India sets its foreign policy sights on China in shift away from Pakistan: ‘we are ready to join with others to curb you’
- India’s old nonaligned stance, rooted in Cold War-era rivalries, has come to an end as its policymakers increasingly turn their focus to Beijing
- A former Indian diplomat said New Delhi recognised the need to curb Beijing’s ‘ambitions’ – after decades of believing China was not a military threat
That relentless competition made Pakistan always the focus of New Delhi’s foreign policy.
India’s ever-growing economy, which is now vastly larger than Pakistan’s, combined with Beijing’s increasingly assertive push for influence across Asia, mean that “New Delhi has increasingly grown Beijing-centric,” said Lieutenant General D.S. Hooda, who from 2014 to 2016 headed Indian military’s Northern Command, which controls the part of Kashmir that India administers, including Ladakh.
Kashmir has suffered insurgencies, lockdowns and political subterfuge since India and Pakistan gained independence from British colonial rule in 1947, and has been at the heart of two of the four wars India has fought with Pakistan and China. The three countries’ tense borders meet at the disputed territory, in the world’s only three-way nuclear confrontation.
Starting in the 1960s, India was an active member of the Non-Aligned Movement, a grouping of over 100 countries that theoretically did not align with any major power during the Cold War. Despite disputes with neighbouring Pakistan and China, India’s nonaligned stance remained a bedrock of its foreign policy, with its diplomats focused mainly on upending Pakistan’s claim to Kashmir.
“Kashmir was in a way central to our foreign policy concerns,” said Kanwal Sibal, a career diplomat who was India’s foreign secretary in 2002-2003.