Issue 1 | India's World

Delhi's Grand strategy

Volume 1 Issue 1
January – February 2025

The Argument

Breaking Dependence: Enabling the Rise of India’s Defence Industry

Engaging Europe amid Global Turbulence

The Great Unravelling: Trump Reinvents America and Reorders the World

India in the Middle East: A Soft Power in a Hard Terrain

Syed Akbaruddin

India’s Geopolitics: The Legacy of the British Raj

Grand Strategy for a “Viksit Bharat”

Grand Strategy

Multi-Alignment’: Towards a ‘Grand Strategy’ for India in the Twenty-first Century

An Economic Strategy for India

The US and China in Indian Grand Strategy

Why India needs a techno-strategic doctrine

Pranay Kotasthane

Five Paradoxes in India’s Grand Strategy

India’s Strategic Choices: Constrained and Getting Worse

Rajesh Rajagopalan

Diplomatic History

Kashmir Princess: An Indian aircraft and the plot to kill Zhou Enlai

Discovery of a Harappan Settlement in Jaisalmer

Jeewan Singh Kharakwal, Tamegh Panwar, Ravindra Devra

The Legend of the Marut, India’s First Indigenous Jet Fighter

Sanjeet Kashyap, Kirti Singh

Blurred Cartographies: Hadramis, Siddis and Translocal Identities in Hyderabad

The Past Behind the Scenes: Narayani Basu – A Profile

From Clipper to Combat: The Story of HAL

Muhammed Kunhi, Junjun Sharma Pathak

Notebook

Notables

India’s World

The End of Assumed American Superiority

Covering India’s World: An MEA beat reporter remembers

Suhasini Haidar

Reporting India-Pakistan: Smoke, Mirrors, and the Power of Narratives

Theory

The Rise of Primacy: Theorising the Geopolitics of “America First”

Why Might isn’t Right: The Moral Dimensions of Classical Realism in the Work of Thucydides

Classic Strategy: What to Remember when Reading Kautilya’s Arthashastra

Is IR Theory Useful For Policy?

From backyard to expanse: Theorising India’s approaches to South Asia

Joys of theory

China

For China, Age is More than a Number

Indian Democracy and the Package deal with China

Sidharth Raimedhi

Harmony means hierarchy: Lifting the veil on China’s global community rhetoric

The Moving Needle of China’s Wolf Warrior Diplomacy

China’s ‘National Rejuvenation’ v/s MAGA

The Rise of China’s Manufacturing Industry as the World’s Factory

Arindam Goswami

Culture

F.N. Souza and The Last Supper: Religion Reimagined.

Jonathan Koshy Verghese

The Shifting Sands of Migration and Memory: The Indo-Gulf Story in Cinema

Terror at the Turn of the Millennium: India’s tryst with Global Jihad

Indian Yellow: How science, art, and Empire fashioned the story of a pigment

Jonathan Koshy Verghese

From Kapurthala to Coachella: The rise and rise of Punjabi pop

Suanshu Khurana

The Rebel Star: A Profile of Diljit Dosanjh

Middle East

Growing Apart? Why Pakistan Still Refuses to Recognise Israel

From Escalation to Ceasefire: Ambassador Navtej Sarna on the Iran-Israel-U.S. Crisis and the Geopolitics of The Middle East

Mahrukh Chaudhry

US-Israel Strikes on Iran: Ambassador Akbaruddin on Nuclear Talks, Legality, and India’s Interests

America Bombs Iran, But Is it Legal?

From Gaza to Tehran: Israel’s Expanding War in the Middle East

Deepika Saraswat

A Forever War? What the “Doomsday Clock” Signals in Tehran

Khinvraj Jangid

Folio

Reading the Writer: Avinash Paliwal

Sukanya Sharma, Bashir Ali Abbas

Reading the Writer: T.V. Paul

A.S. Bhasin, ‘The Diplomat’s Historian’

Reading the Writer:Dhruva Jaishankar

Sidharth Raimedhi

Reading The Writer: Prof. SD Muni

– Book Reviews

Breaking the Mould: Reimagining India’s Economic Future

The Golden Road: How Ancient India Transformed the World

Kathmandu Chronicle: Reclaiming India-Nepal Relations

Prisoners of Geography: Ten Maps That Tell You Everything You Need to Know About Global Politics

The Contest for the Indian Ocean: And the Making of a New World Order by Darshana Baruah

Dilip Sinha’s Imperial Games in Tibet

India’s Closest Strategic Partners by Sreeram Chaulia

How Sanctions Work: Iran and the Impact of Economic Warfare by Narges Bajoghli, Vali Nasr, Djavad Salehi-Isfahani, and Ali Vaez

The Nehru Years by Swapna Kona Nayudu

Original Sin by Stanly Johny

Junjun Sharma Pathak

British India and the Persian Gulf: The Inheritance of History: A Review

Also Notables

India’s World

Indus Basin Uninterrupted by Uttam Kumar Sinha

Nishica Choudhary

Spying In South Asia: Britain, the United States, and India’s Secret Cold War by Paul M. McGarr

Strategy and Grand Strategy by Joshua Rovner

Sanjeet Kashyap

Fortune Seekers: A Business History of the Nattukottai Chettiars by Raman Mahadevan

Junjun Sharma Pathak

Indira Gandhi and the Years that Transformed India By Srinath Raghavan

Abhinandan Kumar

The Once and Future World Order: Why Global Civilisation Will Survive the Decline of the West By Amitav Acharya

Shattered Lands: Five Partitions and the Making of Modern Asia By Sam Dalrymple

A Man for All Seasons: The Life of K.M. Panikkar By Narayani Basu

Indian Parliament: Shaping Foreign Policy By K V Prasad

Notables

India’s World

A Small State’s Guide to Influence in World Politics (2022), By Tom Long

AI, Automation, and War: The Rise of a Military-Tech Complex (2025), By Anthony King

Vajpayee: The Ascent of the Hindu Right 1924-1977 (2023), and, Believer’s Dilemma: Vajpayee and the Hindu Right’s Path to Power 1977-2018 (2025), By Abhishek Choudhary

The World According to Military Targeting (2025), By Erik Reichborn-Kjennerud

The New World: 21st Century Global Order and India (2025), By Ram Madhav

The Silent Enemy: Non-Traditional Challenges to National Security (2025), By Arvind Gupta and Rajesh Singh

Tibet

The Dalai Lama, Mahabodhi, and India’s Buddhist Diplomacy

Satvik Pendyala

India must endorse the Dalai Lama’s statement on his succession

Balancing Faith and Geopolitics: Amitabh Mathur on Tibet’s Future and the Legacy of the Dalai Lamas

Junjun Sharma Pathak

Democracy in Exile: The Uncertain Fate of the Tibetan People

Law & Foreign Policy

Mainstreaming International Law in Indian Foreign Policy

Prabhash Ranjan

Gender

The Unravelling of Feminist Foreign Policy in Europe

Garima Shrivastava

Why India needs a Feminist Foreign Policy, Now

Tishya Khillare

The Last Word

Reforming Defence Production: Faster and Deeper

Beyond the Summer of Humiliation: A Resilient Europe

Beyond India’s Trump Trauma

India and The Middle East: The Great Inversion

India in its periphery

The Many Splendored World