Setting the Context Seychelles, an archipelago of 115 islands in the western Indian Ocean, punches far above its demographic weight in India’s strategic calculus. Small in population but commanding a vast Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) astride critical sea lanes, it is one of India’s closest maritime-security partners and a cornerstone of India’s vision of itself…
Setting the Context Nigeria is Africa’s most populous nation and one of its largest economies — the giant of West Africa — and, for India, among the continent’s most consequential partners. The relationship is built on a foundation of anti-colonial solidarity and has matured into a Strategic Partnership spanning energy, trade, investment, defence and healthcare….
Setting the Context Angola, a resource-rich nation of Southern Africa, has emerged as one of India’s most important energy partners on the continent — a leading supplier of crude oil and a treasure-house of diamonds and critical minerals. What was long a quiet, oil-centred relationship has recently acquired strategic depth, marked by Angola’s growing role…
Setting the Context Mozambique occupies a distinctive place in India’s Africa policy — a partnership defined by the convergence of three vital national interests: energy security (through some of the world’s largest offshore gas discoveries), food security (as a major source of pulses), and maritime security (as a strategic littoral of the Mozambique Channel). What…
Setting the Context Few of India’s bilateral relationships are as intimate as the one it shares with Mauritius — a small island nation of the south-western Indian Ocean that India regards not as a foreign country in the ordinary sense, but as an extension of its own civilisational family. Roughly 70% of the Mauritian population…
Setting the Context Kenya is one of India’s most important partners in East Africa — a stable, fast-growing economy that functions as a commercial and logistical hub for the entire region. Anchored by a long-settled and prosperous Indian-origin diaspora, the relationship blends deep people-to-people warmth with a pragmatic, expanding partnership in trade, development, defence and…
Setting the Context India and Africa are bound by one of the world’s oldest and most organic relationships — a partnership rooted not in the arithmetic of power but in a shared history of anti-colonial struggle, a common developmental aspiration, and enduring people-to-people ties. Africa is a continent of 54 sovereign states, home to a…
Introduction and Strategic Significance The relationship between India and China is among the most consequential in the world — a complex blend of cooperation and competition between two ancient civilisations, two of the fastest-growing major economies, and two nuclear-armed neighbours who share a long, disputed and largely un-demarcated frontier. China is India’s largest neighbour and…
Introduction and Strategic Significance Few bilateral relationships in the world are as intractable as the one between India and Pakistan. Born together from the Partition of 1947, the two states have moved from a clash of national identities to territorial disputes and, since 1998, to a nuclear rivalry. A well-known observation captures the paradox: while…
Introduction: The Graveyard of Empires Afghanistan has been called both the ‘Heart of Asia’ and the ‘Graveyard of Empires’—a landlocked crossroads that has swallowed the ambitions of the British, the Soviets and the Americans in turn. For India, the relationship (the ancient Gandhara–Bharata connection) is civilizational and strategic, but it comes with a defining feature:…
