Contemporary India has the narrowest conception of neighbourhood ever in its history which has progressively shrunk over the millennia. Indian thinkers and policymakers have embraced the artificiality of South Asia and consider that construct as the country’s natural geopolitical habitat. To become a power of global consequence, India must move beyond its self-identification as a South Asian power. It should stop viewing wins and losses in South Asian geopolitics as major markers of success for an aspiring great power and shed the historical-psychological burden of reclaiming a periphery where its influence is diminishing.
More crucially, the view that India must first pacify South Asia before aspiring to be a global power is a mistaken belief deeply entrenched in India’s strategic culture; India’s path to global power does not run through South Asia. Instead, India must transcend South Asia to be a global power as South Asia can, as is, contribute little to India’s aspirations for global status. Attempting to fashion South Asia to its liking before it can rise as a global power is hardly a realistic timeline.
The logic behind this is not to challenge the legitimate sovereign claims of our neighbours, nor is it a refusal to acknowledge that the India of today is hardly the same as the ancient Gupta or the Mughal empires. The argument is definitely not to fuel the intellectually lazy Akhand Bharat narrative. The contention here is about our mental maps of what constitutes our region or neighbourhood and how mental maps bleed into policy. India’s territory has surely shrunk from the time of the Raj, for instance, and borders are closer to the national capital than ever before, a physical reality we must unhesitatingly accept. But should that territorial reality limit India’s sense of cultural, historical, and geopolitical relationships with a wider region?
