alternative to dialogue” and “we can choose our friends but not neighbours”, and the record of Pakistani behaviour.
• Unchanging security dilemma → neither side’s threat perception has fundamentally changed; Pakistan’s first National Security Policy mentions peace briefly and spends the rest debating New Delhi’s “hegemonic” goals.

What India should do

• Balance Pakistan in Afghanistan → engage the Taliban realistically and build security cooperation, while bracing for a heightened threat.
• Counter China → form counter-alliances on the lines of Kautilya’s raja-mandala and raise issues uncomfortable for Beijing.
• Revive SAARC → follow a functionalist approach and make Pakistan realise the benefits of cooperation, particularly while it is under economic stress.
• Use the Shanghai Cooperation Organization → both are members of a security-focused body; find ways to press Pakistan on terrorism.
• Neutralise Pakistan strategically → conventional victory has become costly and remote since Pakistan acquired credible deterrence.
• Take the first initiative under ‘Neighbourhood First’ → India, as the bigger country, should move first, but with caution.

Possibilities of cooperation

• Rajesh Basrur — systemic change has created conditions for cooperation. Pakistan’s nuclear weapons neutralised India’s conventional advantage, while India’s rising economic and political power has widened the gap between them.
• The widened gap encourages, though it does not necessitate, long-term cooperation; India needs stability in its immediate environs to play a larger role in Asia and beyond.
• Nuclear weapons and economic trans-nationalisation together → (a) give Pakistan security from attack, reducing its sense of vulnerability; (b) produce sufficient risk to make leaders rethink; (c) create stronger incentives to cooperate.

Toward a democratic peace?

• Both moved away from zero-sum approaches to Kashmir in the early twenty-first century, loosening controls on cross-LoC movement of people and goods; state-level factors kept the movement a slow crawl.
• Mansfield and Snyder — democratising states are war-prone. Pakistan’s unstable hybrid democracy, its mix of populism and military power, and parties outbidding each other in appeasing conservatives, make democratic peace difficult.

The prospects for a ‘democratic peace’ between India and Pakistan remain limited for the near future. The truism that democracies do not fight one another applies only to developed capitalist societies, and neither is anywhere close to being that.

Rajesh Basrur

Instances of cooperation, and the economics

• The Indus Waters Treaty, in force through several conflicts, seen as a model for international water-sharing; SAFTA and regional cooperation during periods of calm; cultural exchange of artists; Pakistani players in the Indian Premier League; joint hosting of the South Asian Games, 2004.
• Political tension long kept trade low because Pakistan sought to keep India at arm’s length. Trade growth does not by itself rule out political tension, as United States–China and Japan–China trade show.
• Both the Pakistan People’s Party and the Pakistan Muslim League (Nawaz) favour more trade and investment; Basrur notes that internal pressures nonetheless held up MFN status, despite economic misfortune and IMF pressure.
• Trade figures → $521 million (2004–05) → about $2.35 billion (2012–13) → $329.26 million (2020–21) → $1.35 billion in April–December 2022 against $516.36 million in all of 2021–22. One study estimates potential growth of about tenfold.
• India imposed 200% tariffs after Pulwama and withdrew MFN status; Pakistan suspended trade after August 2019. Facilitating structures exist — the Wagah–Attari crossing and SAFTA — but advance only as far as politics allows.

Defeat, contain, negotiate — and the Army question

Rajesh Basrur (The Oxford Handbook of Indian Foreign Policy) identifies three tried options.

Three options tried, and the one Basrur puts on the table. DEFEAT (1948, 1965, 1971. Made Pakistan cautious — and accelerated the bomb) → CONTAIN (India chose non-alignment; Pakistan built alliances) → NEGOTIATE (Willingness to limit demands read as weakness) → SYMMETRIC (Calibrated backing of nationalist, not fundamentalist, forces)

• Defeat → Pakistan initiated war in 1948, 1965 and 1971 seeking parity; India’s response was reactive in the first two, proactive in the third. Defeat made Pakistan cautious but accelerated its nuclear programme, nullifying the war option, and pushed it towards asymmetrical balancing through terrorism.
• Contain → containment worked poorly, because India chose non-alignment and avoided alliances while Pakistan built them. Continued infiltration, Kargil, the 2001 Parliament attack and Mumbai 2008 showed Pakistan could not be deterred.
• Negotiate → India’s willingness to make and limit demands appears to have been read as weakness. Pakistan’s internal fissures make abandoning revisionism difficult, as the failure of the composite dialogue showed. Bhutto’s promise of a 1,000-year war over Kashmir and Zia’s Islamisation further narrowed the space.

The symmetric option

Basrur’s suggestion — calibrated backing of nationalist, as distinct from religious fundamentalist, forces opposed to the Pakistani state. The objection that India could not risk state failure and radicals acquiring the bomb is, in his view, exaggerated.

Assessing Indian policy

• Rajesh Basrur → containment yielded few dividends. India kept flagging a military option that was unviable, especially after 2002, and could not influence Pakistan’s asymmetric strategy, which depended entirely on internal Pakistani factors.
• India also failed to build a strategic partnership with the United States that would have strengthened its position; a decade after offering military bases in the wake of 9/11, it was avoiding agreements on logistics support and communications interoperability, apparently wary of antagonising China — which is odd, given India’s limited capacity to tackle even Pakistan.
• Rajiv Dogra → since independence, and especially under Nehru, idealism produced concessions that Pakistan pocketed before finding new means to undermine Indian interests.
• The Army question → any warming will happen only when the Pakistani military comes on board, so engaging the military may be more fruitful than engaging the civilian government. India’s dilemma is that it deals with the civilian government but refuses to deal with the most powerful institution setting Pakistan’s India policy. There are no army-to-army talks, and it is unclear whether the Indian Army, with far less influence over policy, would gain from them — or whether the Pakistan Army, whose very reason for being is a perceived existential threat, would even be inclined.

Policy since 2014, and its assessment

The turn

• The government began with ‘Neighbourhood First’ in earnest, inviting all SAARC heads of state to the swearing-in. Talks stalled after Pathankot (2 January 2016) and the Uri attack of 18 September 2016, the deadliest on security forces in two decades, killing 19 soldiers.
• India cancelled participation in the SAARC summit scheduled for Islamabad in November 2016; on 28 September 2016 it carried out “surgical strikes” across the LoC.
• John Joseph Vater and Yogesh Joshi → policy has moved from strategic restraint to realist strategic assertiveness. Externally: failure to credibly deter revanchism, upsized military and economic capability, greater freedom from international reprisal, and the threat of radicals moving from Syria to Afghanistan-Pakistan and on to Kashmir. Domestically: the 2019 electoral verdict, a strongman leadership style, nationalist support generated by confronting Pakistan, and a parliamentary majority permitting an agenda not possible under coalition constraints in 1998–2004.
• Kanti Bajpai → the policy is ‘normal anger’ assertive diplomacy with explicit coalition building, defined as a ‘cooperation-defection cycle’: doors kept open to preserve India’s image as a responsible player and for nuclear stability, defection used to set the agenda and the precondition of ending terrorism.

At the heart of Modi’s efforts is the desire to make terrorism the central focus of India–Pakistan negotiations. — Kanti Bajpai. His point: this runs counter to India’s policy since the 1990s, under which a long-term composite dialogue would treat Kashmir and security as co-equal primary issues. The signal now is that India will discuss terrorism and refuse to talk about Kashmir.

• Doval Doctrine → defensive offence. India’s refusal to counter Pakistan’s aerial riposte to Balakot with attacks on military positions in the Naushera sector signalled defensive intent pursued through offensive means.
• Key elements → rejection of peace talks as impractical; using India’s superior position against Pakistan’s vulnerabilities; and a three-fold strategy of intelligence-driven pre-emption, strategic weaponisation to disrupt terrorist infrastructure, and high-tech intelligence.

Bilateral and coalition diplomacy

• Bilateral → the cycle of cooperation and defection. Talks were cancelled when the Pakistani High Commissioner invited Hurriyat leaders in August 2014, a practice New Delhi had overlooked for twenty years. At Ufa (SCO, 11 July 2015) the two agreed to an NSA-level meeting on terrorism; attacks followed at Gurdaspur (17 July) and Udhampur (5 August). After the Paris meeting of November 2015 dialogue resumed; Pathankot followed on 2 January. A joint investigation team visited Pathankot in March 2016; Islamabad cancelled the dialogue on 7 April.
• Coalition → argued for a UN convention on terrorism; sought sanctions listing for Masood Azhar in February 2016; the June 2016 India–US joint statement committed both to act in the UN against three Pakistan-based organisations and to press Pakistan on Mumbai and Pathankot. An ‘Acting West’ approach persuaded Iran, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the UAE to include strong references to terrorism in joint statements.
• India also took Pakistan to the ICJ and worked with the Financial Action Task Force, drawing the distinction between a “responsible” India and a “rogue” Pakistan.

India has moved on from its non-aligned past. India is today an aligned state — but based on issues.

Vijay Gokhale

Where things stand — and the 2025 conflict

Age of minimalism

Happymon Jacob’s term for the present phase — a ‘cold peace’ with no political will for a grand relationship, grand gestures or grand outreach.

• Happymon Jacob → very little bilateral contact, few expectations of a breakthrough, hardly any warmth. New Delhi has learnt that peace with Pakistan demands too much time, commitment and effort with little guarantee of success; relations have been reduced to a backchannel between the Indian NSA and the Pakistan Army establishment.
• Sushant Sareen → 2019 set the tone. Within days India shook off restraints it had imposed on itself for three decades, striking not in PoK but in Balakot in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa; the August move on Article 370 killed whatever remained. At best, diplomatic relations may be restored, trade may open and travel may ease; beyond that the LoC will stay hot and terrorism will continue below the threshold of tolerance.
• Factors shaping the future → democracy and internal stability in Pakistan; the influence of the United States despite both sides rejecting mediation; agreement on a direction for comprehensive effort on Kashmir; and recognition of the Simla and Lahore arrangements.

The escalation arc — each response goes one step further. URI, 2016 (Surgical strikes across the Line of Control) → PULWAMA, 2019 (Balakot — air power beyond the LoC, in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa) → PAHALGAM, 2025 (Operation Sindoor — drones and precision strikes)

The 2025 conflict

• Triggered by the terrorist attack at Pahalgam, attributed to Pakistan-based groups.
• Both sides avoided targeting civilians directly and avoided full-scale war. India framed the action as a response to terrorism rather than war against Pakistan, managing international perceptions while maintaining strategic restraint.
• The nuclear dimension hung over the conflict without escalation; crisis management and military-to-military communication mattered in de-escalation.
• Assessment → warfare is becoming faster and more technologically sophisticated; deterrence works up to a point, but the underlying cause, Pakistan’s support for terrorism, remains unresolved.

Operation Sindoor — the doctrine and the debate

The sequence, in dates

• 22 April 2025 — Pahalgam; 26 civilians killed, most male and identified by religion. India attributed it to The Resistance Front, described as a Lashkar-e-Taiba front; Pakistan denied involvement.
• 23 April — IWT held in abeyance; Attari check-post shut, SAARC visa-exemption entry cancelled, Pakistani defence advisors expelled, High Commission strength cut from 55 to 30.
• 7 May — nine sites struck in Pakistan and Pakistan-occupied Kashmir; no Pakistani military facilities targeted. First strikes on the Muridke and Bahawalpur headquarters of Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Mohammed. Attacks reached deepest into Pakistani Punjab since 1971.
• Weapons firsts → first Indian use of BrahMos and SCALP-EG cruise missiles against Pakistan; first India–Pakistan clash where both sides used drones to inflict damage; Pakistan’s first use of Fatah-I and Fatah-II ballistic missiles.
• 9–10 May — India struck about eleven military sites, including Nur Khan airbase near Rawalpindi. No manned aircraft crossed into the other’s airspace; the fighting stayed a stand-off exchange. Pakistan launched Operation Bunyan-un-Marsoos on 10 May.
• 10 May — ceasefire understanding through DGMO channels. The United States role is disputed: Washington claimed mediation, India insists the pause was bilateral.
• Casualties, disputed → India claimed over 100 terrorists killed; Pakistan reported 51 dead. India acknowledged at least five service personnel lost; totals remain contested.

The doctrine, 12 May

Three pillars

Retaliation for any terror attack, on India’s terms · no tolerance of ‘nuclear blackmail’ · no distinction between terrorists and the governments that sponsor them.

If there is a terrorist attack on India, a fitting reply will be given … on our terms only … India will not tolerate any nuclear blackmail … we will not differentiate between the government sponsoring terrorism and the masterminds of terrorism. — Narendra Modi, Address to the Nation, 12 May 2025

Terror and talks cannot go together … Terror and trade cannot go together … Water and blood cannot flow together. — Narendra Modi, Address to the Nation, 12 May 2025

What changed — the case for a new doctrine

• Arzan Tarapore → a change in India’s theory of victory. India no longer expects that threatening punishment can change Pakistani behaviour; it now accepts that Pakistani intent is fixed and seeks instead to degrade terrorist capacity through repeated, direct cost imposition — cumulative deterrence, on the Israeli model of periodic degradation.
• Happymon Jacob → a doctrinal innovation that collapses the distinction between subconventional and conventional aggression and, with little nuclear talk on either side, calls Pakistan’s nuclear bluff. His sharpest claim: Sindoor builds a tripwire — a terror attack means Pakistan has already begun a conventional conflict, so the burden of avoiding war shifts to Islamabad.
• Walter Ladwig III → a lower bar for action: a failure by Pakistan to deny space to terrorist groups is now treated as reason enough to strike.

The retaliation, rather than its threat, is the instrument of coercion — levying tangible costs that force the adversary’s future attacks to be smaller or rarer. — Arzan Tarapore, War on the Rocks, 19 May 2025

The counter-case — continuity, and the costs

• The commitment trap → Tarapore argues the pledge to respond every time cedes the initiative to the terrorists and narrows India’s own room to manoeuvre in a crisis. Moeed Yusuf and Rizwan Zeb trace the same dynamic back to Uri and Pulwama, where each claim of a ‘new normal’ raised the political price of inaction next time.
• Sameer Lalwani, Shailender Arya and David Brostoff → question the coercive value of non-contact warfare. Stand-off strikes and drones drift toward limited, incremental action that may signal resolve without imposing much real pain; the Pakistan Army treats militant proxies as an instrument of policy and has domestic reasons to keep fighting.
• Ladwig → a structural risk — once retaliation is guaranteed, fringe actors may stage attacks precisely to provoke a crisis.
• Tarapore concedes that a pure cost-imposition strategy cannot deliver peace and, on its own terms, never ends.

Calibration under the nuclear overhang

• Christopher Clary (Four Days in May) → overt nuclear signalling was lower than in earlier India–Pakistan crises; both sides calibrated moves and tested escalation thresholds without clearly crossing them. He reads the 8–10 May strikes through Schelling’s theory of coercion.
• Yusuf and Zeb → across a quarter century these have been crises in a nuclearised environment rather than nuclear crises, because both states hold a recessed deterrence posture — leaning on Vipin Narang’s account of Pakistan’s asymmetric escalation posture. Their warning: the real hazard is a growing belief on both sides that escalation can be managed.

The power to hurt is often communicated by some performance of it. — **Thomas C. Schelling, Arms and Influence, 1966

cited in Clary

South Asian crises can most aptly be described as crises in a nuclearized environment rather than nuclear crises per se.

Moeed Yusuf & Rizwan Zeb, Carnegie Endowment, 2026

Doctrine, or only a pattern?

• Soumya Awasthi → a turn to proactive compellence — escalation-dominant, built on cost imposition meant to alter the adversary’s calculus. Her caution: India has no formally published counter-terrorism doctrine, its intelligence-to-strike cycle is not routinised, and its narrative advantage faded within days.
• Harsh V. Pant → one year on, what emerged is a clearer pattern of behaviour rather than a fixed doctrine; Sindoor demonstrated a capability that still awaits institutional permanence. He also reads the wider design — by linking previously insulated areas such as water and connectivity to security, India signalled that the costs of backing proxy violence would be spread across several fronts.
• The mediation dispute → Trump’s claim to have brokered the ceasefire cut against India’s long-held rejection of third-party mediation; Pant calls the resulting contest a battle over narratives that served Pakistan’s interest in internationalising the dispute, and holds that Washington’s acceptance of India’s counter-terrorism framing proved conditional rather than transformative.
• The China factor → Lalwani and co-authors note that Pakistan’s use of Chinese systems and reported Chinese support hardened Indian assessments of a fused two-front threat.

A doctrine that exists only in battlefield execution, without doctrinal codification … remains a half-completed revolution.

Soumya Awasthi, Observer Research Foundation, 7 May 2026

Theory, scholars, books

Theoretical perspectives

• Functionalism → despite deep conflict, cooperation on water, trade and counter-terrorism could be built by concentrating on shared economic and security benefit.
• Sociological Liberalism → societal ties and people-to-people interaction — cultural exchange, education, civil society — build trust and reduce the weight of nationalist rhetoric.
• Social Constructivism → the conflict is not only material; perceptions, historical narratives and misunderstanding shape it, so trust-building and reframing are central.

Views of scholars

• Sumit Ganguly (Deadly Impasse) → traditional deterrence models and the security dilemma are inadequate here; persistent insecurity on both sides blocks rapprochement. He characterises Pakistan as revisionist and irredentist, driven by a parochial mindset within its military establishment rather than a comprehensive national interest, and stresses the conflict of identity between Islamist Pakistan and secular India.
• Insecurity dilemma perspective → pathological obsession and paranoia among elites; a reductive nationalism fixated on animosity. In Pakistan, discourse is consumed by hostility towards India with minimal focus on national pride, amplified by a well-funded military establishment.
• Dilip Hiro → a narrative of fatal miscalculation, entrenched antagonism and reciprocal paranoia among elites.
• Stephen P. Cohen → a “mutually hurting stalemate”, in which neither party can secure victory nor sustain continued losses.
• Hussain Haqqani → symbolic gestures will not solve the conflict; a major shift in attitudes is required on both sides.
• Pakistan’s distinctive features → a hybrid political system with a dyarchic structure in which the military wields substantial influence through a selected civilian figurehead; a rentier state reliant on external assistance; often characterised as a rogue state.

Prescriptions — who says what

Two books worth naming in an answer

• J.N. Dixit, India-Pakistan In War And Peace → Kashmir will not be resolved unless the aspirations of the Kashmiri people are addressed, and India will find it hard to negotiate the demands of groups such as the JKLF and the All Party Hurriyat Conference. On Pakistan he offers a dismal but realistic picture: its military leadership will keep the issue alive, and whenever Kashmir went to the backburner Pakistan sought to internationalise it, as Kargil showed, with disregard for the Shimla Accord and the Lahore Declaration. On nuclear weapons, he attributes India’s 1998 decision to the external threat from China and its links with Pakistan, India’s quest for regional power status, and the discriminatory nature of regimes such as the CTBT; Pakistan followed only to match India.
• Sharat Sabharwal, India’s Pakistan Conundrum: Managing a Complex Relationship → dealing with Pakistan is a game of snakes and ladders: every time you climb and feel progress is being made, the snake intervenes and you are lower than before. Pakistani security agencies and their terror proxies ensured the relationship hit one of the longer snakes each time it looked up. He holds that direct engagement with the Army would not change behaviour, given its hostility.

India will have to continue to count on its counter-terror capabilities and deterrence, combined with turning as much heat as possible on Pakistan in conjunction with its international partners.

Sharat Sabharwal

Assessment

• Atal Bihari Vajpayee → we can change our friends but not our neighbours. Good relations with neighbours are a precondition for a country’s progress, and in an era of complex interdependence a nation’s destiny is tied to its region.
• India lives in a difficult neighbourhood with no simple solutions; the record of managing these challenges is creditable, and is likely to continue through new partnerships and hard decisions.
• The way forward lies in normalisation, or at least stabilisation — innovative diplomacy, coalition building, and the wisdom Sun Tzu attached to understanding one’s adversary. Bolstering India’s integration into the global economy raises the number of stakeholders in its stability; redressing internal grievances removes what Pakistan can exploit.

How the relationship is described

• Uniquely rooted in shared history and geographical proximity, and marked by inherent uncertainties and complex dynamics.
• Sheikh Hasina described the relationship as like a flowing river, full of generosity. S. Jaishankar describes the current state of affairs as a fraternal friendship.
• For the relationship to thrive, it is often said that India should let go of historical grievances while Bangladesh should consider geographical realities.
• Harsh Vardhan Shringla called the relationship a “role model” for international affairs. Ajit Doval recognised Bangladesh as India’s most important neighbour.
• S. Jaishankar → “if there is one example where the neighbourhood first policy has yielded good result, it is in case of Bangladesh”.
• Sreeradha Datta → “India–Bangladesh relations reflect the complex legacy of partition, liberation, and regional geopolitics.”

Geography has made us neighbors, history has made us friends.

Sheikh Mujibur Rahman

Three dimensions of the relationship

What India and Bangladesh have built

The balance sheet in one line

Connectivity and infrastructure

• Bangladesh India Friendship Pipeline for supply of diesel; agreement to use Chittagong and Mongla seaports for transportation to India’s northeastern states; the BBIN Motor Vehicles Agreement.
• The Feni bridge connecting Sabroom in Tripura to Ramgarh; four of six pre-1947 rail links restored; an inland waterway between Sonamura port in Tripura and Munshiganj; work to double air connectivity to 120 flights per week; direct bus services between Kolkata–Dhaka–Agartala and Dhaka–Guwahati–Shillong; a 15-km broad gauge rail line between Agartala and Bangladesh.

Energy, security, economy

• Rooppur Atomic Energy Project, an Indo-Russian collaboration in Bangladesh; export of 660 MW of electricity; extradition of ULFA terrorists.
• Substantial lines of credit for developmental projects; MoUs for two special economic zones for Indian companies at Bheramara and Mongla; a draft agreement and two pacts on coastal shipping cooperation in 2015; the transit facility signed in June 2015.
• Dispute resolution → the Land Boundary Agreement and the maritime boundary were peacefully settled, the latter through acceptance of the Permanent Court of Arbitration award in Bangladesh’s favour.

Health, culture, multilateral

• 9 million Covishield doses supplied; Bangladesh accounts for more than 35% of India’s international medical patients and more than 50% of India’s medical tourism revenue. Bangladeshis form a large share of tourists in India, outnumbering all tourists from Western Europe in 2017.
• Joint commemoration of Mahatma Gandhi’s birth anniversary, Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman’s birth centenary and the 50th anniversary of the War of Liberation; cultural exchange programmes for 2015–2017 (Kashem and Islam).
• Work together on UNSC reform, climate change, the SDGs and protection of migrants’ rights; cooperation in SAARC and BIMSTEC; Bangladesh thanked India for convening the SAARC leaders’ video conference in March 2020 and creating the SAARC Emergency Response Fund; both are members of IORA, whose chairmanship Bangladesh assumed in 2021.

Contention I — illegal migration

• India and Bangladesh share the world’s longest land border, approximately 3,700 km. Estimates suggest 30 to 40 million Bangladeshis are in India illegally, with notable demographic change in regions such as Tripura.
• Causes → lack of recognition, since Bangladesh has not fully acknowledged the extent of the problem; poor border management; push factors such as floods, poverty and historical conflict including the 1971 war; pull factors such as porous borders, corruption among law enforcement, and political motives of electoral support.
• Challenges → trafficking of drugs, humans and cattle; fake voter ID cards threatening democratic processes; communal tensions from demographic shifts, affecting the secular character of society; economic strain on infrastructure, healthcare and education.
• Potential solutions → enhanced border management including electrified fences aligned with regional security dynamics; addressing corruption among law enforcement agencies; the Gujral Doctrine approach of cooperating with Bangladesh on the underlying causes of poverty and unemployment; effective data management through the National Population Register; and a work permit system, which would reduce corruption, maintain accurate records, build goodwill, combat organised crime and protect migrants from exploitation.

Contention II — water: Farakka and Teesta

• India and Bangladesh share 54 common rivers. A bilateral Joint Rivers Commission (JRC) has worked since June 1972 to maximise benefits from common river systems, but only two rivers — the Ganga and the Teesta — have been the subject of formal agreement, and the JRC has been inactive since 2011.

Farakka Barrage

• Nilanjan Ghosh → the Farakka Barrage, long the point of contention in transboundary relations, is now emerging as an inter-state water dispute. It was planned to enhance the flow of the Bhagirathi-Hooghly and revive the port at Kolkata downstream.
• Bangladesh was critical from the proposal stage, apprehending that enhanced flow into the Bhagirathi-Hooghly would reduce the dry season flow of the Ganges/Padma into Bangladesh.
• What should be done → removal of Farakka would harm ecosystem services in that part of the state. The basic problem is the flawed design of the barrage, which did not consider the sediment variable; ecologically informed engineering is the need of the hour. River basin commissions with powers above the federal states should be set up to prevent escalation of inter-state conflicts, and outmoded engineering paradigms should be dispensed with.

Teesta

• A 315 km river rising in the eastern Himalayas near Chunthang in Sikkim, flowing through West Bengal into Bangladesh and on to the Bay of Bengal; a tributary of the Brahmaputra, known as the Jamuna in Bangladesh. It originally flowed south into the Padma and around 1787 changed course eastward to join the Jamuna.
• The dispute → contested since 1947, when the catchment areas were allotted to India. After the JRC was set up in 1972, an ad hoc arrangement of 1983 gave India 39% and Bangladesh 36%; allocation has been under discussion since 1972, with only 25% of the waters shared and the remainder unevenly divided. Bangladesh seeks a 25% share. Negotiations began in earnest after the Ganga Water Treaty of 1996 and have made limited progress.
• Constant dam building along the Teesta in Sikkim has reduced lean season flow into Bangladesh, on which the livelihood of millions depends. As a lower riparian, Bangladesh is naturally sensitive on transboundary issues.
• For West Bengal, the river sustains five northern districts — Darjeeling, North and South Dinajpur, Cooch Behar and Jalpaiguri — among the poorest farming districts, with about 12.77% of the state’s population. There is also the matter of Kolkata port silting up and needing more water in the lean season.
• A framework agreement under the Manmohan Singh government faced obstacles from coalition politics and objections from West Bengal, along with complications from India’s water agreements with Pakistan. The West Bengal Chief Minister vetoed the proposed treaty in 2011 but has more recently said the state is ready to share water if suitable alternatives, such as interlinking of rivers through canals, are explored with the central government.
• Tariq A. Karim → despite advances in other areas, the Teesta dispute remains a major concern for many Bangladeshis, and this emotional factor exacerbates tensions.
• Jaideep Majumdar → unresolved issues on the Teesta might weaken India’s position on other water disputes, such as the Brahmaputra with China; failure could also undermine opportunities for “Blue Water Partnerships” in the Indian Ocean.
• S.D. Muni → broader strategic interests should not be impeded by narrow domestic concerns; the Gujral Doctrine of good neighbourly relations could serve as a basis for resolution.

Contention III — China in Dhaka

• The starting position — Bangladesh as India’s largest trade partner in South Asia and the showcase of Neighbourhood First. S. Jaishankar called it the one clear success of the policy; Ajit Doval called it India’s most important neighbour.
• What China brings → the dominant share of Bangladesh’s defence imports, infrastructure finance, and a standing offer on the Teesta.
• The turn after 2024 → under interim leader Muhammad Yunus, Dhaka moved from cautious balancing toward closer alignment with Beijing, inviting China into the sensitive Teesta project and Mongla port.
• Pakistan re-enters → renewed ties including the Aman-25 naval exercise and the first ministerial visit in thirteen years add a military edge. Aparna Divya and Salman Ali Bettani trace a possible Bangladesh–Pakistan–China triangle taking shape.
• The sharpest concern → a reported Chinese airfield at Lalmonirhat, close to the Siliguri Corridor that links India to its Northeast.
• What India still holds → connectivity, power trade, the settled land boundary and maritime award, health and education links, and the weight of a 3,700 km border. China can finance; it cannot relocate.

After Hasina — the verdict and the extradition question

What happened

• August 2024 — a student-led uprising ended Sheikh Hasina’s fifteen-year rule. She fled to India on 5 August 2024 and has stayed since.
• 17 November 2025 — tribunal ICT-1 sentenced Hasina and former Home Minister Asaduzzaman Khan Kamal to death in absentia for crimes against humanity during the July–August 2024 crackdown. Dhaka asked India to hand her over under the 2013 extradition treaty.
• The crackdown → the OHCHR report of 12 February 2025 estimated up to about 1,400 killed; three-quarters of protest deaths came from firearms, many from weapons meant for war.
• 12 February 2026 — a BNP-led alliance won 212 of 297 declared seats; turnout 59.88%. Tarique Rahman became prime minister after seventeen years in exile, and renewed the extradition request in April 2026 under a Bangladesh First approach.

The treaty — what it allows and blocks

The 2016 amendment easing evidence requirements — pushed through by Hasina’s own government — now works against her. And because the treaty has no binding dispute-settlement body, each government can defend its own reading.

The debate

• Prabhash Ranjan → the decision is political, not strictly legal. Article 6 cannot shield her; Article 8 can. The appeal window lets India delay without a formal refusal — a legal question becomes one of timing and political will.
• Veena Sikri → the treaty’s protection against political persecution could justify continued shelter. She raises procedural doubts about the trial: judges without experience of international-crimes law, an ordinance widening the tribunal’s remit that parliament never approved, and prosecutors she sees as partisan.
• Ranjan accepts the trial’s fairness can be questioned, yet holds that an unelected government can still run a lawful court under international law. The dispute sets accountability for mass killings against the charge of victor’s justice.

At the end of the day, the call on Hasina’s extradition is about politics, not so much about law.

Prabhash Ranjan, Hindustan Times, 13 September 2024

What it does to Neighbourhood First

• Harsh V. Pant and Sohini Bose → the Hasina years were a golden phase for Neighbourhood First and Act East, because her zero-tolerance policy on cross-border insurgents secured India’s Northeast. Her fall puts connectivity through Chattogram and Mongla in doubt and revives an opposition they read as anti-India and pro-China — yet geography ties the two states together, so India must persist.
• Aditya Gowdara Shivamurthy → one of the sharpest strategic shocks Delhi has faced, since Hasina alone had honoured India’s core sensitivities. He identifies three Indian red lines — protection of Hindu minorities, control of anti-India militants, and caution over Pakistan and China — which the BNP and Jamaat-e-Islami have crossed before.
• Shanthie Mariet D’Souza → the carefully drafted treaty lets India hedge, but Delhi should expect blowback from Dhaka whatever it decides.
• Sreeradha Datta → India is unlikely to extradite, but letting Hasina campaign from exile deepens Bangladeshi anger; disengagement is not an option for either country.
• Avinash Paliwal → history rhyming with 1975, when the killing of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman turned a trusted relationship cold. India over-invested in one leader; he calls Delhi regime agnostic, ready to work with whoever holds power, and expects a cool but workable reset with the BNP, much as India adjusted to Ziaur Rahman after 1975.

I think history is rhyming when it comes to India and Bangladesh. — Avinash Paliwal, CASI Deep Dive interview, 31 March 2025

The two statements to quote

As a close neighbour, India remains committed to the best interests of the people of Bangladesh, including in peace, democracy, inclusion and stability in that country.

India, Ministry of External Affairs, 26 November 2025

It would be a grave act of unfriendly conduct and a travesty of justice for any other country to grant shelter to these individuals convicted of crimes against humanity.

Bangladesh, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, November 2025

Theory and scholars — Bangladesh

Bangladesh adopts a nuanced hedging strategy, engaging diplomatically and economically with both India and China while maintaining a position of neutrality and nonalignment.

Al Amin, Discover Global Society, 2025

Bangladesh’s autonomy is fundamentally dependent on the goodwill of its political elites… failures in managing hedging relationships with each dominant power could lead to falling into the trap of geopolitics. — **Md Abul Hasan, Asia and Africa Today, No. 04, 2024**

Views of scholars and policy suggestions

• Harsh V. Pant → India should demonstrate sensitivity to Bangladesh’s needs and concerns, actively understanding their perspective.
• C. Raja Mohan → soft power and people-to-people connections can bridge trust gaps; managing the neighbourhood demands not dominance but diplomacy.
• S.D. Muni → strategic collaboration is essential for regional security, particularly on terrorism and border issues. Ayesha Siddiqa → the strategic importance of cooperation, given growing Chinese influence in South Asia.
• Pinak Ranjan Chakraborthy → creation of a security community in the Indian Ocean region.
• Jayanta Kumar Ray and Muntassir Mamoon (India-Bangladesh Relations: Current Perspectives) → sceptics may say India can afford indifference while Bangladesh cannot, but realities do not admit such oversimplification. With India’s northeast region chronically unstable, and with China and Myanmar trying to improve relations with Bangladesh — which itself is a commercial gateway to the Northeast — India has to substantially upgrade relations to safeguard vital interests. The need to strengthen SAARC adds urgency.
• Quality-advantage branding → emphasise the superior quality of Indian assistance against other providers, and align support with Bangladesh’s developmental needs. Increase investment, fulfil developmental promises and resolve Line-of-Credit issues; revive SAARC; increase strategic integration and explore new areas such as cyber capabilities and energy exploration.

India must ensure that goodwill is not transactional, but transformative.

Shyam Saran

After the takeover

• The Taliban takeover has made the regional security situation more fragile; Pakistan-based organisations such as Jaish-e-Mohammed and Lashkar-e-Taiba now have a regime that may look the other way or provide safe haven.
• M.K. Narayanan refers to Pakistan as the ‘patron saint’ of the new regime. Islamabad publicly condemns these organisations while quietly permitting or supporting their operations, seeking indirect control or strategic influence to reduce space for India.
• India’s counter should be to mend ties with the regime realistically, innovatively countering Pakistan’s search for strategic depth by building security cooperation, while bracing for a heightened threat.
• There is still no consensus in South Asia on recognising the Taliban as the legitimate government, which makes holding a SAARC summit difficult, since barring Pakistan no member would be comfortable sharing the table with its representatives.

The New Great Game

• Since 2001 China’s policy has moved from a non-engagement “observer” policy (2002–2010) to an economics-centred agenda (2011–2017) to a security-dominated agenda (post-2018), which has remained dominant since August 2021.
• Beijing’s primary concerns are curbing regional instability and preventing Afghanistan from becoming a haven for groups it brands terrorist, especially Uyghur militants.
• China’s economic interests centre on mining — the Mes Aynak copper mine and oil extraction in Faryab and Sar-e-Pol — both long on hold. BRI projects circumvent Afghan territory; Chinese policymakers worry about the effect of instability on their interests in Pakistan and Central Asia.
• C. Raja Mohan → closer collaboration between China and Pakistan could be a “serious challenge for India”, given India’s border dispute with China and the treatment of CPEC as a threat to Indian trade and security.
• China and Russia share strong mutual interests, both focused on security and violent extremism; Russia is concerned that violence could spill into Central Asia, which it treats as its near abroad and exclusive sphere of influence. Neither has recognised the Taliban government, and both have criticised the American and European focus on human rights and democracy while scaling down expectations of an inclusive government.
• Post-August 2021 China’s main assistance has been humanitarian aid and COVID-19 vaccines; diplomatically it has rallied support for rebuilding, calling for sanctions relief and unfreezing of Afghan assets, with Pakistan urging Western powers to engage.
• Dr. Sanjeev Kumar notes that a serious study by Peking University in 2018 appreciated the Indian model of delivering major projects in Afghanistan — India’s aid is more comprehensive and wider in coverage than China’s, and Afghans valued that India had contributed more than the UN and NATO.
• India must therefore ensure involvement in Afghanistan’s settlement to protect national interests, check China-Pakistan ambitions and engage Russia without affecting relations with the West.

Views of scholars — and the 2023 question

• Sushant Sareen → engage, isolate, or oppose — Indian policy should incorporate all three. While engaging the Taliban, India must reach out to its old friends, most of them in exile, to push for reconciliation; it must simultaneously isolate the Taliban without breaking ranks with the international community; and it must oppose the Taliban, not only diplomatically and politically but by covertly supporting anti-Taliban forces — a carrot-and-stick approach. There are never any full stops in Afghanistan, and no reason for India to put full stops in its own policy; pragmatism combined with hard-nosed moves is the way to get back in the game.
• Vivek Katju → the Taliban is here to stay, and India has no alternative but to deal with it even while repeating, if it wishes, the mantra of inclusive government. Maintaining contacts with leaders of the ousted Republic would be unobjectionable, especially as the Taliban itself wants them to return. The sooner India establishes a permanent presence in Kabul the better; this is not evangelism but the cold pursuit of interests, which often requires supping with the devil, with a long spoon.
• Rudra Chaudhuri → the approach will mean taking risks, assessing costs and expecting failures, and also doing everything possible to address real challenges. Facts must be taken for what they are: that Afghanistan is changing is a fact, and that the United States is leaving is a fact. As Kissinger argues, it is not easy to change facts; what is possible is for facts to be used. A state’s decision to recognise a government is a matter of pure discretion premised on larger political gains, and India’s approach should be determined by its geo-strategic interests.

Nepal — the unique neighbour

• Land-locked; bounded by China’s Tibetan region to the north and India on three sides; smaller than several Indian states.
• S.D. Muni — Nepal is India’s unique neighbour: the two are bound in a complex web of linkages and contiguities across civilisational, historical, socio-cultural, economic, geostrategic and political terrains.
• A border of over 1,850 km with five Indian states — Sikkim, West Bengal, Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand — with open borders. No two countries in the world are as closely interdependent; the relationship is more a by-product of people-to-people ties than of government-to-government ties.
• A. Bhattacharya — strategic weight arises from location between two rising Asian giants and from Nepal’s transformation into a buffer zone in the 1950s. David Scott — ‘India-China rivalry in Nepal’ defines its main strategic importance.
• David M. Malone (Does the Elephant Dance?) — the tensions and interdependencies typical between small and large neighbours; historical, geographical, economic, political, religious and sociocultural links, and constant population flows, create deep attachments and also deep resentments. The Treaty of Peace and Friendship, 1950 is the bedrock of the special relationship; because it was driven by Indian security considerations, Nepalese resent Indian domination.

Why Nepal matters for India

• As an immediate neighbour, Nepal forms the inner circle of the raja-mandala — a natural security buffer between India and China.
• Internal security — no anti-India terrorists or Maoists should find haven there.
• The Chinese opening — political instability and economic crisis open the door; reports suggest China brokered a deal between factions of the ruling Nepal Communist Party, and its cheque-book diplomacy offers loans and grants for infrastructure.
• Nepal’s position is vulnerable to China–United States rivalry and to unanticipated Sino-Indian conflict along the Himalayan borders. Instability also compromises India-aided projects, where timely completion would create much-needed goodwill.
• Flood management and hydropower — the Gandak and Kosi feed India’s perennial river systems; Nepal’s cooperation is essential to control floods in Bihar, and its hydropower potential can be tapped through joint ventures.
• Open border — citizens cross for livelihood and marriage, so unrest spills over.
• S.D. Muni — new connectivity and communication technologies, missiles and cyber security have reduced the salience of the Himalayas as a barrier; India’s defence and security concerns in Nepal have become more subtle and mundane, relating to the use of Nepali territory to India’s disadvantage by China, any third country, or non-state actors.

“India’s relations with Nepal are shaped as much by geography as by history and sentiment.”

Shivshankar Menon

The two-soils formulation

C. Raja Mohan — for India, Nepal is the punya bhoomi, its sacred geography a living repository of the subcontinent’s spiritual heritage; for Nepal, India is the vast economic hinterland and may well be called its karma bhoomi. Destinies are inseparably intertwined, and problems have arisen whenever Delhi or Kathmandu has acted against the logic of extraordinary interdependence. Sushma Swaraj called it the “roti beti ka rishta”.

Chronology — Sugauli to the present

Evolution — monarchical Nepal to federal republic

How Nepal became a buffer — and how the buffer logic curdled. 1816 · Sugauli (Nepal barred from engaging other foreigners — the origin of India’s third-country reflex) → 1950 · Treaty (Peace and Friendship; reciprocal ‘national treatment’; sub-Himalayan strategic space) → 1950–51 · Tibet (Security concern flips: ‘threat from Nepal’ becomes ‘threat to Nepal’) → 1955 · Mahendra (Nationalist foreign policy; China road, Chinese presence in the Terai, ties with Pakistan) → 1960s–90s (The China card institutionalised — Birendra 1988, Gyanendra 2005)

Phase I — monarchical Nepal

• S.D. Muni — a strong imprint of British legacy forced India not to allow other foreigners into Nepal’s economic and strategic affairs; India remains uneasy about third-country involvement even today, while continuing to recruit Nepali Gurkhas despite dissent within Nepal.
• Jawaharlal Nehru took a realist posture, accepting openly that India’s security interests had priority over Nepal’s sovereignty.

“From time immemorial, the Himalayas have provided us with a magnificent frontier … We cannot allow that barrier to be penetrated because it is also the principal barrier to India. Therefore, such as we appreciate the independence of Nepal, we cannot allow anything to go wrong in Nepal or permit that barrier to be crossed or weakened as that would also be a risk to our security.”

Jawaharlal Nehru, in Parliament, December 1950

• S.D. Muni — the geographical determinism of India’s security interests led Nehru to build a ‘special relationship’ involving guarding Nepal’s northern border, modernising its defence capabilities and closely coordinating its foreign policy.
• Nepal assisted India in 1948 with troops for Hyderabad and for the situation created by Pakistan’s tribal invasion of Kashmir. With Tibet invaded in 1950, the 1950 Treaty was signed and the security concern was redefined from ‘threat from Nepal‘ to ‘threat to Nepal‘.
• India supported the end of hereditary Rana rule in 1951 in favour of monarchy under King Tribhuvan with a cabinet system; relations soured once King Mahendra succeeded in 1955.
• In 1959 a constitution established multiparty democracy and constitutional monarchy. Deteriorating India–China relations in the 1960s gave Mahendra room for two decisions: he dismissed the elected Koirala government, discarded the constitution and assumed absolute power; and he promoted a nationalistic foreign policy, for which the projection of nationalism meant resistance to India’s pervasive political, economic and cultural presence.
• He allowed China to build a road connection and encouraged Chinese traders and officials in the Terai, close to India’s Indo-Gangetic heartland, and established diplomatic relations with Pakistan.
• King Birendra and King Gyanendra continued to use China, Pakistan and other players to balance India and extract concessions. Relations from the 1960s to the 1990s were tense, sour and non-cordial; India’s security and economic interests suffered most during the decades of monarchical supremacy.
• The last decade of the twentieth century saw absolute monarchy give way to a hybrid dispensation of multiparty democracy and constitutional monarchy, opening political space for ethnic groups and for the Madhesis of the plains. The Maoist movement became an armed insurgency demanding, among other things, abolition of the monarchy.
• Fearing extension of the ‘red corridor’ into India, India in 2005 promoted an understanding between the mainstream parties and the Maoists, producing the 12-point agreement. Under the pressure of Jan Andolan the King conceded popular sovereignty in 2006 and the monarchy ended; a Comprehensive Peace Agreement closed the decade-old civil war and set a roadmap to a constituent assembly.

Phase II — Nepal as a federal republic

• In 2008 the monarchy was abolished by the newly elected constituent assembly; the major parties agreed to write a constitution within two years.
• Having helped mainstream the Maoists, India was panicked by their electoral success in 2008 and by their attempts to dominate the state, pitted itself against them, and lost most of the goodwill earned. Discord derailed constitution-making and the First Constituent Assembly was dissolved without a constitution.
• S.D. Muni — breakdowns in India’s policy and diplomacy adversely affected its immediate and short-term interests; more than six decades of such breakdowns have eroded those interests and crippled India’s capacity to pursue them. The 1950 Treaty remains intact but its substance has been mutilated in many significant respects, and even the promising trade agreement of 2011 on promoting investment became controversial in Nepal’s domestic politics.

Relations under the present government — HIT to ‘Super HIT’

• Addressing Nepal’s Constituent Assembly in 2014, the Prime Minister gave the HIT formula — Highways, Information highways and Transways, that is transmission lines — as the three pillars of the relationship. In 2023 he expressed the wish that the relationship become ‘Super HIT’ and be taken to Himalayan heights.
• The Constituent Assembly missed its deadline repeatedly; the constitution was finally promulgated in 2015.
• Who are the Madhesis? An ethnic group in Nepal with extensive cross-border ethnic and linguistic links with India. India’s involvement in Nepali politics and the upsurge in Madhesi protests both have deep historical roots.
• Unhappy that the demands of the Terai people were not accommodated, India resorted to muscular diplomacy and an undeclared blockade in 2015. The relationship touched its lowest ebb and Nepal courted China. Nepal’s communist parties are generally pro-China; the Nepali Congress under Sher Bahadur Deuba is pro-India.
• After the 2015 earthquake India extended all needed help through Operation Maitri and USD 1 billion for recovery.
• Tensions rose again in 2020 over the north-western boundary, with Nepal claiming the Limpiyadhura–Lipulekh tri-junction. COVID-19 hardened relations further, the open border staying closed for over a year and a half from March 2020.

Areas of cooperation — the working relationship

Territorial disputes — Kalapani, Lipulekh, Susta

• Rajiv Sikri sets the frame: ‘Indians have taken Nepal too much for granted. India’s approach towards Nepal has been dismissive and neglectful. The Indian government and public have never shown adequate sensitivity to Nepali pride and uniqueness.’ David M. Malone adds that Nepal has several concerns beyond worries over excessive Indian interference; Nepalese hold that treaties and agreements are ‘unequal’, which prevents the two from tapping the full potential of cooperation.
• After the reorganisation of Jammu and Kashmir, India published a new map in November 2019 showing Kalapani as Indian territory. Nepal objected and in 2020 laid claim to the Limpiyadhura–Lipulekh tri-junction.
• The Kali river delineates the border through the Kalapani region; the dispute covers about 35 sq km where the border is marked by the Mahakali. The Gandak forms the international boundary elsewhere. The Treaty of Sugauli (1816) is the basis of demarcation, with a Supplementary Boundary Treaty concluded the same year.
• Susta — about 140 sq km in Uttar Pradesh at the Terai border, under Indian control and claimed by Nepal; the change of course of the Gandak is the main cause. The 1981 Boundary Committee delineated 98% of the border but not Susta.
• India termed the claim a ‘unilateral act’ not based on historical facts and evidence. Nepal’s new political map came in retaliation for the Indian road from Dharchula to Lipulekh.

Kalapani — one river, two readings

• Nepal’s reading — Limpiyadhura is the source of the Kali — higher than the rest of the river’s flow — which places Limpiyadhura, Lipulekh and Kalapani east of the Kali. Evidence cited: Sugauli 1816 · the 2020 political map · about 35 sq km at stake
• India’s reading — The border begins at Kalapani, where the river originates in springs below the Lipulekh pass; the ground north of these streams is not clearly delineated by Sugauli. Evidence cited: nineteenth-century historical, administrative and revenue records · continuous administration since the 1950s · infrastructure development · a 2015 Chinese statement on expanding trade through the Lipulekh pass

Sugauli leaves the ground north of the streams undelineated — that silence is the dispute

The 1950 Treaty — the revision demand

• Concluded when Nepal feared a Chinese threat after the occupation of Tibet, the Treaty specifically mentions cooperation against threats from third countries and reciprocally grants residents the right to reside, work and acquire property — in effect extending ‘national treatment’.
• Treaty issues — the obligation to seek consent while importing arms from third countries is resented as an attack on sovereignty; Nepal wants India to revisit the Treaty to reflect contemporary realities. India’s tepid response has intensified strain.
• S.D. Muni — India incorporated a provision to keep foreign influences at bay and to secure preference over all foreign assistance for the ‘development of natural resources’ and ‘industrial projects’ in Nepal.
• Nepal’s political elite calls the Treaty unequal; though it can be abrogated on one year’s notice, no Nepali government has exercised that sovereign right.
• The Nepali side has wished to retain what is advantageous while dispensing with reciprocal obligation. India has not received the ‘national treatment’ it is due, while Nepali citizens continue to enjoy privileges almost equivalent to those of Indian citizens; Indians in Nepal need residence and work permits and cannot buy property.
• India has acceded to Nepal’s request for review, but only one round has been held at foreign secretary level.

Chinese inroads — and the trilateral question

• Smaller and weaker neighbours play the China card to bargain with India. Prashant Jha notes China was not much interested in Nepal initially, but its investments in economic and developmental activity have grown, along with engagement with political parties, high-level visits, and increasingly public statements on Nepal’s domestic situation. Failures and delays in Indian projects gave China ample room.
• Kings Mahendra, Birendra and Gyanendra all strengthened ties with China or used the China card. Cooperation has moved from trade and development into strategic areas — PLA–Nepal Army joint exercises in 2017 and 2018, and regular PLA financial assistance to the Nepali Army since 2019.
• Nepal’s assent to the One Belt One Road initiative is viewed with suspicion; Nepal has slowly fallen prey to chequebook diplomacy and debt trap policy.
• Relations were elevated from a “Comprehensive Partnership of Cooperation Featuring Ever-lasting Friendship” to a “Strategic Partnership of Cooperation Featuring Ever-lasting Friendship and Prosperity”. The Himalayan Quadrilateral meeting between China, Pakistan, Afghanistan and Nepal is an attempt by China to contain India in South Asia.
• Trade rules have made it easier for small and medium Nepali businesses to trade with China; despite open borders, complex documentation and difficulty in cash movement complicate India–Nepal trade. Ideological similarity between the communist parties helps China.
• India is Nepal’s largest trading partner at 65% of its total trade — and also the source of its largest trade deficit. Geographical constraint has left Nepal heavily reliant without acquiring comparative advantage in exports; local enterprises cannot compete against cost-efficient Indian products, and non-tariff barriers and poor infrastructure add to discontent.
• Current dimensions — Chinese FDI now surpasses India’s commitments; trade and transit agreements have improved connectivity; infrastructure such as dams and Pokhara Airport; Chinese universities attracting Nepali students; BRI participation signalling geopolitical realignment.

“The tendency in India is to regard Nepal’s dependence on India for transit as leverage against it.”

Shyam Saran

• Shyam Saran — every ruling dispensation in Kathmandu uses two cards to compel Indian acquiescence: the China card and the Hindu card. If India does not support the incumbent government it will court China; and since Nepal is the only other Hindu-majority country, India must not weaken the religious affinities that bind them. India must never fall into this trap.
• S.D. Muni — India’s approach during the 2015 constitutional crisis damaged relations seriously: intrusive, muscular and economically coercive. Nepal reacted under Oli’s leadership by whipping up anti-Indian nationalism and an aggressive display of the China card. Both sides now seem to realise they went overboard. Denial of transit is a powerful negative instrument but breeds hostile sentiment that Nepali politicians then exploit.
• Ranjit Rae (Kathmandu Dilemma: Resetting India-Nepal Ties) — the Nepali media accuses India of trying to make Nepal a Hindu Rashtra although the Government of India has made clear it has no views and the matter is for Nepal’s people; Oli’s anti-India agenda included the Kalapani encroachment charge, disrespect to the Indian emblem and distorted facts on the birthplace of Lord Rama. Against this, he finds less substance and more hype in projections of Nepal–China bonhomie: India–Nepal trade is booming and Indian assistance, mostly on a grant basis, is increasing, compared with Chinese soft loans. The trade deficit and falling Indian FDI can be minimised if Nepal fully uses its hydropower potential and resolves political sensitivities on Indian investment.
• Deb Mukherji and Baral (Politics of Geo-politics: Continuity and Change in India-Nepal Relations) — they stress overall continuity and recognition of India’s national security interests; the need for autonomy is among the foremost concerns in the Nepalese mindset. The 1950 Treaty provided the base for stronger relations, yet India is accused of “micro-managing” Nepal’s domestic affairs. Since the late 1950s Nepal has engaged China, Pakistan and others, making clear that India is a ‘special’ friend but not the ‘only’ friend, while not being particular about India’s security concerns. Deep-rooted civilisational ties and strategic location impose an obligation on both: they can neither alienate nor be free of each other. The triangular dynamic — Sinophiles standing for the friendly stability China provides, Indophobes treating India as an interventionist power — is a critical reason for the shrinking of Nepal’s autonomy, its foreign policy narrowed to India and China rather than integrated with the world.

Rivers, defence and security

River water sharing

• India’s first hydropower projects were on the Kosi (1954) and Gandak (1959); the Nepalese perceived them as tilted heavily in India’s favour [Gyawali; Shrestha]. To accommodate these concerns the agreements were revised in 1964 (Gandak) and 1966 (Kosi).
• Akhilesh Upadhyay notes a general impression in Nepal that it did not get a fair deal on the Kosi and Gandak. S.D. Muni — a deep cleavage of distrust followed, and no major project could be undertaken until the Mahakali Treaty of 1998.
• Implementation of the Mahakali Treaty has barely moved. Out of commercially viable potential of 45,000 MW, Nepal has developed hardly 600 MW — not enough even for its basic requirements — so it buys power from India rather than selling.
• Both sides have agreed to assemble a team of experts to resolve differences and finalise the detailed project report for the 6,480 MW Pancheshwar Multipurpose bi-national plant on the Mahakali.

Defence and security

• S.D. Muni — Nepali territory has been used, given the open border, by cross-border terrorists from Pakistan, criminal gangs, smugglers of both countries, and for the flow of fake Indian currency.
• The hijacking of IC 814 from Kathmandu in December 1999 made prevention of such incidents a major Indian concern.
• India stresses strengthening the legal framework against common cross-border challenges and has provided liberal assistance for infrastructure, capacity building, equipment and training.

Nepal after 2024 — the Gen Z uprising and the 2026 verdict

• BRI financing settled on paper — Nepal and China signed the Framework for Belt and Road Cooperation in December 2024, settling a long grants-versus-loans dispute on “aid assistance financing”. The drawn-out fight over that wording shows Nepal’s own wariness of Chinese debt.
• Lipulekh raised with Beijing — K.P. Sharma Oli took the dispute to Xi Jinping in August 2025, carrying a bilateral boundary question into a third capital.
• The uprising — Gen Z protests in September 2025 forced Oli to resign; Sushila Karki led an interim government and parliament was dissolved. Mass jailbreaks and looted weapons alarmed New Delhi, which alerted the Sashastra Seema Bal.
• Both powers wanted the same thing — India and China each backed timely polls and offered help, India providing over 600 vehicles.
• The verdict — on 5 March 2026 the Rastriya Swatantra Party won 182 of 275 seats, overturning expectations of a hung house. Balen Shah beat Oli in Jhapa-5 and became prime minister on 27 March 2026.
• A more transactional phase — from 19 April 2026 Nepal enforced stricter tariffs on Indian goods. Shah is a Nepali-nationalist figure; the tariffs and the earlier Lipulekh friction point to a more contested relationship.

Nihar R. Nayak — two powers, two definitions of stability

• Nihar R. Nayak, writing for the Stimson Center’s South Asian Voices, shows that India and China each pursue stability in Nepal through different frames: India links it to border security and democracy, China to the ‘One China Principle’ and Tibet.
• In MP-IDSA Monograph No. 72 Nayak applies buffer-state theory and neorealism to Nepal, drawing on M.G. Partem and John Chay and Thomas Ross on buffer states, on M.F. Elman for the neorealist claim, and on S.D. Muni’s account of Nepal’s three-level foreign policy.

“Nepal occupies a unique position in South Asia. It is a small and landlocked semi-buffer state, located between two Asian powers that have fought a war with each other… Its tactics have been mostly hedging in the post-Cold War period.” — **Nihar R. Nayak, Political Changes in Nepal and Bhutan, MP-IDSA Monograph No. 72, 2021, pp. 22, 17**

Nepal — theory, scholars, policy

Lenses: Functionalism · Sociological Liberalism · Realism · Balance of influence

Views of scholars

• S.D. Muni — several reasons lie behind India’s policy breakdowns. A congenital flaw in a policy driven by inherent insecurity bordering on paranoia; micro-management of Nepali affairs and a casual approach to Nepal’s sensitivities produced anti-India feeling. India’s policy played a decisive role in resolving Nepal’s transformational conflicts but lacked a clear and categorical stance to sustain that transformation, reflecting gross neglect of India’s own stated political principles and institutional preferences. A further problem is a marked preference for weak and pliable individuals over leaders with grassroots support — India preferred M.P. Koirala over the more charismatic B.P. Koirala, and such preferences are common knowledge in Nepal and work against Indian interests. Policy may articulate a long-term perspective but ends up taking a short-term view, and the information and critical assessment feeding it are poor.
• Shyam Saran — Nepal balances India’s overwhelming presence by courting China, which India resents and which heightens security concerns. The root of Nepal’s poverty and underdevelopment lies in the mindset of political elites who prefer to see India as a threat rather than an opportunity; any joint project is examined for what it brings to the Indian plate rather than for what it fetches Nepal. He also affirms that “Nepal is not just a neighbour but a natural ally.”
• C. Raja Mohan — mutual respect is the key; Delhi must resist the temptation to meddle in Nepal’s political processes, and instead of demanding an “India first policy” should affirm strong support for a “Nepal first policy”. India must act with empathy, not just power, in its periphery.
• David M. Malone — India needs a positive agenda in Nepal and could be more proactive in supporting economic renewal, democracy and civil society; its approach appears reactive to events on the ground, suggesting an absence of actual strategy.
• Aditya Adhikari, offering the Nepali perspective — India’s economic growth arouses respect and envy; apprehensions about the Maoists have somewhat mitigated disapproval in Kathmandu, but criticism persists about perceived or actual Indian involvement in domestic politics. The ‘China card’ can be played only when politics is stable and the centre cohesive, and even then nobody expects China’s influence to rival India’s.
• Brahma Chellaney — Nepal will always need India, simply because of geography; China can replace India as Nepal’s main provider of essential supplies only by moving the Himalayas southward.
• Kanak Mani Dixit — India must move beyond being a “big brother” and be big and a brother. M.K. Narayanan — India’s soft power in Nepal must be reinvigorated, acknowledging Nepal’s sovereignty while recognising strategic interdependence.
• Harsh V. Pant and Abhijnan Rej: “New Delhi has found itself utterly unprepared to deal with an assertive Chinese foreign policy under Xi Jinping.”
• Anil Sigdel — as long as non-interference and peaceful co-existence are respected and high-level political engagement is pursued, cooperation will follow; the present government appears to have moved from muscular diplomacy towards cooperative diplomacy. Arun Kumar Sahu — the Chinese are practitioners of realpolitik with national security high on the agenda; a relationship built on similarities of history, culture and social ethos may prove more durable, and a democratic, progressive and economically stronger India may overshadow the China factor.

Policy suggestions for India

• India has not used its soft power well; poor use of economic support for strategic objectives is a serious flaw. Since the 1960s India has struggled to initiate significant infrastructure projects, the East–West Highway being a notable exception. Unless this changes, Chinese inroads will not stop.
• Restart the water dialogue and frame policies safeguarding those affected on both sides of the border; resolve Kalapani, Lipulekh and Susta at the earliest, with India showing generosity.
• Introduce new economic, developmental and infrastructure initiatives that bring tangible benefits to Nepali citizens and address vulnerabilities emerging as Nepal engages China.
• Recognise that a strongly sovereign Nepal is beneficial, not detrimental, to India’s security; emphasise Nepal’s sovereign status and independent policy choices, and help Nepal exercise them.
• Manage Nepal’s challenges realistically — remittances make up about 30% of its GDP, mostly from the Gulf, and there is an increasingly strong Nepali diaspora worldwide.

Bhutan — the buffer that never played the card

• Satish Kumar — Bhutan, the Druk Yul (‘land of thunder dragons’), located between the Tibetan plateau and the Assam-Bengal plains, is geopolitically vital. It has a border of 605 km with India and 470 km with China; the two countries ‘collide’ in and over Bhutan, making it a buffer state of the first importance in the eastern Himalayas in the military sense.
• India and Bhutan share an open border of 700 km, a visa-free regime and duty-free trade.
• Tuhina Sarkar — the relationship is unique in being relatively trouble-free compared with other bilateral relations in South Asia; ties are deep-rooted, traditional, amicable and warm. Formal diplomatic relations began in 1968 with a resident representative in Thimphu; before that, engagement was handled by the Political Officer in Sikkim.
• The former King described India and Bhutan as “milk and water” which cannot be separated. S.D. Muni describes a partnership in which Bhutan retains its independence while cooperating closely with India on key issues.

“No two countries in the world understand each other so well or share so much as India and Bhutan.”

PM Modi

Indian interests in Bhutan

• Arvind Gupta — Bhutan’s geo-strategic location between India and China is critical for India’s security.
• The Chumbi Valley, at the trijunction of Bhutan, India and China, lies about 500 km from the “Chicken’s Neck” corridor in North Bengal connecting the Northeast to the rest of the country. The western Bhutan border guards possible Chinese ingress routes.
• Containing insurgency in Northeast India — militants have found haven in Bhutan in the past; Bhutan collaborated with India in flushing out the NDFB and ULFA.
• China lacks a diplomatic presence in Thimphu and has expressed interest in establishing relations; reports suggest Beijing is pressing Bhutan for trade and diplomatic ties as part of a reciprocal arrangement for a border resolution.
• Security buffer — prevents hostile access to sensitive areas, particularly the Siliguri Corridor. Regional influence — Bhutan’s support amplifies India’s voice in SAARC and BIMSTEC and strengthens India’s position in Himalayan geopolitics. Environmental diplomacy — Bhutan’s status as carbon-negative offers a distinctive avenue of cooperation aligned with India’s sustainability goals.

Chronology — 1949 to the present

From Sinchula to 2007 — the treaty architecture

• Bhutanese practise Buddhism, which came to Bhutan from Tibet and was born in India.
• Reetika Sharma, Ramvir Goria and Vivek Mishra — the British wanted control of Bhutan without assimilating it, preferring a buffer from Tibet. The Treaty of Sinchula (1864) deprived Bhutan of rights in the Duars in return for an annual subsidy, and Bhutan came to be guided by Britain in foreign relations — the origin of the guidance clause in the 1949 Treaty.
• Bhutan pursued a policy of isolation to preserve its environment and tradition. Change began when Jigme Dorji Wangchuck became king in 1952; in 1953 he instituted the National Assembly and systematised national laws. His son Jigme Singye Wangchuck continued reform, bringing modernisation without harming tradition, and saw hydropower as a source of development, collaborating with India.
• Satish Kumar — Nehru was the first foreign dignitary ever to visit Bhutan; the visit was a landmark and a step in the gradual opening of Bhutan for India. It brought assurances in the Indian Parliament that any Chinese aggression against Bhutan and Sikkim would be treated as aggression against India. In 1961 a contingent of Indian military officers visited to establish arrangements for Bhutan’s defence.
• Bhutan was a protectorate of India from 1949 to 1974, when it became a member of the UN; India looked after its defence and foreign policy and was responsible for decisions on these matters.

The treaty revised — what 2007 changed

• 1949 · Perpetual Peace and Friendship — Peace and non-interference; free trade and commerce; equal justice to each other’s citizens. Article 2 — Bhutan to be guided by India’s advice in external relations. Article 10 — amendment only by mutual consent. Behind it: Sinchula 1864, and the guidance clause it bequeathed; protectorate status, 1949–1974
• → 2007 · India–Bhutan Friendship Treaty — Clauses II, III and IV of 1949 removed; the offensive clauses eliminated and security and political cooperation given new foundations. Both to “cooperate closely with each other on issues relating to their national interests”. Behind it: democratisation and decentralisation; scope broadened to cultural, economic and development dimensions; the legal basis India invoked at Doklam

Medha Bisht — provisions dating back over fifty years were out of date and did not reflect contemporary bilateral ties

Areas of cooperation

• Bhutan has never tried to take advantage of India–China disputes by playing one against the other; it has instead cooperated with India for its development.
• India helped and backed Bhutan’s entry into the Colombo Plan (1961), the Universal Postal Union (1969), the United Nations (1971), the Non-Aligned Movement (1973) and SAARC (1985).

Bhutan’s own three priorities: Peace, security, prosperity · Gross National Happiness · A vibrant democracy

The Chinese angle and Doklam, 2017

• Satish Kumar — China has always claimed rights in Nepal, Bhutan, Sikkim and Arunachal Pradesh, on grounds of traditional, ethnic, cultural and religious affinity between Tibetans and the populations of the claimed territories. The primary objective of China’s manoeuvres appears to be separating these territories from India and integrating them into the Chinese sphere of influence by methods short of outright warfare.
• In July 1958 China published a map indicating the Sino-Indian border by a thick brown line, taking in a large chunk of Indian territory and a considerable area of eastern and northeastern Bhutan. China occupied eight villages on the Bhutan–Tibet border in 1959.
• Under Article 2 of the 1949 Treaty, India took up the border question with China on Bhutan’s behalf; China under Zhou Enlai refused Nehru’s contention that any ‘special relation’ existed between Bhutan and Sikkim and India.
• The 1998 Agreement on Peace and Tranquility committed both sides to maintain peace and to uphold the status quo of the boundary prior to March 1959; Chinese road-building close to Bhutan’s border marked a diversion from it and led to protests in Bhutan.
• The land swap offer — China proposed giving 495 sq km near central Bhutan in return for 269 sq km in the west where the Chumbi Valley lies. The deal would have brought China closer to the Chicken’s Neck and been disastrous for India’s security; Bhutan declined.
• Harsh V. Pant and Aditya G. Shivamurthy: “Starting in 1984, Bhutan and China started bilateral negotiations on their territorial disputes.” There have been 24 rounds and 11 Expert Group Meetings. Negotiations reached a stalemate in 1998, prompting Bhutan to propose an expert technical group to delineate boundaries through study of maps. By 2015 technical field survey reports in the Central and Western sectors were complete. Chinese intrusions nonetheless continued, with citizens encouraged to settle in disputed areas and roads, infrastructure and permanent settlements built within Bhutanese territory.
• Chinese forces dismantled several unmanned posts in Bhutan, disturbing the sanctity of the Sino-Bhutan border close to Sikkim, and are now within a few hundred kilometres of the Siliguri Corridor. India undertook responsibility for Bhutan’s defence because of China’s actions in Tibet and its assertive stance along contested borders.

Doklam — where exactly is the trijunction?

• India and Bhutan — The trijunction lies at Batang La. Root of it: rival readings of the 1890 Calcutta Convention between Britain and China
• China — The trijunction lies about 6.5 km south, at Gymochen. Rule in force: under the 2012 India-China agreement, both must hold the status quo until competing claims are resolved in consultation with the third party, Bhutan

June 2017 · Operation Juniper — India confronts road-building towards the plateau and aligns with Bhutan’s position

• Lacking any treaty describing the boundary, Bhutan and China continue to negotiate an alignment; the most contentious discrepancies lie in Bhutan’s west along the Chumbi Valley. India accused China of building a road towards the Doklam plateau, a concern also raised by the Royal Bhutanese Army.
• China’s expansionary attitude can be explained through its “Middle Kingdom complex” — the Chinese treat their country as the centre of the world and their culture and civilisation as the greatest, and hold that a ‘subdued neighbourhood’ is necessary for stability. The actions at Doklam align with a strategy of intimidating smaller neighbours. China did not appear to anticipate India’s intervention; the Communist leadership is angered by India’s refusal to join its signature projects and displeased with New Delhi’s closeness to Washington and Tokyo.

Challenges — hydropower, debt, generational change

• Chinese engagement — boundary negotiations and infrastructure near sensitive trijunction areas create strategic uncertainty. Samaranayake (2019) warns that any shift in Bhutan’s alignment could expose India to vulnerability.
• Hydropower dependency — concern about over-dependence on the Indian market, delays in projects, and tariff disagreements. Economic diversification — Bhutan wishes to reduce dependence on India for trade and to diversify partnerships, including with Bangladesh, as part of building a more resilient economy.
• Debt and perception — loans, grants, lines of credit and hydropower projects have made Bhutan more dependent rather than promoting a self-sustaining economy. India’s use of Indian labour, capital, technology and goods rather than local resources has drawn criticism, as have imports of hydropower electricity at below market prices. Delay has increased Bhutan’s costs and debt: 94% of Bhutan’s current debts relate to hydropower projects alone, on top of a continuing trade deficit with India. The result is a perception that India is taking back whatever it invests.
• Cost overruns — the three major ongoing projects, Mangdechhu, Punatsangchhu-I and Punatsangchhu-II, cost approximately ₹12,300 crore, accounting for 77% of the contribution. The 720 MW Mangdechhu project nearly doubled in cost over two years of construction; Punatsangchhu-I and II, each 1,200 MW, tripled in cost and were delayed by more than five years. Interest accrues on projects funded as 30% grant and 70% loan at 10% annual interest.
• Tariff dispute — Indian negotiators propose rates up to ₹3.90 per unit while Bhutan seeks closer to ₹4.40, in line with the cost-plus model used for the 1020 MW Tala project.
• Generational change — while the older generation stayed loyal to India, the young are eager to see Bhutan play a global role; their sense of identity and ideology is still forming, which makes them open to different views of foreign policy. Chinese applications have become popular despite security loopholes, exposing young people further to anti-Indian sentiment. Some sections perceive India as a hurdle in border negotiations with China, citing Bhutan’s refusal of the ‘package deal’ and alleged Indian involvement in the 2013 elections. During Doklam, some Bhutanese criticised both India and China on social media and called out their own government for overreliance on India; there are those who find India’s economic embrace “suffocating”.
• People-to-people frictions — tensions over issues such as demonetisation or cross-border trade regulation, generally resolved diplomatically.

“… there are high chances of being accused of the same sort of ‘debt trapping’ that China is accused of today.”

Suhasini Haidar

Bhutan — theory, scholars, policy

Lenses: Realism · Sociological Liberalism · Functionalism

Views of scholars

• C. Raja Mohan — despite diversifying bilateral ties, Bhutan will politically continue to consider India its only major strategic ally; New Delhi should recognise Thimphu’s concerns and not take it for granted. The cornerstone lies in hydropower, but both must strengthen science and technology education, healthcare and other domains. New Delhi should be vigilant about strategic powers engaging Bhutan, as indicated by high-level visits from China and the United States. In a world of expanding choices, prioritising each other’s concerns remains in the best interests of both.
• Harsh V. Pant and Aditya G. Shivamurthy — Prime Minister Lotay Tshering in 2023 denied Chinese intrusions and installations within Bhutanese territory and said China is as much a stakeholder as India and Bhutan in the Doklam issue. India-China competition and China’s assertive stance have influenced shifts in Bhutan’s foreign policy, though recent developments show a strong element of continuity. After nearly forty years there is some optimism within Bhutan for demarcating its borders with China, barring the Doklam trijunction, and the denial of intrusions suggests Bhutan may be contemplating ceding certain territories in the Northern and Western disputed sectors for a broader settlement. There are reports that India urged Bhutan to resolve its dispute so that a tripartite engagement in the trijunction region could become possible. They warn that Beijing will keep using intimidation to set the regional agenda, and that with trust in China at a historic low and Doklam unresolved, the India-Bhutan-China triangle faces another stress test. In their assessment, India-China competition is increasingly going to be the primary determinant of the foreign policy of South Asian countries.
• Phunchok Stobdan — New Delhi’s coercive business diplomacy pushes Bhutan towards China; yet these economic ties are vital for Bhutan’s growth and integral to India’s energy needs.
• Kanak Mani Dixit — India and Bhutan share a relationship based on mutual respect, not dominance, resting on sovereignty and fair trade. K.P.S. Nair — India has played a key role in Bhutan’s security and economic development, demonstrating soft power in the region.

Policy suggestions for India

• Reetika Sharma, Ramvir Goria and Vivek Mishra — Bhutan’s trade beyond South Asia is just 10% and must increase; exports must be diversified, and medicinal plants may hold the key for research in medical technology. Economic growth with electoral democracy holds a bright future, and engagement with different nations including India is a must for raising Gross National Happiness. To ensure durability, India must pursue a flexible approach, as it did in renewing the clauses of the Friendship Treaty.
• India must meet deadlines, keep project costs within affordable limits, and renegotiate electricity tariffs.
• Respect Bhutan’s sovereignty and autonomy. Resentment among younger Bhutanese about the 1949 Treaty led to its revision in 2007; the 2007 security arrangement was the basis on which Indian forces stood against China in Bhutanese territory at Doklam. Strategic experts note Bhutan’s misgivings about becoming another Sikkim or meeting the fate of Tibet. Just as India pursues strategic autonomy, Bhutan wants the same from India.
• Follow a developmental stance and use a functionalist approach to explore cooperation beyond government initiatives by giving more space to the private sector. Strategic dialogue — consider trilateral dialogue with Bhutan and China to ease border tensions. Economic diversification — encourage Bhutan to move beyond hydropower into fintech, space and pharmaceuticals.
• Suhasini Haidar urges an equal and sensitive approach addressing Bhutan’s aspirations for sovereignty and modernisation while protecting India’s security interests. Cultural engagement — Buddhist diplomacy, education exchanges and tourism, with figures such as Guru Rinpoche revered in both countries. Responsiveness — remain responsive to Bhutan’s developmental priorities and align with the Gross National Happiness philosophy; the recent financial support of ₹10,000 crore is a step in this direction.
• Ashok Sajjanhar — invite a larger number of Bhutanese youth to study in India at all levels, from high school to professional and technical courses, since China and Western countries are stealing a march. Media is a powerful instrument to reach Bhutanese decision-makers and ordinary people with the assurance that India will stand by them according to their own wishes and aspirations. Bhutanese are proud of never having been colonised or subjugated, and India should not behave like a big brother.
• India must cement ties so that China cannot drive a wedge; the Doklam impasse produced a more confident and resolute relationship, and most analysts believe India conducted its diplomacy well. Jawaharlal Nehru declared in Parliament that aggression against Bhutan would be seen as aggression against India, and that security guarantee has been reaffirmed since. New trade routes should be opened, such as the June 2020 route between Jaigaon in India and Pasakha in Bhutan.

Sri Lanka — the love-hate relationship

• Per the Ministry of External Affairs, the relationship is more than 2,500 years old, built on a legacy of intellectual, cultural, religious and linguistic interaction. Tamils and Buddhism both reached the island from India, and demography, religion, language and culture bear the imprint of Indian influence.
• K.M. Panikkar emphasised the strategic unity of India and Sri Lanka and argued for closer union. Shivshankar Menon (Choices) refers to Sri Lanka as an “aircraft carrier” in the Indian Ocean.
• Eswaran Sridharan — the determinants of the relationship are geography, the legacy of British colonial rule, the inherited relationship, geopolitical alignments, economic relations, and personal relationships between leaders.
• Shashi Tharoor — relations remain complicated by the history of India’s prior involvement (support for the Tamil militancy, then a disastrous military intervention ending in ignominious withdrawal) and by India’s legitimate desire, made urgent by domestic political imperatives, to see Tamil political aspirations accommodated. India’s prioritisation of the United States and China, and its disproportionate neighbourhood focus on Pakistan, has come at the cost of attention to other neighbours.
• V. Suryanarayan terms it a love-hate relationship, driven above all by India’s powerful position. India’s commanding position at the heart of South Asia is both enviable and much-resented; a huge neighbour is loved by no one — neither do Mexicans love the United States, nor Ukrainians Russia. Historical, cultural and geographical affinity should make the two natural partners, yet the asymmetry made Sinhalese leaders apprehensive of India’s intentions and capabilities, and Sri Lankan leaders sought external aid against perceived Indian threats rather than close collaboration.

“Every other nation is a friend to Sri Lanka, but India is a relative.”

Mahinda Rajapaksa

Why Sri Lanka matters

• The Indian Ocean handles around 30% of global trade; Sri Lanka sits between West Asia and Southeast Asia with abundant natural resources, and can contribute to marine space surveillance and maritime security.
• Increasing Chinese footprint — Sri Lanka is part of the BRI and the Maritime Silk Road, checking India’s rise as a ‘net security provider’ and ‘regional hegemon’. Harsh V. Pant — China sees India’s engagement in Sri Lankan affairs as a way to “manage” the country and gain “regional hegemony” in South Asia, and also to “eradicate the influence of other countries”.
• Ethnic and familial ties — unlike China, India cannot act on purely commercial motives.
• Outside powers — the Indian Ocean, once regarded as a Zone of Peace, has become a Zone of Conflict; strategic compulsion now pushes India to collaborate with the United States, France, Britain, Japan and Australia, of which QUAD is one outcome.
• External balancing by Sri Lanka — wary of Indian pre-eminence, Colombo used the United States earlier and uses the China card now, both to balance India and to raise its bargaining power.
• S. Jaishankar describes the relationship as a “fraternal friendship”.

Chronology — 1948 to the present

Sridharan’s four phases — and the current one

• Eswaran Sridharan (Indo-Sri Lanka Relations, in Engaging the World) holds that of the three levels of analysis — systemic, domestic and personal — the domestic level has been most significant in shaping Indian policy.

The arc of the relationship, phase by phase. I · 1948–1982 (Normal but not cordial — statelessness, Katchatheevu, security perceptions) → II · from 1983 (Deterioration — ethnic violence, civil war, Colombo’s tilt to the West) → III · since 1991 (Restoring friendship — LTTE banned, liberalisation, ISFTA) → IV · 2009–2015 (After the LTTE — China and Pakistan enter; the 13th Amendment stalls) → Current (SAGAR and Neighbourhood First — crisis assistance, the five-pillar vision)

Phase I (1948–1982) — three issues dominated

• Statelessness of Indian Tamils — those who went to the island during colonial rule to work on plantations faced a citizenship crisis in 1948 as the Sinhalese elite whittled down their political rights. The Citizenship Acts of 1948 and 1949 were rigid and restrictive, denying citizenship to all not indisputably indigenous; Tamil speakers were gradually marginalised in public employment and, from the early 1970s, in university admissions through the ‘standardisation policy’. Ceylon sought repatriation to India; Jawaharlal Nehru resisted, unwilling to set a precedent for other overseas Indian populations. The 1964 and 1974 accords fixed numbers for repatriation, the rest being granted citizenship. Eswaran Sridharan — these agreements aligned with the Nehruvian approach to overseas Indians: promote them as responsible citizens of host countries and encourage host nations to grant full citizenship, avoiding friction with states India sought relations with.
• The Katchatheevu dispute — a tiny barren island in the Palk Strait. Every piece of historical evidence indicates it was under the Zamindari of the Raja of Ramnad in Tamil Nadu; Sri Lanka claimed that British Indian authorities had tacitly accepted its ownership. Successive Indian leaders showed a lack of active concern; Nehru and his successors minimised the disagreement in the interest of good relations. In the 1974 Agreement India recognised Sri Lankan sovereignty, against objections by the DMK government in Tamil Nadu; the 1976 Maritime Agreement barred fishing vessels of either country in the other’s waters, introducing a new irritant. Eswaran Sridharan — both settlements owed much to the personal relationship between Indira Gandhi and Sirimavo Bandaranaike, but lacked foresight: they missed that relations could still deteriorate because of Sri Lanka’s discriminatory domestic policies and their repercussions in India, and that depletion of fish stocks would later cause trans-maritime poaching and tension.
• Security perceptions — Sri Lankan leaders perceived India as a potential threat and justified the 1947 Sri Lanka–UK defence agreement on that ground; Nehru tried to allay these fears with assurances of goodwill. Colombo’s persistence showed extra-strategic considerations in the defence policy that D.S. Senanayake and John Kotelawala preferred — counterpoising India’s pre-eminence through military cooperation using the island’s locational advantage. The Indira doctrine of the 1970s made clear that India aimed at pre-eminence in the region, and Indian geostrategic thinking sought to push Cold War meddling by the United States a safe distance from India’s borders.

Phase II — deterioration from the early 1980s

• The July 1983 ethnic violence and the ensuing civil war between the Sri Lankan army and the LTTE decisively affected bilateral relations. India’s concern over civilian deaths and its desire to protect Sri Lankan Tamils created fear in Colombo, which went in search of global security guarantees in 1983–84. India adopted a two-pronged strategy of persuasion and coercion towards both the Sri Lankan government and the Tamil groups, aiming at a negotiated political settlement.
• Strategic gestures to the West annoyed India further. Under J.R. Jayewardene (1978–89) and Ranasinghe Premadasa (1989–93), Sri Lanka allowed the United States to set up a Voice of America transmitting station, suspected of intelligence gathering and electronic surveillance of the Indian Ocean; extended refuelling and recreation facilities to visiting US naval ships; and granted a contract for leasing oil storage tanks at the strategic harbour of Trincomalee to a Singapore-based US company — scrapped under the 1987 Accord. Jayewardene even sought British involvement by reviving the 1947 defence agreement, which India’s firm stand against external involvement prevented.

Phase III — restoring friendship, since 1991

• Eswaran Sridharan dates this phase from the assassination of Rajiv Gandhi and the banning of the LTTE in India in 1992. From the election of the Narasimha Rao government in June 1991, India launched a long-term economic liberalisation programme.
• Departing from its traditional stand against external involvement in South Asia, India supported Norwegian facilitation of the peace process, alongside the United States, the European Union and Japan. With the LTTE, India wanted no relations.
• Pro-US shift — post-liberalisation growth needed Western capital and technology; strategically, the Soviet collapse removed the implicit guarantee against China embodied in the Indo-Soviet Friendship Treaty of 1971, while the Kashmir insurgency from December 1989 kept war a possibility.
• From the time of I.K. Gujral (1997–98) India followed a dual track — South Asian regional cooperation alongside improved bilateral ties, with economic growth and security both in focus. Sri Lankan policy shifted under Chandrika Kumaratunga from 1994; she proposed federal solutions in 1995, 1997 and 2000, the last an improvement on the Thirteenth Amendment.
• The Indo-Sri Lanka Free Trade Agreement of 1998, operational from 2000, was part of a wider shift in foreign economic policy running parallel to SAPTA and SAFTA. Relations grew rapidly during the boom years of 2003–08; by 2012 Sri Lanka was India’s biggest trading partner and the leading destination for Indian investment in South Asia.
• The NDA government broadly followed the Accord’s approach — a negotiated solution based on devolution, discouraging a military solution. The UPA minority government from 2004 followed a hands-off policy while promoting trade and investment. India’s stated position remains a political resolution within a unified Sri Lanka that addresses the wishes of all communities.

Phase IV — after the LTTE, 2009–2015

• Begins with the defeat of the LTTE and the destruction of its leadership in May 2009. China and, to a lesser extent, Pakistan established a diplomatic presence; Pakistan supplied pilots and arms during the final phase of the Eelam War (2006–09) and China supplied arms on a larger scale.
• India exercised restraint, given its earlier experience of fighting the LTTE, uncertainty about Colombo’s intentions towards the Tamils, and public sentiment in Tamil Nadu. Sri Lanka has since played the China card to ward off pressure for full implementation of the Thirteenth Amendment, involving devolution of land, police and fiscal powers.
• Economic integration proceeded quickly, with trade reaching $5 billion in 2011–12, and constrained political options.
• The Rajapaksa regime’s failure to implement the Thirteenth Amendment and more — that is, 13 plus — pushed India to vote against Sri Lanka at the UNHRC in March 2012 and March 2013. In mid-2013 Mahinda Rajapaksa considered doing away with the Amendment altogether or diluting it. India warned against dilution or cancellation of the first Northern Provincial Council elections due in September 2013, and threatened to boycott the CHOGM in Colombo in November 2013 and take stronger action at the UNHRC. Elections were held and the Tamil National Alliance won resoundingly; Prime Minister Manmohan Singh skipped CHOGM.
• The defeat of Rajapaksa and the election of Maithripala Sirisena in January 2015 improved relations, as he sought to loosen the embrace of China and reorient policy towards the West and India. The fishing rights issue and the ceding of Katchatheevu revived with frequent shooting and arrests of Indian fishermen by the Sri Lankan Navy, especially after the civil war.

Current phase

• SAGAR — Security and Growth for All in the Region — prioritises the Indian Ocean for India’s peace, stability and prosperity. Its goals: a climate of trust and openness; addressing regional concerns; increasing maritime cooperation; peaceful resolution of maritime issues; and adherence by all Indian Ocean states to international maritime rules and norms.
• In line with ‘Neighbourhood First’ and SAGAR, New Delhi attaches “a special priority” to Colombo. India’s outreach to the Rajapaksas began in 2018 when the SLPP swept the local elections.
• Ranil Wickremesinghe set himself a deadline of Independence Day, 4 February, to announce an ethnic package; no such package has been finalised. The ‘vision document’ adopted during his visit rests on five pillars: maritime connectivity; air connectivity; energy and power connectivity; trade, economic and financial connectivity; and people-to-people connectivity.
• The Tamil diaspora and refugees in Indian camps look for a comprehensive package: an international inquiry, a Peace and Reconciliation Commission on the South African model, demilitarisation, return of civilian land, and compensation for war victims.

The 1987 Accord and the Thirteenth Amendment

Provisions of the Accord

• Merger of the northern and eastern provinces, where Tamils were in a majority, into a single province.
• Substantial devolution of power to the Northern Province.
• Dissolution of the LTTE and surrender of arms within a very short time.
• The Indian army to aid the Sri Lankan government if requested.
• The Thirteenth Amendment to create provincial councils, and to make Sinhalese and Tamil national languages while retaining English as the link language.

What the Thirteenth Amendment is

A new constitutional arrangement for power sharing between the Sinhalese majority and the Tamil minority, and between centre and provinces — a Provincial Council system, a constitutional structure providing the substance of federalism.

Consequences

• The Indian Peace Keeping Force played a role in controlling the insurgency, but Operation Pawan turned into a thankless venture.
• Hated by Sri Lankan Tamils and Sinhalese alike, the IPKF was characterised as an army of occupation by the Premadasa regime. India protected Sri Lanka’s national interest at heavy cost without acknowledgement, and the Premadasa administration used unconventional methods to force the IPKF out.
• Despite the failure, the enactment of the Thirteenth Amendment was a significant step towards devolution across the island.

Areas of cooperation

Contestation — the fishermen and the ethnic question

Fishermen and Katchatheevu

• India recognised Sri Lankan sovereignty over Katchatheevu in 1974 without adequate safeguards for traditional fishing rights; Indian fishermen retained access for rest and drying of nets, not for fishing.
• Attacks on and arrests of Indian fishermen have increased, driven partly by depletion of marine resources on the Indian side; Sri Lanka protests the use of big trawlers and bottom trawling, which is illegal in its waters and damaging to marine ecosystems.
• The International Maritime Boundary Line is demarcated but fishermen on both sides cross it. Incidents have included the Sri Lankan navy firing on Indian fishermen, contrary to UNCLOS principles.
• Measures — a Joint Working Group on fisheries; a direct hotline between coast guards; release of detained fishermen and boats on humanitarian grounds; development of deep-sea fishing skills to reduce pressure on traditional grounds. The issue should be treated “as a purely humanitarian and livelihood concern”, with force never resorted to.
• A proposal for licensed fishing for southern Tamil Nadu fisherfolk in Sri Lankan waters met stiff resistance from Northern Province fishers, backed by MPs cutting across party lines. Possible approaches include a formal lease arrangement for the island or other cooperative resource management.

The ethnic question

• Jaffna Province has a large concentration of Tamils who began demanding a national homeland, a Republic of Eelam, over about 18,000 sq km.
• Two categories of Tamils — about a million Ceylon Tamils whose forefathers migrated in ancient times, and about a million who went during the nineteenth century, many without citizenship, whose status dominated early relations.
• The Sinhalese fear of Tamil domination is the principal reason behind the conflict; Tamil youth who lost faith in non-violence organised themselves into the Liberation Tigers, seeking a sovereign Eelam.
• The earliest attempt at settlement was the 1953 Nehru–Kotelawala agreement; Tamils alleged it was not implemented sincerely and many became ‘stateless persons’. The 1956 language disturbances aggravated tensions, and the 1983 violence was described as an ‘ethnic explosion‘.
• India continues to favour a peaceful solution within the framework of Sri Lanka’s sovereignty and territorial integrity, through negotiation and without outside interference, and welcomes devolution to areas largely inhabited by the Tamil minority.

The Chinese angle — why Beijing gained ground

• China follows a policy of non-interference, in contrast to Indian diplomacy dubbed arrogant and meddlesome. Indian assistance is viewed with scepticism, Chinese assistance as a positive balancer. China’s unconditional support at the UNHRC and its ability to shield Colombo from Western pressure on human rights, accountability and reconciliation work in its favour.

“China has managed to project itself as a disinterested neighbour and a remarkably attractive alternative to big brother India.”

Kanti Bajpai

• A former Foreign Minister of Sri Lanka has said that “China has never tried to dominate, undermine or destabilise Sri Lanka and has come to rescue with timely assistance on several occasions when Sri Lanka’s security and territorial integrity was threatened”.
• Reciprocity — Sri Lanka follows a one-China policy on Taiwan and Tibet and, despite being a Buddhist state, denied the Dalai Lama a visa. Mahinda Rajapaksa in May 2014: “I assure you that our policies towards China have never changed and won’t change.”
• India’s own record contributed — the IPKF and insistence on a political solution reinforced the ‘big brother’ image; India’s partnership with the United States is read as a device for continued dominance; India did not sell weapons during Eelam War IV and China filled the gap.
• Initially Sri Lanka offered Hambantota to India, and India’s response was lukewarm; the offer then went to China. Sri Lanka also offered Trincomalee and Batticaloa; bureaucratic apathy meant India could not develop them. India’s delivery deficit pushed Colombo towards Beijing.
• India makes investment conditional on policy reform, competitive bidding, transparency and human rights; China does not. Chinese bidders are mostly state-owned and backed by state financial institutions, prioritising strategic advantage, diplomatic mileage and goodwill over profit. Domestic compulsions constrain India — Tamil Nadu politics is always a factor.

Extent of the footprint

• Hambantota port is a pearl in the “string of pearls”, located at the southern extremity overlooking South Asia’s vital sea lanes. Colombo’s assurance that it will remain civilian and under Sri Lankan control finds no takers in New Delhi.
• China is building the Colombo international container terminal, a 17-km elevated highway in Colombo, and the Colombo Port City Project; a Chinese firm won a contract for energy projects on three islands off the northern Jaffna peninsula, close to Rameswaram. China has become the largest investor with funding and investment of nearly $15 billion; Sri Lanka endorsed the Belt and Road Initiative.
• Debt, investment and trade — China has been the second-largest foreign lender over the last decade and a half, financing the Colombo–Katunayake expressway, Hambantota port and Mattala Airport; the largest foreign investor during 2010–20; and now the top import partner, surpassing India. In 2020 Chinese imports fell 8% under Sri Lanka’s import restrictions while Indian imports fell about 19%.
• Comparison — India has never been a major lender and cannot lend on China’s scale; running a trade deficit above $100 billion, its support rests largely on export credits, and Indian FDI has been small. Trade is the strongest leg: only 10–20% of Indian exports are routed through the ISFTA, and China overtook India as the largest exporter without any FTA. Sri Lanka’s exports to China were 2.3% of its total in 2020 against 6.1% to India, so it relies more on India as an export market. In ships, boats and floating structures, China’s share of Sri Lankan imports rose from 1% in 2007 to 96% in 2017, against India’s under 1% — a clear sector for India to build capability.
• Sri Lanka states three pillars of its ‘non-alignment’ — strategic security priority to India; a posture of neutrality with global powers; and equidistance from the declining West, a rising India and China. Despite reiterating ‘India first‘, there is a perceived tilt.
• Closeness to China slowed Indian and Japanese projects, including the Japanese-funded light rail, and Sri Lanka ‘unilaterally’ pulled out of the 2019 tripartite agreement on the East Coast container terminal. There are reports of a Chinese hand behind anti-India sentiment around Indian projects.
• R.P. Rajagopalan — much like in the Maldives, China’s interests in Sri Lanka are more strategic than economic; India-China competition there will continue to grow and India will find it difficult to match Chinese pockets. Unless India does more for its neighbours and enlists other partners, China will remain a significant strategic challenge.

The 2022 economic crisis and India’s response

• From April 2019 Sri Lanka underwent its worst economic crisis since independence — unprecedented inflation, near-depletion of foreign exchange reserves, shortages of medical supplies and rising prices of necessities. Total debt stood at $64 billion, with almost 95% of government revenue going to debt repayment.
• Causes — the pandemic’s impact on tourism, a high debt burden, mismanagement of funds and governance failures. Between 2009 and 2018 the trade deficit grew from $5 billion to $12 billion; tax cuts, interest rate changes and a ban on fertiliser and pesticide imports worsened matters, and a credit rating downgrade closed off international markets. A political crisis followed — violent clashes, resignations, emergency declarations and restrictions on social media.

How India helped

• Supply of essentials from January 2022; monetary support of over USD 1.4 billion — a USD 400 million currency swap, USD 500 million loan deferment and a USD 500 million line of credit for fuel imports, with discussions on a further USD 1 billion package.
• In all, over $3.5 billion in financial assistance, including a $500 million oil line of credit and a $1 billion credit line for essential commodities and food; medicines worth around $6 million and nearly 40,000 tonnes of rice, milk powder and kerosene.
• C. Raja Mohan — Delhi’s unstinting material and financial support during the crisis generated much goodwill and offers a major opportunity to reframe ties with Colombo. The visits of the Nepali and Sri Lankan leaders showed strong commitments to deeper economic integration with India, and deep-seated political resistance to commercial partnership with India is shifting.
• India was earlier complacent about China’s economic presence and now offers competition through a bouquet of regional infrastructure projects, working with like-minded partners to present credible alternatives to neighbours who had seen Beijing as the only game in town.

Implications for India, and mitigation

• Sri Lanka’s trade with China surpasses its trade with India, affecting Indian trade interests; Chinese investments have been criticised for opacity and strategic consequence.
• Disruption at Colombo Port would affect India’s container traffic and exports; Indian investments in real estate, manufacturing and petroleum refining could suffer. Around 75% of Colombo port’s transshipment business is linked to India. A refugee influx into India would raise security and political concerns.
• As a major creditor, India can offer debt relief, a repayment moratorium or restructuring, which would also blunt Chinese influence. Strengthening trade through the FTA promotes stability; over the longer term India should help Sri Lanka reduce dependence on China and integrate better into the global economy.

Sri Lanka after 2024 — the Dissanayake reset and its limits

• Why the reset was doubted — Sri Lanka elected Anura Kumara Dissanayake, whose Marxist party had long opposed Indian influence. The Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna began as an anti-Indian, Sinhala-nationalist force and led two insurrections, the second against the IPKF; its rise raised doubts about Colombo’s tilt.
• The ORF reading — Harsh V. Pant and Aditya G. Shivamurthy argued that pragmatism would prevail and that Colombo would keep balancing between India and China.
• December 2024 — Dissanayake’s first foreign trip, 15–17 December, with Delhi talks on the 16th and a joint statement, Fostering Partnerships for a Shared Future. Both sides agreed to give “primacy to each other’s security concerns”, and Colombo reaffirmed that its territory would not be used against India.
• What India put on the table — USD 4 billion in crisis support, co-chairmanship of the Official Creditors’ Committee, and conversion of some credit-line loans into grants.
• April 2025 — the Colombo visit of 4–6 April: the first-ever India–Sri Lanka defence-cooperation MoU and seven agreements exchanged; an India–UAE–Sri Lanka pact to build Trincomalee as an energy hub; the 120 MW Sampur solar project launched; and the conferment of the Mithra Vibhushana.
• The limits, a year on — Aditya G. Shivamurthy noted a weakening government: an opposition regaining ground, cancelled energy projects, and criticism of the very defence MoU.
• Cyclone Ditwah — struck in late November 2025; over 640 deaths and more than three million people affected. India launched Operation Sagar Bandhu on 28 November and on 23 December 2025 offered a USD 450 million package (USD 350m credit, USD 100m grant). The disaster cut Colombo’s bargaining room and pulled China back in with a fresh highway loan, even as the Indian package deepened the reset.

Maritime and fisheries irritants

• The one-year ban on foreign “research vessels” — of the Yuan Wang 5 and Shi Yan 6 type — ended; a case-by-case Standard Operating Procedure replaced it.
• Katchatheevu, ceded under the 1974 accord, resurfaced in India’s 2024 election; 178 Indian fishermen and 23 trawlers were detained in 2024.

“Recognizing shared security interests of India and Sri Lanka, both leaders acknowledged the importance of regular dialogue based on mutual trust and transparency and giving primacy to each other’s security concerns… President Disanayaka reiterated Sri Lanka’s stated position of not permitting its territory to be used in any manner inimical to the security of India.” — India–Sri Lanka Joint Statement, MEA / PIB, 16 December 2024, para 21

“Sri Lanka will always find India by its side.” — Prime Minister Narendra Modi, letter to President Dissanayake on Cyclone Ditwah relief, December 2025

Sri Lanka — theory, scholars, policy

Lenses: Realism · Liberalism · Constructivism

Policy suggestions for India

• To meet Indian apprehensions on Hambantota, Colombo has tried to confine China to commercial management, with security under Sri Lankan oversight.
• The civil nuclear cooperation agreement is Sri Lanka’s first with any country; India is making forays into infrastructure in the Northern and Eastern provinces, with Trincomalee Port planned as a counterweight to Hambantota.
• V. Suryanarayan — India should refrain from the cynicism and opportunism of China’s approach. Developments in Sri Lanka are not purely domestic, since they have repercussions in Tamil Nadu. The effectiveness of Indian diplomacy lies not in imposing solutions but in how quickly New Delhi can convince Colombo to devolve significant powers to Tamil regions, allowing Tamils to keep their identity while being proud Sri Lankans. Full bilateral potential — economic, political, cultural, educational — can be reached only after ethnic reconciliation.
• Palk Bay as common heritage — a Palk Bay Authority with members from both countries, including experts in fisheries and marine ecology and representatives of fishing communities; the Government of Tamil Nadu, the Northern Province government and the fishermen themselves must be involved.
• Vijay Sappani — India is a far stronger partner than China in education, healthcare and tourism. Under the Indian Technical and Economic Cooperation Scheme and the Colombo Plan, Sri Lankan nationals can use 400 slots for short and medium-term training. India can establish an Indian Institute of Technology, expand centres like the Sri Lanka–India Centre for English Language Training (SLICELT) in Kandy, and create jobs by expanding its IT presence.
• Gautam Sen — continue a high quantum of assistance for rehabilitation of the war-ravaged north, organised with oversight of Indian representatives so benefits reach local inhabitants, while avoiding pressure on devolution beyond a point.
• N. Manoharan — India must bring its full weight to bear to secure a meaningful devolution package going beyond the present Thirteenth Amendment framework, with a suitable reconciliation method to build bridges among communities. The fishermen issue must be de-politicised by the provincial governments — solutions lie not in electoral politics but in statesmanlike handling, and the waters are better seen as common heritage than contested territory. On China, India must know its strengths and weaknesses, take an edge in whichever fields it can — resettlement, tourism, cultural exchange, trade — and consciously build constituencies in the neighbourhood.
• CEPA should be signed; counter-terrorism training and maritime cooperation, including joint naval patrolling, control of smuggling and piracy, and stronger communication networks, should be deepened.
• C. Raja Mohan — recent developments in Sri Lanka, Nepal and Pakistan underline the geographic imperative binding India to the subcontinent; aligning with geographic reality has become inevitable amid escalating regional and global crises.

The Maldives — why the archipelago counts

• Per the Ministry of External Affairs, India and the Maldives share ethnic, linguistic, cultural, religious and commercial links steeped in antiquity. India was among the first to recognise the Maldives after its independence in 1965 and to establish diplomatic relations; the Indian mission at Malé was established in 1972.
• Located barely 70 nautical miles from Minicoy, the archipelago of 1,200 coral islands lies alongside the main shipping lanes, vital for India’s maritime security and its wider Indian Ocean strategy.
• Rajiv Sikri — the Maldives developed a unique national identity through the interplay of influences from India, Sri Lanka and the Persian and Arab world.
• Relations ebb and surge mainly because of Maldivian domestic factors, especially the nature of the state. By declaring Islam the state religion and forbidding citizens from practising any other faith, the 1997 constitution works as a breeding ground for an intolerant theocratic society; the policies of former President Maumoon Abdul Gayoom, who used religion for political ends, produced a fundamentalist society.
• Going by the levels of analysis, it is the domestic politics of the Maldives that is the dominant factor in its foreign policy decision-making.

“The strength of the Maldives-India diplomatic relationship has ebbed and flowed based on the ruling party or coalition in power in Malé. For years now, India has been the dominant regional power by virtue of its being the most powerful in the subregion and, more recently, by its Neighborhood First policy.”

Rasheeda M. Didi

India’s strategic interests

• Shayesta N. Ahmed — India is a resident power in the Indian Ocean and aspires to be a net security provider to its immediate maritime neighbourhood. The SAGAR policy advocates “a safe, secure and stable Indian Ocean Region”, and the Maldives is an important pillar of India’s maritime agenda in the Indo-Pacific.
• The location ensures uninterrupted flow of energy supplies to China, Japan and India; anti-piracy operations have raised its significance further. India formulated the Indian Ocean Naval Symposium (IONS) as a forum for littoral navies to work towards interoperability.
• C. Raja Mohan — proximity to Lakshadweep and to major sea lines of communication makes the Maldives a strategic “toll gate”; 50% of India’s trade and 80% of its energy imports pass through these routes, so instability there would undermine India’s regional influence and energy security.
• China’s economic presence is a major concern because Chinese investment always carries a strategic element; with the country said to owe 70% of its external aid to China, many believe Yameen did to the Maldives what Rajapaksa did to Sri Lanka.
• A 2015 constitutional amendment permitted freehold land ownership by foreigners; a Chinese company secured a 50-year lease on Feydhoo Finolhu near Malé for $4 million. Saudi Arabia planned to invest $10 billion in acquiring Faafu, 19 low-lying islands 120 km south of Malé; seen against the growing footprint of radical Islam, increasing Chinese-Saudi defence cooperation is worrying for Indian planners.
• During Yameen’s tenure radicalisation increased rapidly, with the archipelago reportedly having one of the highest per capita numbers of foreign fighters in Syria. The Maldives has a huge EEZ but lacks defence and surveillance capacity, which is where India can act as net security provider.
• M.K. Bhadrakumar — a permanent solution is needed; the Maldives is like a floating butterfly, but it stings like a bee quite often at our navel. In these postmodern times the fizz has gone out of the regime-change formula, and India’s foreign and security establishment should come up with something ingenious — he suggests something like the Diego Garcia formula.

Chronology — 1965 to the present

The regime swing — why Malé politics is the variable

Every president resets the relationship. Gayoom (1978–2008 · religion used for political ends; Operation Cactus, 1988) → Nasheed (2008 · first democratic president; resigns 2013, shelters in the Indian Embassy) → Yameen (2013 · GMR contract cancelled; FTA with China 2017; emergency 2018) → Solih (2018 · “India First”; US$4 billion assistance; “India Out” declared a security threat) → Muizzu (2023 · campaigned on “India Out”; 77 Indian personnel to withdraw; agreements under review)

• Maumoon Abdul Gayoom was President from 1978 to 2008. In December 1988 India thwarted a coup in Malé orchestrated by a guerrilla outfit from Sri Lanka.
• Mohammed Nasheed succeeded through democratic elections in 2008, which India welcomed. Relations turned down when he resigned in February 2013 and sought shelter in the Indian Embassy; he was defeated in the November 2013 elections and later convicted in a sedition case and sentenced to 13 years in 2015.
• Abdulla Yameen assumed office in November 2013. Within two months relations nosedived when his government terminated the USD 800 million GMR contract for Malé airport, alleging irregularity. He visited India in January 2014 and paid a state visit in April 2016, when several agreements including the Indo-Maldivian Action Plan for Defence were signed and he described the Maldives as pursuing an “India First” foreign policy — a statement that came just after India shielded his government from punitive action by the Commonwealth’s human rights and democracy oversight body.
• In December 2017 the Maldives finalised an FTA with China, becoming the second South Asian country after Pakistan to do so. Its swift approval in a session lasting barely half an hour was read in India as a signal of closer alignment with Beijing. In February 2018 Yameen declared a State of Emergency after a Supreme Court ruling overturned convictions of nine opposition leaders; it lasted 45 days.
• Ibrahim Mohamed Solih became President in 2018 and championed “India First”, improving relations. India announced US$4 billion in financial assistance in 2018, an USD 800 million line of credit in 2019, and a visa facilitation agreement the same year. In August 2022 he reiterated “India First” and called India a “dependable ally to the Maldives, enduring challenges together.”
• Relations soured under Mohammed Waheed Hassan and Yameen, both of whom favoured Beijing, though the decline should not be overstated — Yameen softened his rhetoric once in power. India’s advocacy for the release of political prisoners and for the rule of law also created friction, and the Maldives refused to renew a contract for military helicopters.
• Mohamed Muizzu, a close associate of Yameen who oversaw most Chinese investments during his tenure, requested the withdrawal of 77 Indian military personnel and announced a review of about 100 bilateral agreements. The Prime Minister did not attend his swearing-in, sending a Union Minister instead; Muizzu chose Turkey as his first destination, breaking the tradition of Maldivian presidents visiting India first.

Areas of cooperation

Contestation — China, “India Out”, radicalisation

Chinese presence

• China established relations in 1972; from 1985 Chinese companies began project contracting, and by the end of 2001 the accumulated value of contracted projects was $46.37 million with turnover touching $40 million.
• 2013 was the watershed, when Abdulla Yameen and Xi Jinping both became presidents. With the Belt and Road Initiative and the Maritime Silk Route, the Maldives moved high on China’s agenda, and Yameen used the ‘China card’ to seek concessions from India.
• The Maldives has become a significant component of China’s “String of Pearls”. The China-Maldives Friendship Bridge was funded with $200 million; China has provided loans of $1.25 billion for a new airport and a new port, pushing public debt towards nearly 75% of GDP with almost 70% of total debt owed to China.
• Chinese and Saudi investors are developing the i-Havan project, a special economic zone on an island not far from India; reports suggest another port on the southern atoll of Laamu. China opened its mission in Malé only in 2011, so the growth is remarkable.
• Shyam Saran — China repeatedly forswears any intention of setting up bases but signalled its intention to maintain a naval presence by a highly visible first visit of three naval vessels to Malé in August 2017. China has often complained about India’s hegemonic attitude in the Indian Ocean and is determined to demonstrate its assertion that the Indian Ocean is not India’s ocean.

“Select locations meticulously, make deployments discreetly, give priority to cooperative activities and penetrate gradually.” — a Chinese Navy journal, on the Indian Ocean strategy, in a 16-character guideline

• In 2018 there were indications that China intended to construct a Joint Ocean Observation Station at Makunudhoo in the northwest; the plan was put on hold. Speculation about a Chinese naval base has so far remained speculation.
• India is worried about the neocolonial character of Chinese investment — cheque-book and debt-trap diplomacy leading to economic crisis and political instability, as in Sri Lanka. According to former President Nasheed, the Maldives accumulated Chinese debt of nearly $3.1 billion under Yameen.
• N. Manoharan — the Maldives has emerged as an important “pearl” in the String of Pearls; given its location, Beijing has sought a maritime base primarily to secure its sea lanes and the flow of energy supplies from Africa and West Asia. B.R. Deepak — this is part of a broader sphere-of-influence struggle in South Asia.

Political instability and anti-India politics

• Political turmoil since 2016 culminated in the declaration of emergency in 2018; the international community and India expressed concern about the effect on security, development and democratic rights.
• Regardless of which party is in opposition, there is a tendency to use anti-India protests to secure votes. The “India Out” campaign opposed New Delhi’s developmental funding and urged the government not to “sell national assets to foreigners”, and remained a focal point up to the September 2023 elections.
• Democratic institutions have weakened, and fragile democracies may become susceptible to radical ideologies.
• The two Dhruv Advanced Light Helicopters provided in 2010 and 2015, though used for search, rescue and weather surveillance, are portrayed by critics as evidence of an Indian military presence. Speculation surrounds the UTF Harbour Project, which some allege might be converted into an Indian naval base. The new police academy built with Indian support has drawn scepticism over its size; the dockyard and harbour under joint development for the MNDF Coast Guard have drawn concern that Indian technicians and advisers will undermine sovereignty. The opposition contends there has been insufficient transparency about the terms of agreements with India.
• The Solih government held that the “India Out” campaign was inimical to Maldivian interests, jeopardising relations and the aid the country receives; it signed a decree declaring the campaign a threat to national security.

Terrorism and fundamentalism

• The rise of radical Islam is a serious concern, aggravated by the Maldives being an Islamic Republic. Many Maldivian students have been indoctrinated with Salafi-Jihadi ideology, and there is concern about Saudi Arabia’s role in radicalisation.
• The Maldives has recorded one of the highest per capita numbers of ISIS recruits, with more than 200 Maldivian youths having joined. Protests by Islamists bearing ISIS flags are frequent.
• Political instability and socio-economic uncertainty are the main drivers; the same forces are involved in anti-India activity. Developments in West Asia and the Af-Pak region have also influenced radicalisation, and growing radicalisation could allow Pakistan to establish terror launch pads. Harsh V. Pant and C. Raja Mohan warn that these developments require vigilant monitoring and cooperation.

Internal contradictions in the Maldives

• The constitution prevents non-Sunnis from obtaining citizenship and declares Islam the state religion, making the Maldives a non-secular state.
• An emerging civil society and a history of patronage produce an unstable polity and a frustrated citizenry.
• Rising drug abuse and religious fundamentalist tendencies fuelled by Saudi-based Salafi funding.
• A skewed labour market and escalating inequality in an economy heavily reliant on external factors.

The Maldives after 2024 — from “India Out” to recalibration

• The withdrawal, on schedule — India withdrew about 80 military personnel by May 2024, replaced by civilians. Delhi read the moment carefully, keeping food exports flowing and rolling over treasury bills while the troops left.
• What changed the calculus — a severe economic squeeze: reserves fell close to default levels and public debt neared 116 per cent of output.
• October 2024 — a Vision Document adopted; a twin currency swap of USD 400 million and INR 30 billion; the RuPay card launched.
• July 2025 — the Malé visit of 25–26 July: a USD 565 million (Rs 4,850 crore) line of credit, India’s first denominated in Indian rupees. An amendatory pact cut annual debt repayments by about 40 per cent, from nearly USD 51 million to about USD 29 million; FTA talks began and UPI launched.
• Gulbin Sultana — writing for the Manohar Parrikar Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses, Gulbin Sultana reads Muizzu’s turn as a shift from an “India first” to a “Maldives first” policy aimed at cutting dependence, with early outreach to Turkey and China. She concludes that the recalibration “should not be seen as a zero-sum game for India”, though it is no return to the old ‘India first’ line either.

“This is the first LOC extended to the Maldives that is denominated in Indian rupees… the annual debt repayment obligations of the Maldives will reduce by a sharp 40 per cent, from nearly US$51 million annually to about US$29 million.” — Foreign Secretary Vikram Misri, MEA Special Briefing, Malé, 25 July 2025

“India is Maldives’ closest neighbour. Maldives holds an important place in India’s ‘Neighbourhood First’ policy and ‘MAHASAGAR’ vision.” — Prime Minister Narendra Modi, joint press statement, Malé, 25 July 2025

Maldives — theory, scholars, policy

Lenses: Realism · Liberalism · Constructivism

The intervention debate — four positions

Policy suggestions for India

• The tussle between two aspiring regional hegemons is clear. India has consistently favoured the Maldives; Maldivian behaviour has varied with the regime in power, though Malé is aware it cannot ignore India because of proximity and the multidimensional nature of the relationship.
• To challenge Chinese gains, India must complete infrastructure projects on time, collaborate with like-minded countries such as Japan on connectivity while maintaining strategic autonomy and not becoming a junior partner to the United States, and strengthen the QUAD. Use soft power, especially the diaspora — films, music and people-to-people contact.
• Anand Kumar — the Maldives faces an existential threat from climate change, repeatedly highlighted by its leaders, and cannot deal with it alone. India faces similar challenges and is well placed to cooperate; collaboration on climate change can serve as a foundation for a comprehensive and strategic partnership.
• Economic cooperation — bilateral trade is at a very low level and there is no FTA; one should be signed in earnest.
• Domestic politics — India must mend ties with both mainstream parties so that anti-India feeling does not become a vote-gathering campaign. C. Raja Mohan: “India’s proximity comes with its problems — close neighbours often have multiple disputes while a distant power can take a more strategic view of the relationship.” The rivalry between Asia’s major powers in the Maldives and Sri Lanka has become intertwined with domestic politics, with factions seeking support from either India or China.
• Deeper engagement with political sensitivity — Dunya Maumoon and Shyam Saran recommend outreach to all Maldivian stakeholders with sensitivity to sovereignty concerns.
• Diversify cooperation into fintech, green technologies, cultural exchange and education; climate and health diplomacy through initiatives such as Aarogya Maitri and joint research; people-centric outreach through tourism, student exchange and employment to insulate the relationship from political fluctuation.
• Regional cooperation — the Colombo Security Conclave, agreed by India, Sri Lanka and the Maldives in November 2020, identified four pillars: Maritime Safety and Security; Terrorism and Radicalization; Trafficking and Organized Crime; and Cyber Security. Use of the Indian Ocean Rim Association and the Indian Ocean Naval Symposium should be deepened, while SAARC remains hindered by India-Pakistan tension.
• India is presently engaged in 45 infrastructure projects across the Maldives compared with one by China, ranging from water and sanitation to airport extension and connectivity. Foreign Minister Abdulla Shahid’s election as President of the UN General Assembly, which India was the first to endorse, offers an opportunity to deepen cooperation on strengthening multilateralism.
• Practical steps — smaller-scale projects in the atolls; study of a Blue Economy model for sustainable coastal development; encouragement of small-scale industry and Indian investment through small grant projects; expansion of skill development institutions in the atolls including English language and vocational training; decentralisation of healthcare beyond Malé; consultation with communities and institutions such as the Asian Development Bank; and monitoring and evaluation of existing projects.
• C. Raja Mohan — India’s success will depend on its ability to be “an indispensable partner”, sensitive to local realities while safeguarding its own national interests. S. Jaishankar places the relationship squarely within ‘Neighbourhood First’; Fazlur Rahman notes that Indian engagement transcends security to include economic development, infrastructure and energy. India should make the Maldives understand the assurance that New Delhi has been and will continue to be the “first responder” to any need or crisis facing the island nation.

The regional debate — hedging, the debt trap, Neighbourhood First

Lenses: Small-state hedging · Buffer-state theory · Neorealism

Small-state hedging

• Cheng-Chwee Kuik developed the framework for smaller states caught between great powers; the balancing logic is applied to this neighbourhood by Aditya G. Shivamurthy on Sri Lanka’s course and by Nilanthi Samaranayake on island-state agency in the Indian Ocean.

“I define hedging as insurance-seeking behavior under situations of high uncertainty and high stakes, where a rational state avoids taking sides and pursues opposite measures vis-à-vis competing powers to have a fallback position.” — Cheng-Chwee Kuik, ‘Getting Hedging Right: A Small-State Perspective’, China International Strategy Review, 2021, p. 300

The debt-trap thesis and its rebuttal

Hambantota — strategic seizure, or a domestic failure?

• The thesis — Hambantota as strategic seizure — Brahma Chellaney, and the ‘String of Pearls’ reading
• The rebuttal — A Rajapaksa ‘white elephant’ — Lee Jones and Shahar Hameiri; a commercial lease, not a seizure

Nilanthi Samaranayake and colleagues — small-state agency is real, but it shrinks as great-power competition intensifies

• The thesis in practice — N. Sathiya Moorthy treats the research-vessels question as a test of exactly this anxiety.
• The evidence against — Lee Jones and Shahar Hameiri show that Sri Lanka’s debt crisis came mainly from Western-market borrowing, and that the port now hosts Sri Lanka’s own southern naval command.

“The Hambantota Port case shows little evidence of Chinese strategy, but lots of evidence for poor governance on the recipient side.” — Shahar Hameiri, ‘Debunking the Myth of China’s Debt-trap Diplomacy’, Lowy Institute, 9 Sep 2020

“The story of Hambantota Port is, in reality, a narrative of political and economic incompetence, facilitated by lax governance and inadequate risk management on both sides.” — **Lee Jones & Shahar Hameiri, Debunking the Myth of ‘Debt-trap Diplomacy’, Chatham House, Aug 2020**

Neighbourhood First — adaptation or structural strain?

“India is actually doing more than ever, but it is the neighbourhood that is losing India. It is the countries of South Asia that are moving on, escaping the traditional region called South Asia with India as its gravitational core.”

Constantino Xavier, interview in Scroll.in, 22 August 2020

• Where the record lands — the 2024–2026 evidence supports both readings: the island resets held and even deepened after Ditwah, yet Nepal’s nationalist turn and China’s steady economic presence mark the limits of Indian influence. India frames its own conduct through Neighbourhood First and the maritime vision now called MAHASAGAR.