Evolution of India's foreign policy

Story hook

It is September 1961, Belgrade. Jawaharlal Nehru stands beside Josip Broz Tito of Yugoslavia, Gamal Abdel Nasser of Egypt, Sukarno of Indonesia and Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana — the five founding fathers of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM). They declare that decolonised, newly independent nations refuse to be forced into the US-led NATO bloc or the Soviet-led Warsaw Pact. India will chart its own moral, autonomous, anti-colonial path. The Cold War's "blocs" have no purchase on the Subcontinent.

Now fast-forward 64 years. It is 22 October 2024. Prime Minister Narendra Modi lands at Kazan, Russia for the 16th BRICS Summit. In a single week he has met Xi Jinping (China — first since 2019), Vladimir Putin (Russia — fifth visit), and held a separate Quad Leaders' Summit with Biden, Kishida and Albanese at Wilmington just weeks earlier. India buys discounted Russian Urals crude, French Rafale jets, American MQ-9B Sea Guardian drones, and Israeli Heron UAVs — all at once. India presides over G20 New Delhi 2023 while hosting the Voice of the Global South Summit.

This is multi-alignment — sometimes called strategic autonomy 2.0. It rests on three pillars: (i) issue-based coalitions, not permanent blocs, (ii) strategic autonomy — no foreign veto on Indian decisions, and (iii) integration into the global economy while preserving political independence. S. Jaishankar captured it in his 2020 book The India Way: "Engage America, Manage China, Cultivate Europe, Reassure Russia, Bring in Japan, Draw Neighbours in, Extend the Neighbourhood, Expand traditional constituencies of support."

For UPSC, the evolution of India's foreign policy is a Mains GS-II staple — it is the lens through which every bilateral and multilateral chapter is read.

Why this matters for UPSC

The evolution of Indian foreign policy is asked in almost every Mains GS-II paper as either a direct question ("Discuss the shift from Non-Alignment to Multi-Alignment") or as an analytical framework for bilateral questions (India-US, India-Russia, India-China). Prelims testing has been limited to dates of NAM summits, Panchsheel principles and Look East / Act East chronology. Interview boards probe the analytical and value-laden choices behind multi-alignment — "Is NAM still relevant?", "Has India abandoned its moral foreign policy?", "Can India lead the Global South?"