International Politics (2022) 59:1–8

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ORIGINAL ARTICLE

Introduction: Narendra Modi and India’s foreign policy

Ian Hall1 · Šumit Ganguly2

Accepted: 13 October 2021 / Published online: 30 October 2021

© The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Limited 2021

Abstract
This article introduces the special issue on Narendra Modi and India’s foreign pol-
icy. It observes that there is little consensus about the effectiveness of the Modi gov-
ernment’s management of international relations. Some argue that since it first came
to power in May 2014 it has transformed India’s foreign policy and proved far more
successful than its predecessors in handling the country’s key relationships and chal-
lenges. Others contend that India’s basic strategy is unchanged and that New Delhi’s
position is weaker today in important areas, notably regarding China and Pakistan
than it was under earlier regimes. This article introduces this debate and the analyti-
cal questions addressed in the special issue concerning the extent of prime ministe-
rial autonomy in foreign policymaking, the role of ideas and ideology, and the ques-
tion of how far India’s agency is constrained by structural impediments, both in its
immediate region and further afield.

Keywords India · Narendra Modi · Indian foreign policy · Hindu nationalism

Introduction

Few Indian prime ministers—with the clear exception of the first, Jawaharlal
Nehru—have prompted as intense and sustained a debate about their foreign policy
as Narendra Modi.1 In part, this is due to the energy he and his Bharatiya Janata
1
See especially Chatterjee Miller and Sullivan de Estrada (2017), Chaulia (2016), Ganguly (2017),
Gokhale (2017), Gupta et al. (2019), Hall (2019), Karnad (2018), Mohan (2015), Pant (2019), Singh
(2017), Tremblay and Kapur (2017). This special issue is the product of a roundtable that was meant to
be held at the International Studies Association Convention in 2020. We would like to thank the contrib-
utors for persisting with the project despite the cancellation of the Convention and the journal’s editors
and reviewers.

* Ian Hall
[Link]@[Link]
Šumit Ganguly
[Link]@[Link]
1
Griffith University, Queensland, Australia
2
Indiana University Bloomington, Bloomington, IN, USA

Vol.:(0123456789)
2 I. Hall, Š. Ganguly

Party-led government brought to the conduct of international relations after their

first landslide win in the May 2014 general election (Ganguly 2017: 140). In con-
trast to his predecessor, Manmohan Singh, Modi proved a very enthusiastic traveller,
embarking on as many foreign visits during his first term in office as Singh did in a
decade, attending a series of high-profile summits, and aiming to establish rapport
with his counterparts in China, Japan, and the United States, as well as in South
Asia. His government also revamped key initiatives—such as ‘Look East’, rendered
into ‘Act East’—and launched others, including a renewed effort to build better ties
with India’s neighbours, branded ‘Neighbourhood First’. It promised to play a major
role in providing security and improving infrastructure in the Indian Ocean region,
as well as to enhance its defence and diplomatic ties with states stretching from the
Middle East through Central and South Asia to Southeast Asia. Significantly, the
Modi government also pledged to reground Indian foreign policy in a set of princi-
ples more in tune with what it views as India’s traditions, and to restore its standing
in the world, ensuring its status and interests are respected by all, including major
powers like the United States or China.
Whether Modi and his ministers have achieved these objectives or will achieve
them with the policies they have put in place are keenly contested questions. Some
argue that the Modi government has revolutionised as well as energised foreign pol-
icy, boosted national pride and the country’s ‘soft power’ in the world, strengthened
relationships with key partners, and restored the standing of India in the world, as
well as the confidence of foreign investors. The ‘Modi government’s foreign policy
has been transformative’, one study concluded, and Modi ‘has established himself’
as both ‘a world leader’ and a ‘policy entrepreneur’ (Tremblay and Kapur 2017:
218–219; 15).2 His ‘open embrace’ of a strategic partnership with the United States
has been praised as both far-sighted and prudent (George 2018; cf. Pant and Joshi
2017) and his handling of an increasingly assertive China cast as deft (Gokhale
2017: 111–140). In parallel, his government’s responses to terrorist attacks across
Kashmir’s Line of Control—including a punitive raid by Indian special forces and
an air strike into Pakistan proper—have been praised for their strength and their sup-
posed deterrent effects on Islamabad (Gokhale 2017).
Others are less complimentary. A number of analysts argue that Modi and his
ministers have changed less than might at first appear. For them, the basic strat-
egy and overall ‘trajectory’, Rajesh Basrur put it, of Indian foreign policy is largely
‘unchanged’ (Basrur 2017).3 Some suggest that the Modi government’s claims to
have broken from long-standing ways of thinking about or practicing foreign policy
are unconvincing (Hall 2019). Many question its management of key relationships
and challenges. They argue that since 2014 the US-India partnership has not pro-
gressed as far and as fast as it might and that even when the disruptive effects of
Donald J. Trump are taken into account, the Modi government bears a significant

2
Other sympathetic assessments, varying in their enthusiasm, include Abhyankar (2018), Chaulia
(2016), Gokhale (2017), Mohan (2015), and Pant (2019).
3
For similar arguments, see Ganguly (2017), Hall (2015, 2016), Karnad (2018), Ogden (2018), Singh
(2017).
Introduction: Narendra Modi and India’s foreign policy 3

amount of responsibility for those failings (Tellis 2018). The administration’s han-
dling of relations with China and Pakistan has been subjected to even more sustained
criticism, even if his various critics disagree on the exact source of the problem (see,
for example, Bajpai 2017; Karnad 2018). Modi has been assailed for being too con-
frontational with China, to India’s detriment (Jha 2017), and at the same time, criti-
cised for being too deferential to its President, Xi Jinping (Tharoor 2018: 450–455).
His government’s efforts to diplomatically isolate Pakistan over its alleged backing
of terrorism have found more support, but doubt remains in some minds about India
is more or less secure as a result of its punitive raids across the Line of Control
and its heavy-handedness in Kashmir (Mazumdar 2017).4 Similarly, Modi’s efforts
to strengthen ties with India’s South Asian neighbours and like-minded states in
the wider Indo-Pacific region have received very mixed assessments (Rajagopalan
2020).

Analysing Indian foreign policy

This special issue does not aim to settle these disputes. Rather, it explores the under-
lying drivers of India’s foreign policy under the Modi government and tests some of
the assumptions that underpin judgements of its performance. One of the biggest of
these, of course, is the idea that Modi himself is a transformational leader bringing
about major changes in both domestic and foreign policy.5 This is an idea that he and
his supporters are keen to promote, but one which demands rigorous assessment. It
is often assumed that Indian prime ministers have unusually broad latitude in for-
eign policymaking compared to other democratic leaders, due to the centralisation
of control within the core executive and low levels of both parliamentary and public
interest in the area.6 This has led to a persistent tendency in the literature to explain
shifts in foreign policy, as well as successes and failures, in terms of what leaders
think and do. And it suggests that if Modi did have a transformational agenda for
Indian foreign policy, he might be able to put it into practice.
However, recent studies argue that this focus on leaders has repeatedly pro-
duced misleading explanations of India’s behaviour in international relations,
overemphasising their capacity to determine what is done at the expense of other
factors, such as contestation between different parts of the central government
(see Hansel et al. 2017; Friedrichs 2019). This directs attention away from the
prime minister himself, and towards their ministers and advisors, and the bureau-
crats that work for them, shaping and implementing policy, as well as party politi-
cal differences. Others argue that in foreign policy as in domestic policy, bargain-
ing between New Delhi and India’s States and Union Territories, and between

4
For a short discussion of the effort to isolate Pakistan, see Jaffrelot (2017: 30–32).
5
On this concept and for an analysis of the claim that Modi is a ‘transformational leader’ focused on
domestic politics, see Chhibber and Verma (2018: 135–150). See also the literature on Modi as an
authoritarian populist: Chacko (2018), Plagemann and Destradi (2019), Wojczewski (2020).
6
For a classic account, see Bandyopadhyaya (1970).
4 I. Hall, Š. Ganguly

the central government and other powerful actors within the country, including
the big industrial conglomerates or agricultural interests, can also restrain the
core executive and limit the choices it can make (see Mattoo and Jacob 2010). In
what follows, we can see both of these sets of limitations in operation, at certain
moments, in the case of the Modi administration.
Another set of assumptions addressed in this special issue concerns the roles
of ideas and ideology. The Modi government has put significant effort into chang-
ing the language of Indian foreign policy, setting aside terms and concepts inher-
ited from the postcolonial era dominated by Jawaharlal Nehru, and introducing new
ones largely drawn from the Hindu nationalist tradition of thought, running back to
Swami Vivekananda and Aurobindo Ghose (Hall 2019). Modi’s supporters argue
that this reimagining or reinvention of India’s international relations is freeing the
country to play a bigger role in the world and opening up new opportunities for
global leadership (Chaulia 2016). But whether these attempts have been successful
is unclear, and it remains a moot point whether under Modi Indian foreign policy
is guided by Hindu nationalist thinking. A number of scholars argue that it contin-
ues to be shaped by inherited ideas, which fits with earlier research that points to
the stability over time of elite attitudes in India about foreign policy (see Ganguly
et al. 2017). Others observe that the Modi government’s approach, like those of ear-
lier administrations, is also marked by incrementalism and pragmatism (see Basrur
2019; Chatterjee Miller 2020).
The third set of assumptions concerns agency and structure in the international
system. Some think that India’s choices are constrained because its material power
is still relatively low and because the context in which the Modi government has
found itself has been and remains challenging (see Pant and Rej 2018; Tellis 2016).
They argue as a consequence that even a leader that aspires to be transformational
and to cast foreign policy in a new language will struggle to bring about substan-
tive change. Aside from the state of Indian economy, which has not improved as
fast as Modi promised back in 2014, the biggest external constraint is, of course,
China. The People’s Republic’s rapid economic development under Deng Xiaop-
ing and his successors began to be perceived as a significant problem for India in
the 1990s, posing as it continues to do a combined political, economic, and secu-
rity challenge. China’s development model offers a potent alternative to India’s less
dynamic but arguably more legitimate approach. Its sheer weight—which is still
growing—is changing both the bilateral relationship and India’s immediate region,
as fast-changing patterns of trade and investment affect its neighbours. And its mili-
tary modernisation, combined with its uncertain intentions, raises the possibility of
conflict across an unsettled border.
The Modi government was perhaps unfortunate to come to power soon after Xi
Jinping’s ascent to paramountcy in 2013 and doubly unfortunate to be in power dur-
ing Donald J. Trump’s presidency, from 2017 to 2021. Its agency was limited by
these two developments, which led to far more assertive behaviour by Beijing and
more capricious behaviour by Washington, at least until Joseph R. Biden’s inaugura-
tion as President of the United States. Tensions and troubles with both China and US
complicated India’s relationships with its immediate neighbours, especially Nepal,
Pakistan, and Sri Lanka (see Jacob, in this special issue). At the same time, however,
Introduction: Narendra Modi and India’s foreign policy 5

as some of the articles in this issue show, shared concerns about Beijing and Wash-
ington also prompted New Delhi to deepen ties with other partners, including Aus-
tralia, Japan, and a number of East Asian and West Asian states.
In sum, this special issue aims to dig deeper into the underpinnings of the Modi
government’s foreign policy and to try to explain why its approach has taken the
form that it has since it first came to office in May 2014. It aims also to account for
both the successes and the failures of an administration that has had to wrestle with
a slowing economy and an increasingly difficult international climate exacerbated by
the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic in early 2020.

The articles

The articles that follow explore the management of key relationships by the Modi
government or its handling of important areas of foreign and security policy. The
first four examine India’s relations with the United States, China, Japan, and Aus-
tralia. Šumit Ganguly argues that Modi has had a significant impact on US-India
ties, first in setting aside any grievance he might have had about an earlier ban on
entering the US imposed upon him, and then in investing effort in building personal
relationships with Barack H. Obama and then Donald J. Trump. He observes too
that the Modi government’s shift away from nonalignment and the pursuit of stra-
tegic autonomy, a tempering of anti-Americanism within the BJP, and the Trump
administration’s disregard for human rights issues smoothed the road to closer ties,
despite missteps by both sides and tensions over trade. He argues, however, that the
principal reason for the improvement of ties was shared concern about Beijing’s
increasingly assertive behaviour across the region.
In his contribution, Manjeet Singh Pardesi looks at India’s vexed relations with
China during Modi’s time in office. He observes the complexity of the bilateral rela-
tionship, shaped by a mix of memory, status anxiety, conflicting interests, and unre-
solved differences. He notes too that, like its predecessors, the Modi government has
employed a combination of both internal and external balancing, accommodation,
and competition to manage the rivalry with China. He argues that its particular mix
has been heavier on external balancing—principally by deepening the strategic part-
nership with the US and other ‘like-minded’ states in the Indo-Pacific—but that the
pressure generated by China’s economic growth has made the management of the
bilateral relationship more difficult. He concludes by suggesting that both Beijing
and New Delhi will need to find ways to accommodate each other’s interests if they
are to avoid further tensions or even military clashes, like the incident that left doz-
ens of troops dead in the Galwan Valley in Ladakh in June 2020.
The third article turns to India’s changing relationship with Japan. Rajesh Basrur
and Sumitha Narayanan Kutty trace the origins and the substance of the partnership
between the two—now dubbed a ‘special strategic and global partnership’. They
observe the congruence of India’s Look East/Act East policy and Japan’s vision of
a ‘Free and Open Indo-Pacific’ and the efforts made to build formalised dialogue
mechanisms and encourage defence and security cooperation between the two.
They also outline the extent of the Japanese public and private investment in India,
6 I. Hall, Š. Ganguly

including in major infrastructure projects, as Tokyo aims to boost India’s medium

to long-term economic prospects. They also explore the burgeoning of minilateral
coordination and cooperation beyond the bilateral partnership, including under the
auspices of the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (or ‘Quad’), which draws in Aus-
tralia and the US.
Ian Hall’s contribution explores another of India’s strategic partnerships: its
developing, but asymmetrical relationship with Australia. He notes that the election
of the Modi government and his visit to Australia six months later—the first by an
Indian prime minister since 1986—raised hopes in Canberra that fast progress would
be made both in extending defence and security ties and in negotiating a free trade
agreement. He argues, however, that those hopes were not realised, despite mount-
ing worries in both capitals about China’s ambitions and assertiveness. Progress was
steady but unspectacular on the security side of the partnership, with greater dia-
logue and more meaningful exercises between the two militaries. But the talks for a
free trade deal stalled, and then New Delhi walked away too from the Regional Eco-
nomic Comprehensive Partnership negotiation process, which aims at lowering bar-
riers to trade across East Asia. In part, these troubles were a product of leadership
instability in Canberra, but Hall argues they also suggest institutional shortcomings
in New Delhi, as the Modi government found it hard to translate political will into
substantive change.
The next two articles analyse the Modi government’s management of India’s rela-
tions with the states and regional institutions of two key regions: South Asia and
the Middle East (or, as New Delhi prefers, West Asia). Happymon Jacob assesses
the Modi government’s approach to India’s immediate region. He argues that Hindu
nationalist ideology has played a significant role in shaping the way in which it
has conducted relations with some of the key states. He notes too that despite the
accommodating rhetoric initially used by Modi and his ministers, New Delhi has
sometimes taken a straightforwardly aggressive line with some of its neighbours. He
explores too the linkages between domestic politics and foreign policy, concerning
Kashmir and India’s citizenship laws, on the one hand, and electoral imperatives at
the centre and in India’s border states. And he dissects the ways in which China’s
growing economic and diplomatic influence in South Asia is affecting New Delhi’s
ties with each of its neighbours.
Nicolas Blarel turns next to India’s shifting relationships with the states of West
Asia, an area in which it is clear that Modi and his government have brought about
some significant change. New Delhi has deepened a security partnership with
Israel—and brought it out of the shadows, not least with a prime ministerial visit.
Modi has also invested heavily in personal diplomacy with a number of Gulf States,
including Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, seeking investment funds,
better protections for the Indian diaspora in the region, and shoring up access to oil
supplies. Throughout, the Modi government has also been concerned to advance its
long-running effort to loosen the ties that some of these states have to Pakistan, as
it seeks to isolate Islamabad over its support for terrorist groups operating from its
territory.
The final two articles deal with crucial issues, rather than relationships: India’s
evolving foreign economic policy and its changing place in the global nuclear order.
Introduction: Narendra Modi and India’s foreign policy 7

Amrita Narlikar sets out the broad outlines of the Modi government’s approach
to the global economy, focussing especially on its dealings with the World Trade
Organisation. She observes continuities with the ways in which earlier administra-
tions have managed foreign economic policy, despite the introduction of schemes
like ‘Make in India’ and the Atmanirbhar Bharat Abhiyan (Self-Reliant India Cam-
paign) rolled out since the 2019 election. Narlikar argues that although the Modi
government has been more protectionist than some expected it might be, this
approach may be better suited to a global economy increasingly characterised by
‘weaponised interdependence’.
In the last paper, Rajesh Rajagopalan examines the Modi government’s nuclear
policy, including its management of India’s nuclear arsenal, its nuclear doctrine, and
its nuclear diplomacy. He argues that here too there has been less change and more
continuity than might have been expected, given the BJP’s insistence that it is taking
a more robust approach to national security and its hints that it might move India
away from the ‘No First Use’ doctrine it has had since the weapons tests in 1998. He
argues too that, on the face of it, these policy continuities are odd, since India faces
two potential nuclear adversaries—China and Pakistan—that are both in the pro-
cess of expanding and modernising their arsenals and using unconventional means,
including incursions by troops and proxies, to exert pressure on New Delhi.

Declarations

Conflict of interest On behalf of all authors, the corresponding author states that there is no conflict of
interest.

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