As for its potential as a major power, India is a critical bulwark against the inexorable growth of Chinese capabilities and assertiveness. India under Indira Gandhi was not a key global player during the Cold War. In contrast, given its substantial economic and military capacities, Modi’s India is likely to remain central to the two germinating networks that, in addition to U.S. power, seek to persuade China to be more amenable to a negotiated world order. The first of these is the military-strategic network represented by the interlinked set of U.S.-led alliances and the looser strategic partnerships represented by, among others, the U.S.-India and India-Japan bilateral relationships, the U.S.-Japan-India triangle and, with Australia, the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue. The second is the economic web beginning to bring the same states together to challenge China’s Belt and Road Initiative by developing new investment frameworks such as the Japan-led Partnership for Quality Infrastructure and the U.S.-initiated Blue Dot Network; and the effort to build new supply chains that reduce global economic dependence on China.   

The Biden administration’s policy toward India will need to steer between these two dimensions of the uncertain world order. Should it press India to be more democratic or should it adopt a more circumspect persuasive approach and wait till Indian politics plays itself out into a less troubling future? Too much pressure may cause Modi’s India to try and chart its own course, which in turn may weaken the networks that both, along with Japan and others, are currently trying to build. On the other hand, maintaining a studious silence about the precipitous decline of liberal norms in India would align the United States with the forces of global illiberalism. The task that lies ahead for the Biden administration as it negotiates these shoals will require extraordinarily deft maneuvering.  

Sumit Ganguly is a Distinguished Professor of Political Science and holds the Rabindranath Tagore Chair in Indian Cultures and Civilizations at Indiana University, Bloomington.

Dr. Rajesh Basrur is a senior fellow with the South Asia Program at the Rajaratnam School of International Studies at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore.

Image: Reuters