The India Way: Strategies for an Uncertain World

by S. Jaishankar

India’s foreign policy carries three major burdens from its past. One is the 1947 Partition, which reduced the nation both demographically and politically. An unintended consequence was to give China more strategic space in Asia. Another is the delayed economic reforms that were undertaken a decade and a half after those of China. And far more ambivalently. The fifteen-year gap in capabilities continues to put India at a great disadvantage. The third is the prolonged exercise of the nuclear option. As a result, India has had to struggle mightily to gain influence in a domain that could have come so much more easily earlier. It is, of course, better that these issues are being addressed late than never. But greater self-reflection on our mistakes since 1947 would certainly serve the nation well. We could also extend that to the roads not taken.