Chinese Takeaway: Bengal’s Bay

In expanding maritime connectivity and cooperation with Dhaka, Prime Minister Narendra Modi has begun to devote the kind of strategic attention the Bay of Bengal has long deserved. While the waters to India’s east have steadily gained salience in China’s calculus, New Delhi’s interest in the bay has tended to be limited and episodic. Read […]

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India-France Relations: Look To The Indian Ocean

Since 1998, the Franco-Indian relationship has become increasingly strategic, even as one could argue that it has yet to realize its full economic potential. The Indo-French strategic dialogue is now broad and wide-ranging, and the annual joint military exercises have each year grown more elaborate. When Modi and French President Francois Hollande met earlier this […]

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Russia And India: A 21st Century Decline

As strategic relations go, few countries can match the enduring partnership that India and Russia have shared since the 1960s. For close to half a century Russia has been New Delhi’s foremost military supplier. In fact, defense trade became the raison d’être for strategic relations between the two nations – particularly in the post-Cold War […]

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It’s Time For Modi To Directly Engage With Pakistan

The appointment of a former Director, Intelligence Bureau as envoy for Af-Pak and West Asia indicates that the Modi government is looking at the entire Islamic world to India’s West through an intelligence-security prism and not a diplomatic-cultural construct. Modi’s Pakistan policy is conditioned by a similar mind-set of talking but not negotiating, while building […]

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Will Nagaland Ever Have Peace?

Ever since Independence, peace and stability have been treasured luxuries in the Indian states of Nagaland and Manipur. In the last two decades, however, while peace talks may have produced little in the way of progress, ceasefire agreements with the various warring groups have at least provided a relative peace. Read Here – The Diplomat

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What Modi Gains By Taking India’s Politics To Distant Shores

Modi’s meetings have been clearly organised and financed by his local supporters and orchestrated by the BJP/RSS machinery in India, though the embassies have been involved in liaison with the host government for security and logistical support. As these interactions have become political, it is only natural that there will be echoes of domestic Indian […]

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When Narendra Modi Goes To The Holy Land

In my view, viewing national and foreign affairs through a communal prism is one of the most pernicious, destructive and self-defeating features of the Indian scene. It would be far more useful to see the proposed visit to the Holy Land as the commencement of Modi’s engagement with the complex politics, economics and culture of West […]

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