Harsh Vardhan Shringla is a Member of Parliament and former Foreign Secretary of India.

Manjeet Kripalani is the Executuve Director at Gateway House. 

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For decades, the digital world operated under a silent consensus: Silicon Valley provided the code, and the rest of the world provided the data. But as artificial intelligence (AI) evolves from a convenient novelty into the very nervous system of national governance, that era of technological dependence is reaching a volatile end.

In New Delhi, the conversation has shifted from “digital adoption” to “digital swaraj“—a demand for absolute technological self-reliance. The national discourse is shifting from data sovereignty to a more expansive technological sovereignty. The urgency of this shift was laid bare earlier this month with the release of Mythos AI in the U.S. in April this year.

Developed by Anthropic, Mythos is not just another chatbot; it is an autonomous cybersecurity sentinel capable of identifying “zero-day” vulnerabilities across entire operating systems without human intervention. While its creators champion it as a defensive breakthrough, for India, it represents a systemic digital threat.

When an external entity holds a “master key” to global software vulnerabilities, a nation’s financial and critical infrastructure is only as secure as a foreign corporation’s goodwill.

India’s response is rooted in its unique Digital Public Infrastructure (DPI). Unlike the closed ecosystems of the West or the state-monitored walls of China, India’s “India Stack”—comprising Aadhaar, UPI, Direct Benefit Transfers, and the newer ONDC—treats technology as a public good. This foundation is now being leveraged to build a “Sovereign AI” stack. According to a recent KPMG report (2026),^[1] India is developing a national 38,000-GPU compute pool and indigenous 2nm chip designs to ensure that the “brains” of its AI do not reside on foreign servers.

India’s farsighted goal is a hybrid model where global innovation meets local control, where interoperable technologies meet local needs, and where globally standardised digital products and services meet domestic laws and customs. If proved robust and reliable, it can be a model for many countries of the Global South that fall between the U.S. private structures and the Chinese state-led ones.

This infrastructure is being fortified by a sophisticated new legal architecture. The Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2024, safeguards the privacy and data of Indians. The IT Rules (Amendment) of February 2026 represents a decisive break from “intermediary neutrality”. a legal and technical principle that treats online service providers (such as search engines and social media platforms) as passive conduits, not responsible for the content uploaded by their users, provided they do not initiate transmission, select the recipient, or modify the information. This is also called the ‘safe harbour’ protection under the IT Act, 2000, which ensures that platforms are not treated as publishers or speakers of third-party content.^[2]

The law now mandates a three-hour takedown window for AI-generated misinformation and requires “traceability metadata” for all synthetically generated content. This is a vast improvement over the previous 36-hour window for social media platforms to remove unlawful content (on grounds such as national security, public order, or decency) after ‘actual knowledge’ of it was received.^[3]

Slashing the response time for deepfakes by 92% – which are still actively proliferating in India due to a massive surge in the technical sophistication of AI-generated content reaching millions of social media users within minutes after being uploaded – will give respite to victims of malicious digital content.^[4] Even with a mandated 3-hour takedown window, the damage from online viral velocity is often swift and severe.

India is asserting that its digital borders are as real – and as defensible – as its physical ones. India’s DPI is designed to counter private AI architectures by shifting the balance of power from proprietary, closed-loop systems to open, interoperable, and citizen-centric frameworks. While private AI architectures often rely on data monopolies and vendor lock-in, the DPI model aims to democratise technology by providing shared building blocks that anyone can use to innovate.

India’s ambitions of being the provider of alternative solutions from Big Tech (whose solutions may not be in congruence with the priorities of developing countries) extend beyond its own borders. At the India AI Impact Summit 2026, the message to the Global South was clear: you no longer have to choose between “digital colonisation” and digital isolation. By offering its DPI and low-cost AI models to over 45 countries, India is positioning itself as the “provider of choice” for nations that want to modernise without surrendering their data sovereignty to trillion-dollar tech giants.

The path forward is not about isolationism but about algorithmic accountability. For India, Sovereign AI is not merely a technical milestone; it is the ultimate safeguard of national interest in an age where the greatest weapon is not a missile but a line of code.

Ashish Bharadwaj is the Distinguished Fellow for Law and Education, Gateway House.

This article was exclusively written for Gateway House: Indian Council on Global Relations. You can read more exclusive content here.

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© Copyright 2026 Gateway House: Indian Council on Global Relations. All rights reserved. Any unauthorised copying or reproduction is strictly prohibited.

[1] KPMG International (2026): “Sovereign AI and National Security: Strengthening autonomy in critical systems.”

[2] Several countries are in various stages of legislation that makes platforms pay for the content they take from publishers. In May 2026, Australia’s News Bargaining Incentive becomes law, forcing platforms to pay Australian news publishers. Brazil is at the forefront of the movement to balance the rights of content creators and AI developers; it has compensation mechanisms in its legislative bill. The EU AI Act will be implemented in August, focusing on transparency and identifying AI systems that are high risk. India is seriously considering the payment model. It is mindful to balance the need for locally relevant data to train Indian AI models against pressure from the creative and news industries to be paid for providing data used to train LLMs.

[3] Categories of highly sensitive content, such as non-consensual intimate imagery and victim-centric complaints, had a faster mandated removal time of 24 hours.

[4] The speed of regulation is currently being outpaced by the volume of creation. Women are increasingly becoming victims of deepfakes and other forms of technology-facilitated digital violence.

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India needs a multipolar Asia with a multipolar world. The challenge is how to secure this vital goal. India and the Rebalancing of Asia by C Raja Mohan, a leading scholar of Asian geopolitics and India’s foreign policy, offers a complex analysis of the shifting political, economic, military, and technological balance in Asia. Well-researched yet written in simple language, it avoids technical jargon. But the reader must pay close attention to the narrative to absorb the layered explanation of how evolving great-power relations affect India, the latter’s response to these changes, and its future options. The author’s central endeavour is to present a sophisticated understanding of U.S.-China and India-China relations. It must have been a challenging task, as the text was probably finalised in early 2025. Soon thereafter, the Trump administration 2.0 began introducing substantive changes to its approach to the world and to the two Asian powers. A year later, the direction and effects of these changes are somewhat clearer, but not to the extent that one can be confident about what to expect in the next three years! In crafting this volume, Raja Mohan has thus aimed at a constantly moving target.

In five tightly written chapters, the author presents his thesis logically. The introduction defines the region of his attention – Asia and the Indo-Pacific, used interchangeably. He finds a clever middle ground between the Indian and U.S. definitions of the Indo-Pacific by identifying it as a region that includes India and East Asia, as well as the waters off this landmass in the Pacific and Indian Oceans. Still, he excludes Central Asia, the Middle East, and Africa. Most Indo-Pacific scholars can live with this realistic definition.

The first chapter unpacks the major transitions since the British Raj. As Great Britain called the shots from Suez to Singapore, colonial India served as a strong centre in Asia, promoting British imperial interests as well as those of the undivided Indian subcontinent. Following independence and partition, this changed dramatically. Surprisingly, the author sees little rationale behind independent India’s foreign policy and Asia policy, anchored as they were in the Bandung Principles and the dynamics of the Non-Aligned Movement. Nehru’s ‘political romanticism’ towards China comes under critical scrutiny, without reference to India’s multiple vulnerabilities at the time. This argument triggered a passionate articulation of serious dissent by a former Foreign Secretary at the book’s launch in New Delhi.

The second and third chapters examine the China challenge and the U.S. partnership, respectively, tracing the trajectories of India-China and India-U.S. relations. The two Asian nations were at parity in development at one juncture, but China’s decisive win in the race altered the power dynamics between them. Their differences in four areas – border dispute, South Asia, the Indian Ocean, and the multilateral arena – deepened the divide, ensuring “Delhi’s active engagement in a rivalry with Beijing on all these fronts”. As for the U.S., the focus has been on the remarkable progress in strengthening strategic ties with India, beginning with President George W. Bush’s second term. Bipartisan support in both nations drove this consistent trend in the next two decades, despite occasional setbacks.

A fascinating feature is the clinical examination of the second Trump administration’s attempts to review the U.S.’s relations with China and India and how this might influence the dynamics between the U.S., India, and China. Critical strategic and economic factors that draw the U.S. and India closer together are well known. So are the underlying reasons behind the persistence of the U.S. -China and India-China rivalry. The author refers to confusion and anxiety created by Trump 2.0 not only in India but also in Asia. But he reiterates his view that, despite concerns that Trump might make up with China, “there is a recognition that the answer must be (India) doing more with Washington.”

The last two chapters explore regional dynamics and India’s role as a balancer in Asia. On the India-Russia equation, his judgment seems rather harsh: that relations between India and Russia have become “less significant” as India has strengthened ties with the U.S. Other scholars and former diplomats hold that fluctuations in the U.S. approach towards India will ensure that a strong strategic relationship with Russia endures. Those with experience in China might also argue that India would continue to ‘manage China’ without being locked into permanent hostility or an overly trusting friendship.

The book’s last section is insightful. It envisages India’s return to the centre of Asia, a throwback to colonial times, but with fundamental differences. In the great triangle of the U.S., China, and India, the two powers’ bilateral relations with China are “now structural and not amenable to early resolution”. His advice for India is to develop “a dynamic policy of triangular engagement with Washington and Beijing”, which should not be too difficult to achieve. However, in the backdrop of severely strained India-U.S. relations over tariffs, Russian oil, trade deals, the Pakistan and China policies of the U.S., Gaza, and the U.S.-Israeli war against Iran, South Block finds the going quite challenging.

Finally, India’s five Asian challenges result from a deep reflection. The last-mentioned challenge is that India needs to rein in “hyper-nationalism and xenophobia” to play a pivotal role in a diversity-laden Asia. India’s journey from being more than a middle power to an emerging great power will require greater hard power, diplomatic creativity, economic vitality, and national consensus at home.

In sum, the reader, like this reviewer, may be inclined to disagree with the author on some issues and yet ready to appreciate this work of sterling scholarship. It should be recommended reading for those desirous of exploring the deeper waters of Asia’s geopolitics.

The post India and the Rebalancing of Asia appeared first on Gateway House.

The assassination of the Defence Minister of Mali by jihadists in a suicide bombing on April 25 was the latest security shock in Africa. The rise of radicalised groups like Al Shabab and Boko Haram and dozens of others loosely connected with Al Qaeda and Islamic State has created security complications for the continent, from Somalia to Nigeria. They have led to military coups overthrowing governments in Niger, Mali, and Burkina Faso, which, in turn, have dissociated themselves from France, their traditional security provider, and withdrawn from the regional Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS). These shifts are unravelling the African Union Peace and Security Architecture^[1] (APSA), set up in 2002 to prevent, manage and resolve crises and conflicts within Africa.

APSA has had few successes. Africa faces over 50 ongoing armed conflicts, with over 35 million people displaced. Major hotspots include the Sudanese civil war, violence in the eastern Congo, and insurgencies across the Sahel – Mali, Burkina Faso, and Niger. Other significant conflicts exist in Somalia, Nigeria, and the Central African Republic.^[2] 

Since 1946, Africa has accounted for nearly a third of international armed conflicts, underscoring its persistent security challenges. In recent decades, conflicts are increasingly internationalised, with external interventions rising sharply from 12 cases (1991–2010) to 27 (2011–2021). The period after 2014 saw a notable surge, peaking in 2015–16.

Total military spending across Africa grew by 8.5% in 2025 from 2024 to an estimated $58.2 billion. Algeria is the largest spender ($25.4 billion), and Nigeria is increasing expenditure by 55% from the previous year to $2.1 billion.^[3]

Why does peace consistently evade Africa, despite having, in the African Union Peace and Security Architecture, the most ambitious regional security governance frameworks in the contemporary international system? APSA, established alongside the transformation of the African Union from the Organization of African Unity, was a decisive normative and institutional shift from the principle of non-interference to that of “non-indifference.”^[4] This evolution reflected Africa’s recognition that sovereignty could no longer serve as a shield for atrocities, unconstitutional changes of government, or state collapse. APSA sought to be a comprehensive framework of institutions, norms, and operational mechanisms for “African solutions to African problems.”^[5]

The core of APSA is the Peace and Security Council (PSC), a standing decision-making body designed to function as Africa’s equivalent of a collective security council. Comprising 15 member states with varying tenure, the PSC is mandated to undertake conflict prevention, authorize peace support operations, impose sanctions, and coordinate post-conflict reconstruction. Its authority is supported by four principal pillars: the Panel of the Wise, the Continental Early Warning System (CEWS), the African Standby Force (ASF), and the Peace Fund. Together, these form a layered architecture that integrates diplomacy, intelligence, military readiness, and financial support.

The Panel of the Wise^[6] is APSA’s preventive diplomacy arm – a proactive action to prevent disputes from arising, and stop existing ones from escalating into violent conflict. It consists of eminent African personalities tasked with mediation, quiet diplomacy, and advisory functions – but without enforcement authority. That hobbles its active efforts in electoral mediation and conflict de-escalation efforts in countries such as Kenya and Burkina Faso. The Panel of the Wise consists of five respected African personalities tasked with advising the PSC and the AU Chairperson. It runs parallel to the African Forum for Former African Heads of State and Government^[7] which leverages the expertise of former leaders to support current governance, conflict resolution, and development initiatives across the continent.. Individual leaders like Thabo Mbeki, through his eponymous foundation and Olusegun Obasanjo, through his non-profit African Leadership Forum for young leaders, have been individually active. These have certainly contributed to embedding a culture of preventive engagement within African conflict management practices.

Other entities of APSA, like the Continental Early Warning System to anticipate and mitigate conflicts before escalation, and the Africa Standby Force (ASF) with five regional standby-brigades have uneven efficacy, limiting their transformative potential.

The ASF struggles with issues of readiness, interoperability, logistics, and political authorization. Although ad hoc coalitions such as the Multinational Joint Task Force against Boko Haram and the G5 Sahel Joint Force have demonstrated Africa’s willingness to act, they have often operated outside the formal ASF framework, highlighting both flexibility and institutional weakness. When in 2017 Mozambique faced insurgency in Cabo Delgado, the SADC ASF took a long time to be ready. Instead, Rwandan troops came and quelled the insurgency at the French behest.

There have been successes, for sure, over the past two decades. APSA has significantly strengthened Africa’s capacity for peace support operations, as seen in missions in Somalia (AMISOM/ATMIS), the Central African Republic, and Sudan. These interventions underscore the normative shift toward proactive engagement and collective responsibility. APSA has deepened coordination between the AU and RECs, creating a multi-layered security governance system that reflects Africa’s regional diversity.

However, a central challenge for APSA is financial dependency. Despite the establishment of the $610 million Peace Fund, the architecture has relied heavily on external donors, particularly the European Union, for operational and administrative costs. This undermines African ownership and constrains strategic autonomy. Efforts to enhance financial self-reliance, including the AU’s 0.2% import levy on all imports from outside Africa, have progressed slowly and unevenly.

The “Silencing the Guns” initiative, the flagship project of the AU’s Agenda 2063, encapsulates APSA’s long-term ambition to end violent conflict on the continent. Yet, the outcomes of this 2013 initiative have fallen short of expectations. While some conflicts have de-escalated, new and complex threats, such as violent extremism in the Sahel, insurgencies in Mozambique, and persistent instability in Libya and Sudan, have proliferated. The changing nature of conflict, characterised by non-state actors, transnational networks, and climate-related pressures, has tested APSA’s largely state-centric design.

A critical issue has been the gap between normative ambition and political will. The effectiveness of APSA mechanisms often depends on consensus among member states, which is not always forthcoming. Divergent national interests, concerns about sovereignty, and varying levels of commitment have frequently delayed or diluted responses. This has been particularly evident in situations requiring rapid intervention or sanctions against member states.

Despite these challenges, APSA does its best. Its greatest success lies perhaps not in resolving all conflicts, but in creating a framework within which African actors can collectively address security challenges. The architecture has normalized intervention in cases of grave circumstances and has elevated peace and security as central pillars of continental integration at least as aspirations.

Strengthening APSA will require addressing structural weaknesses. Enhancing the operational readiness of the ASF, bridging the early warning-early action gap, and ensuring sustainable financing are critical priorities. Equally important is adapting the architecture to emerging threats, including cyber insecurity, maritime piracy, and climate-induced conflict.

Can India play a positive role in this significant African effort? Certainly. As a long-standing partner of Africa and a major contributor to United Nations peacekeeping operations, India is well-positioned to support APSA. At the Fourth India-Africa Forum Summit to be held on May 28-31, India can announce assistance to APSA for capacity-building in training, logistics, and technology for early warning systems. India-Africa defence industrial cooperation, particularly in affordable equipment and maintenance capabilities tailored to African conditions and expanding cooperation in maritime security, counter-terrorism, and cyber resilience, will align with APSA’s evolving needs. Importantly, India’s Harambee development partnership model, emphasizing local ownership and demand-driven assistance, resonates with APSA’s foundational principle of African-led solutions.

In this way, India can be a catalyst in enhancing APSA’s transformation of Africa’s approach to peace and security. On its part, Africa through APSA must consolidate the gains, overcome persistent constraints, and better manage the rapidly changing security landscape.

Gurjit Singh is a former Indian Ambassador to Germany and author of The Durian Flavour: India, ASEAN and the Act East Policy. He is currently promoting the impact investment movement for implementing SDGs in Africa.

This article was exclusively written for Gateway House: Indian Council on Global Relations. You can read more exclusive content here.

Support our work here.

For permission to republish, please contact outreach@gatewayhouse.in

©Copyright 2026 Gateway House: Indian Council on Global Relations. All rights reserved. Any unauthorised copying or reproduction is strictly prohibited.

References: 

[1] https://www.peaceau.org/uploads/african-peace-and-security-architecture-apsa-final.pdf

[2] Ten African Security Trends from 2025, Africa Center for Strategic Studies, 17 December 2025, https://africacenter.org/spotlight/2025-security-trends-graphics-sudan-sahel-nigeria-somalia-drones-china/#:~:text=A%20sweeping%20al%20Shabaab%20offensive%20across%20much,support%20operation%2C%20and%20mitigate%20regional%20geopolitical%20competition.

[3] SIPRI Military Expenditure Database SIPRI, 27 April 2026, https://www.sipri.org/databases/milex

[4] Paul Williams, From Non-Intervention to Non-Indifference: The Origins and Development of the African Union’s Security Culture,   April 2007  African Affairs 106(423), https://www.researchgate.net/publication/31064640_From_Non-Intervention_to_Non-Indifference_The_Origins_and_Development_of_the_African_Union’s_Security_Culture

[5] Bewuketu Dires Gardachew, The African Peace and Security Architecture as a Tool for the Maintenance of Peace and Security. RUDN Journal of Public Administration 7(4):322-333, December 2020, https://www.researchgate.net/publication/347313635_The_African_Peace_and_Security_Architecture_as_a_Tool_for_the_Maintenance_of_Peace_and_Security_Part_2

[6] Panel of the Wise (PoW), AU, 24 April 2018, https://www.peaceau.org/en/article/panel-of-the-wise

[7] The Africa Forum, https://africaforum.org/about/

[8] The Continental Early Warning System (CEWS), AU, 15 May 2018, https://www.peaceau.org/en/article/the-continental-early-warning-system

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Once the epicenter of one of the largest oil booms in American history, Smackover, a tiny, rural town in southern Arkansas, could soon find itself at the heart of the clean energy revolution — powered not by oil, but by the critical mineral lithium.

Located in one of the poorest areas of the U.S., Smackover and surrounding communities in south Arkansas are above the Smackover Formation, an ancient limestone aquifer that stretches underground from Florida through Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana and southwest Arkansas to eastern parts of Texas.

Thousands moved to the boom town of Smackover in the 1920s to get rich off vast reserves of black gold nearby.^[1]  A century later, lithium prospectors have already packed their bags.

The Smackover Formation passes under much of the Southern U.S. (Credit: Dyman, T.S., and Condon, S.M., Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons)

Portions of the Smackover Formation in south Arkansas and east Texas hold vast reserves of lithium — the critical mineral powering electric vehicles, energy storage systems, and data centres. A 2024 U.S. Geological Survey study estimated between 5 and 19 million metric tonnes of lithium in underground brine reserves in southern Arkansas alone — with even the low-end figure exceeding nine times the International Energy Agency’s projected global car battery demand for 2030.^[2] If successfully tapped, those reserves could drastically reduce America’s dependence on China, the world’s largest lithium refiner and producer of lithium-ion batteries.

“The world needs Arkansas and needs Smackover [lithium extraction] to work,” Simon Moores, managing director of Benchmark Mineral Intelligence, said during the annual Arkansas Lithium Innovation Summit last October in Little Rock, the state capital. “The exciting thing about here is there are not many resources in the world that can actually increase lithium output in these increments.” ^[3]

Much of the Smackover Formation’s promise for lithium production hinges on whether the burgeoning industry there proves commercially viable, whether domestic supply chains can be built out, and whether new extraction technologies now being tested can deliver battery-grade lithium at scale.

Policymakers in India would be wise to follow developments closely. While some hype surrounds the Smackover’s potential as a major player in global lithium supply chains,^[4] it represents an evolving case study worth tracking — particularly as India introduces new laws to encourage private-sector investment in domestic mineral exploration and pursues international cooperation in critical minerals.^[5] Certainly KABIL, the government backed joint venture tasked with forging overseas critical mineral deals for India, might find inspiration.^[6]

An overview of the Smackover Formation, the companies involved in lithium extraction in south Arkansas, the policies supporting the industry’s growth, the technology ecosystem, and the challenges, is a worthwhile study.

The Smackover: A history of resource extraction

The Smackover Formation has a long history of resource extraction. Discovery of a sizeable oil field near the town of Smackover in the 1920s resulted in an oil boom, with the region becoming the leading producer of oil in the world by 1925. Since then, oil and gas have been drilled from Arkansas and neighboring states, including Louisiana and Texas, for decades. Oil and gas producers also discovered that brine waters, a byproduct of oil and gas extraction, were a valuable source of bromine, a versatile chemical compound used for flame retardants, water treatment, pharmaceuticals, and various other industries. The land surrounding the town of Smackover still produces a large percentage of the world’s commercially available bromine today.^[7]

But those bromine-rich brine waters also contain other minerals, including lithium, and in some areas around Arkansas and east Texas, high concentrations of it. Interest in extracting lithium from Smackover brine started about two decades ago and increased as global demand for powerful battery technologies has exploded. New lithium extraction technologies have also emerged and the U.S., as well as many other countries, now view securing a domestic supply of critical minerals as not just a matter of convenience, but also a matter of national security,^[8] a stabilising factor as new funding sources and favorable policy updates mitigate risk in the highly volatile sector.

The Smackover Formation is not the only new region for lithium mining in the U.S.

In Nevada, the Thacker Pass project, a joint venture between Canada’s Lithium Americas and General Motors, is advancing, with phase one completion sometime in 2027.^[9] Upon the completion of the first phase, Thacker Pass is expected to produce 40,000 tonnes of battery-quality lithium carbonate annually. Phase two will produce double that amount. U.S. automaker General Motors has signed an offtake agreement of production volumes from phase one for 20 years and about 40 percent of phase two production volumes for 20 years. The project also received a $2 billion loan from the U.S. Department of Energy to finance the first phase.^[10]

Construction at the Thacker Pass lithium mine in Nevada (Credit: Lithium Americas)

Completion of the first phase of the Thacker Pass project has been a long time coming. There were multiple, lengthy delays involving stakeholder opposition to the mine, which required layers of state and federal permits to even begin construction. Legal battles from environmental and tribal groups halted forward movement for years – a roadblock to Lithium Americas’ ability to de-risk the project and to secure financing.^[11]

From brine to battery: policy foundations in the Smackover

One of the value propositions for companies developing lithium extraction projects in the south Arkansas portion of the Smackover Formation is that pieces of the regulatory framework are already in place from the bromine industry.

That existing experience and permitting structure has streamlined the development of the lithium business. The average time to bring a new mine into operation in the U.S. is almost 30 years, which, behind Zambia, is the second longest mine development time in the world, according to a 2024 report from S&P Global Market Intelligence.^[12] Litigation risks in the U.S., as referenced with the Thacker Project, “may explain why exploration budgets committed by investors to Canada and Australia [mining projects] over the last 15 years have been 81 percent and 57 percent higher than to the U.S.,” the S&P Global report said.^[13] (State and federal lawmakers are proposing or passing a range of new laws that would expedite permitting requirements.)^[14]

“We have a stable, proven, predictable regulatory and statutory framework in Arkansas and a history and familiarity with the production process used to produce lithium based on the fact  that it is almost the same extraction process that we have been using for bromine from the same source,” Arkansas Secretary of Energy and Environment Shane Khoury said during a 2025 interview. “The Smackover Formation exists in all these states, but we are the only state that has been producing brine from that formation. Companies [operating in south Arkansas] could see the statutes and the production history and have experience with us regulating this resource in the past. Other states frankly just don’t have that.”^[15]

Indeed, some companies with a long operating history in the Smackover Formation are pivoting toward lithium. Albemarle Corporation, headquartered in Charlotte, North Carolina, has produced bromine from brine in southern Arkansas since the 1960s. The company controls extensive acreage and infrastructure in the region and, in recent years, has begun piloting direct lithium extraction technologies at its facilities near Magnolia, Arkansas. Direct lithium extraction, or DLE, refers to a group of emerging technologies designed to extract lithium from brines more selectively and potentially more efficiently than traditional methods.^[16] It’s being tested for commercial viability in the Smackover Formation not only by Albermarle but also other major energy players, including ExxonMobil and Chevron.^[17]

Conventional lithium mines, like Albemarle’s Salar de Atacama operation in Chile, one of the largest lithium operations in the world, rely on evaporation ponds to extract lithium. The ponds require huge tracts of land, strain local water resources and take months – or longer – to evaporate so that lithium can be processed from concentrated brine. Hard rock mining, common in Australia, also has limitations, including high costs and environmental damage.[18]

In contrast, DLE involves selectively isolating lithium from brine using chemical or adsorption-based processes. Compared to traditional evaporation methods, DLE has the potential to use less land and water, achieve higher lithium recovery rates, and produce results in days rather than months—though performance varies by technology and project.^[19] Significant challenges remain around scaling, cost, and consistency at commercial levels. Still, because of the high-quality brines in the Smackover Formation, the region has emerged as one of the most important testing grounds for DLE in the U.S.

Smackover Lithium, a joint venture between Canada’s Standard Lithium and Equinor of Norway, is emerging as a key player to watch. In March, Smackover Lithium announced it had signed its first commercial offtake agreement for its $1.45 billion DLE project in southwest Arkansas with Trafigura, the Singapore-based multinational commodities trading group. Smackover Lithium will supply Trafigura with 8,000 tonnes per year for 10 years of battery-quality lithium carbonate when commercial production begins at the southwest Arkansas plant.^[20]

The agreement is a key milestone for the joint venture to reach FID, or final investment decision, a critical stage for mining projects to advance to full-scale construction and deployment. The U.S. Department of Energy also awarded Smackover Lithium’s southwest Arkansas project a $225 million grant for the construction of a processing facility.^[21] Executives said they received “expressions of interest” of more than $1 billion in financing from several export credit agencies, including the Export-Import Bank of the United States and Export Finance of Norway.^[22]

Meet the lithium tech bros

On a balmy early spring day at the end of March 2026, the people of Texarkana, a border town split between Arkansas and Texas, were formally introduced to Teague Egan, a 37-year-old entrepreneur and investor, who didn’t look like he was from around there — because he isn’t.

With a sun-kissed tan, chiseled biceps, perfectly coiffed red hair and dressed in standard Silicon Valley all-black attire, Egan bounded onto an also-all-black stage, complete with a fog machine and custom hype song, for “GET-Lit at Lonestar,” the launch event for the eponymous Project Lonestar, a DLE demonstration plant operated by Energy Exploration Technologies, Inc., or EnergyX — the start-up energy technology company founded by Egan in 2018.

Using EnergyX’s patented “GET-Lit” DLE technology, the Lonestar demonstration plant — on the Texas, not the Arkansas, side of Texarkana — will produce 250 tonnes of battery-grade lithium carbonate from Smackover brine annually, according to the company.[23]

The goal: Commercial expansion of a scalable, low-cost lithium processing supply chain across the U.S.

“We have lost sight of lithium technology innovation in the U.S. China is a decade, maybe two, ahead of us in critical minerals,” Egan said in a flashy “hype” video for Project Lonestar’s launch event on March 26 near Texarkana. “We are really taking a SpaceX-Tesla approach where we have to procure and develop our whole supply chain because it doesn’t exist.”^[24] (Egan was an early investor in Elon Musk’s Tesla, so it’s not a coincidence that he took inspiration for the name of his company, EnergyX, from another one of Musk’s ventures, SpaceX.)

EnergyX, and its tech-bro-esque founder, are worth noting for a couple of reasons.

First, Egan is broadly correct that the U.S. lags China in critical supply chain infrastructure needed to convert lithium—whether from the Smackover Formation or elsewhere—into battery-grade chemicals and downstream components used in EVs, energy storage, and solar systems.

Without that infrastructure, lithium from the Smackover Formation likely would still have to be shipped to China, the world’s dominant lithium refiner and processor. “It just makes no economic sense to pay transport costs to move product to Asia to be processed and then ship it back here for the batteries to be made in [the U.S.],” Standard Lithium CEO David Park said at the 2025 Arkansas Lithium Innovation Summit. “From a producer perspective and from the economics of the supply chain, there is waste in the system we could eliminate.”[25]

Which is where entrepreneurs, like Egan, come in.

“This industry does not change much. It has literally not changed in the past 100 years,” Egan said at the March 26, 2026, “GET-Lit at Lonestar” event, also livestreamed, of course. “There has been zero innovation until now. Everyone told us this was impossible. They said DLE technology does not work. No one will license the technology from you because you can’t prove it. Teague, you’re an outsider.”^[26]

Outsiders might just be the key to success for an American lithium revolution.

Amidst the frenzied rush for the U.S. to secure its own sources and supply chains of critical minerals, a new batch of start-ups are emerging focused on innovation in mining, a strategic advantage that, according to a February 2026 Council on Foreign Relations report, could enable the U.S. to “leapfrog China’s dominance by scaling disruptive innovation, recovery, and recycling, which is cheaper, cleaner, and faster to deploy today and could help insulate the U.S. from future supply shocks.”^[27]

Arkansas is already moving in this direction.

The Arkansas Lithium Technology Accelerator (ALTA), a partnership between the University of Arkansas, Standard Lithium and an Arkansas-based entrepreneur support organisation, is the first accelerator in the U.S. focused on lithium innovation in American battery supply chains. ALTA accepts cohorts of early-stage and growth-stage companies working on lithium-related technologies, providing access to industry contacts, policymakers, research institutions and investors.^[28] With the assistance of state workforce development grants, Arkansas universities and technical colleges are developing professional training programs to bolster a skilled workforce to support the lithium industry in the Smackover Formation^[29] – if, of course, the industry doesn’t go bust first.

The Smackover Formation, South Korea – and India?

While on his first state visit to India in April 2026, South Korean President Lee Jae Myung sat down for an exclusive interview with the Times of India during which Lee discussed increased cooperation between India and South Korea for the development of critical minerals. “India possesses critical minerals, while Korea has the capabilities to manufacture them into rechargeable batteries, electric vehicles and other advanced products,” Lee said. “This makes our two countries ideal partners for generating synergy. By moving beyond the traditional model of importing raw material and combining Korea’s technology with India’s mining and refining industries, we can work together to establish stable critical mineral supply chains.”^[30]

South Korean companies are already inking deals in the Smackover Formation. In June 2024, ExxonMobil signed a non-binding agreement with South Korean EV battery maker SK On, which has the potential to be a multi-year offtake deal of up to 100,000 tonnes of lithium from ExxonMobil’s first planned project in Arkansas.^[31] SK On operates plants in Georgia and is building more U.S. facilities via joint ventures with Ford Motor Co. and Hyundai Motor Group. ExxonMobil signed a similar agreement with LG Chem, a battery parts maker, in November 2024. LG Chem would use the lithium at its $3.2 billion Tennessee cathode manufacturing facility.^[32] (Also of note, at the end of 2025, Korea Zinc announced – in partnership with the U.S. Department of War and U.S. Department of Commerce – it would build a more than $6 billion critical minerals refinery in Tennessee.)^[33]

India could adapt the logic of U.S.- Korea lithium cooperation by securing upstream resources through overseas partnerships, including with companies in the Smackover Formation, while building domestic midstream refining capacity. By importing raw or semi-processed lithium and converting into battery-grade materials at home, India could reduce its dependence on Chinese processing, capture higher value segments of the supply chain and attract JVs with Korean firms seeking diversification away from China.

Of course, to encourage the development of its own domestic lithium resources as well as new supply chain capacity, India first requires some essential ingredients: a transparent and stable regulatory framework, technical expertise, innovative technologies and critical infrastructure, including accessible logistics hubs and high-capacity, reliable electrical grids. Indian policymakers should keep a close eye on the Smackover Formation as a blueprint.

Lara Farar is a Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) International Affairs Fellow, India. 

This article was exclusively written for Gateway House: Indian Council on Global Relations. You can read more exclusive content here.

Support our work here.

For permission to republish, please contact outreach@gatewayhouse.in

©Copyright 2026 Gateway House: Indian Council on Global Relations. All rights reserved. Any unauthorised copying or reproduction is strictly prohibited. 

[1] “Smackover (Union County).” Encyclopedia of Arkansas. Central Arkansas Library System. Accessed May 5, 2026. https://encyclopediaofarkansas.net/entries/smackover-union-county-1000/.

[2] Knierim, Katherine. “Unlocking Arkansas’ Hidden Treasure: USGS Uses Machine Learning to Show Large Lithium Potential in the Smackover Formation.” U.S. Geological Survey National News Release, October 21, 2024. https://www.usgs.gov/news/national-news-release/unlocking-arkansas-hidden-treasure-usgs-uses-machine-learning-show-large.

[3] Moores, Simon. “Keynote Address: Benchmark Mineral Intelligence – Arkansas Rising.” Lecture presented at the Arkansas Lithium Innovation Summit, Little Rock, AR, October 28, 2025.

[4] Cline, Elizabeth L. “Will Arkansas’s Big Bet on Lithium Benefit All of Us, or Just the Wealthy Few?” Arkansas Times, November 14, 2025. https://arktimes.com/arkansas-blog/2025/11/14/will-arkansass-big-bet-on-lithium-benefit-all-of-us-or-just-the-wealthy-few.

[5] Ministry of Mines, Government of India. National Critical Mineral Mission (NCMM). New Delhi: Ministry of Mines, January 2025. https://mines.gov.in/admin/storage/ckeditor/NCMM_1739251643.pdf.

[6] India, Ministry of Mines. “KABIL Is Exploring Opportunities for Acquisition of Overseas Critical Minerals Assets in Argentina, Australia and Chile.” Press Information Bureau press release, July 31, 2024. https://www.pib.gov.in/PressReleaseIframePage.aspx?PRID=2039606&reg=3&lang=2.

[7] Interstate Oil and Gas Compact Commission. “Arkansas’ Brine Production Business.” Paper presented at the Annual Business Meeting of the Interstate Oil and Gas Compact Commission, 2021. https://oklahoma.gov/content/dam/ok/en/iogcc/documents/abm/2021/brine_paper.pdf.

[8] U.S. Department of State, Office of the Spokesperson. “2026 Critical Minerals Ministerial.” Fact Sheet. February 4, 2026. https://www.state.gov/releases/office-of-the-spokesperson/2026/02/2026-critical-minerals-ministerial.

[9] Lithium Americas Corp. “Thacker Pass: Overview.” Accessed May 5, 2026. https://lithiumamericas.com/thacker-pass/overview/default.aspx.

[10] Lithium Americas Corp. “Thacker Pass Overview Video.” YouTube video. Accessed May 5, 2026. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rfHazRiDmtU.

[11] Alonzo, Amy. “Questions over Water Rights Could Halt Construction at Thacker Pass Lithium Mine.” The Nevada Independent, June 30, 2025. https://thenevadaindependent.com/article/questions-over-water-rights-could-halt-construction-at-thacker-pass-lithium-mine.

[12] Bonakdarpour, Mohsen, Frank Hoffman, and Keerti Rajan. Mine Development Times: The U.S.in Perspective. Prepared for the National Mining Association. New York: S&P Global Market Intelligence, June 2024. https://cdn.ihsmarkit.com/www/pdf/0724/SPGlobal_NMA_DevelopmentTimesUSinPerspective_June_2024.pdf.

[13] Ibid.

[14] Trump, Donald J. Executive Order 14241, “Immediate Measures to Increase American Mineral Production.” March 20, 2025. Federal Register 90, no. 57 (March 25, 2025): 13673. https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/03/immediate-measures-to-increase-american-mineral-production/.

[15] “A Proven, Predictable Framework: Arkansas Energy Chief on the State’s Lithium Advantage.” Lithium Link, accessed May 5, 2026. https://www.lithium-link.com/news/a-proven-predictable-framework-arkansas-energy-chief-on-the-states-lithium-advantage.

[16] Albemarle Corporation. “Albemarle’s Roots Run Deep in Magnolia, Arkansas.” Albemarle News, accessed May 5, 2026. https://www.albemarle.com/global/en/news/albemarles-roots-run-deep-magnolia-arkansas.

[17] “Chevron Makes Move into U.S.Lithium Sector with Acreage Buy.” Reuters, June 17, 2025. https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/chevron-makes-move-into-us-lithium-sector-with-acreage-buy-2025-06-17/.

[18] “Lithium Extraction Methods.” Lithium Harvest Knowledge Base. Accessed May 5, 2026. https://lithiumharvest.com/knowledge/lithium-extraction/lithium-extraction-methods/.

[19] Mousavinezhad, Seyedkamal, Sheida Nili, Ario Fahimi, and Ehsan Vahidi. “Environmental Impact Assessment of Direct Lithium Extraction from Brine Resources: Global Warming Potential, Land Use, Water Consumption, and Charting Sustainable Scenarios.” Science of the Total Environment (2024). https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scitotenv.2024.074382.

[20] Trafigura. “Trafigura Signs Battery-Grade Lithium Carbonate Offtake Agreement with Smackover Lithium.” Press release, 2026. https://www.trafigura.com/news-and-insights/press-releases/2026/trafigura-signs-battery-grade-lithium-carbonate-offtake-agreement-with-smackover-lithium/.

[21] Smackover Lithium. “Arkansas Lithium Project Finalized USD $225 Million Award.” Press release, 2025. https://smackoverlithium.com/newsroom/news-details/2025/Arkansas-Lithium-project-finalized-USD-225-million-award/default.aspx.

[22] Smackover Lithium. “Smackover Lithium Receives Indications of Interest for Over $1 Billion in Project Finance for the South West Arkansas Project.” Press release, 2025. https://smackoverlithium.com/newsroom/news-details/2025/Smackover-Lithium-Receives-Indications-of-Interest-for-Over-1-Billion-in-Project-Finance-for-the-South-West-Arkansas-Project-2025-Re7RUz0ucF/default.aspx.

[23] EnergyX. “American Made Lithium Project: Lonestar.” Press release. Accessed May 5, 2026. https://energyx.com/press-release/american-made-lithium-project-lonestar/.

[24] “EnergyX Lonestar Project Video.” YouTube video. Accessed May 5, 2026. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iqm9K2J99wE.

[25] Park, David. “The Missing Midstream.” Panel discussion at the Arkansas Lithium Innovation Summit, Little Rock, AR, October 28, 2025.

[26] EnergyX. “GET-Lit at Lonestar” Full YouTube livestream video. March 26, 2026. https://www.youtube.com/live/DXdjxQF2WvM.

[27] Crebo-Rediker, Heidi, and Mahnaz Khan. Leapfrogging China’s Critical Minerals Dominance: How Innovation Can Secure U.S. Supply Chains. Council Special Report no. 101. New York: Council on Foreign Relations, February 2026. https://www.cfr.org/reports/leapfrogging-chinas-critical-minerals-dominance.

[28] Venture Center. “ALTA 2 Accelerator.” Accessed May 5, 2026. https://www.venturecenter.co/accelerators/alta-2/.

[29] “Lithium Works Program Offers Pathways to New Industry Jobs.” Lithium Link, accessed May 5, 2026. https://www.lithium-link.com/news/lithium-works-program-offers-pathways-to-new-industry-jobs.

[30] “South Korea Working with India to Secure Hormuz Security; Security of Key Maritime Routes Essential for Survival of Both Nations, President Lee.” Times of India, accessed May 5, 2026. https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/south-korea-working-with-india-to-secure-hormuz-security-of-key-maritime-routes-essential-for-survival-of-both-nations-president-lee/articleshow/130380123.cms.

[31] ExxonMobil. “ExxonMobil, SK Lithium Supply Agreement.” News release, June 25, 2024. https://corporate.exxonmobil.com/news/news-releases/2024/0625_exxonmobil-sk-lithium-supply-agreement.

[32] ExxonMobil. “ExxonMobil and LG Chem Sign MOU for Lithium Offtake.” News release, November 20, 2024. https://corporate.exxonmobil.com/news/news-releases/2024/1120_exxonmobil-and-lg-chem-sign-mou-for-lithium-offtake.

[33] Korea Zinc. “Korea Zinc Partners with the U.S. Department of War and U.S. Department of Commerce to Build a State-of-the-Art Critical Minerals Smelter in the United States with $6.6 Billion of Capital Expenditures.” Press release, December 15, 2025. https://www.koreazinc.co.kr/en/korea-zinc-partners-with-the-u-s-department-of-war-and-u-s-department-of-commerce-to-build-a-state-of-the-art-critical-minerals-smelter-in-the-united-states-with-6-6-billion-of-capital-expenditures/.

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Five Indian states have gone to the polls in April 2026: Assam, Kerala, Tamil Nadu, West Bengal, and Puducherry. They are all important, but by far the most significant election is that of West Bengal, for several reasons.

This crucial border state has been ruled by two regional parties for 45 years: the Communist Party of India for 30 years, and the Trinamool Congress Party for the last 15 years. Their focus was on social engineering, over economic growth. Industry left, talent left. Expectedly, during this period, Bengal’s economic indicators have plummeted. According to a 2026 report by NITI-Aayog, Bengal ranked 16^th of India’s 18 major states, with high debt, low fiscal scores, low revenue and low capital expenditure.^[1][2] Per capita GDP^[3] growth in Bengal is the lowest in the country today.

The tragedy of Bengal is hard to overstate. Bengal in the 1960s was home to one of India’s largest industrial clusters and was the third-largest contributor to India’s newly-independent economy, at 10.5% of total GDP.^[4] The region sits on the prosperous Ganges delta and has been a centre of maritime trade and commerce since ancient times, a thriving entrepôt on the Silk Road, a cultural and knowledge hub, and the capital of the British Raj in India. By 2023-24, the state’s share of national GDP had halved, to 5.6 per cent, leaving it a laggard in a surging India.

The deterioration in Bengal is physically evident. A recent week-long road trip to the poll-bound state showed a physical lack of development, low income, despondency among youth, and a mix of fear and hope in anticipation of the election’s outcome, depending on individual political inclinations. The election seems to have coalesced around one overt issue: that of illegal migrants from Bangladesh, who have been given official documentation and become a vote bank for the state’s ruling Trinamool Congress (TMC) party and whom the opposing Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), in power in Delhi, has urged the Election Commission of India to delete from the electoral rolls through a Special Intensive Revision (SIR). The covert issues are those of jobs for youth and security, especially for women.

At stake in this intense struggle is the 15-year regime of Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee and the TMC, the Bengali notion of ‘independence’ from Delhi’s ‘rule,’ economic integration with the growing Indian economy – and the revival of a critical border state that is India’s connector to its northeast, to its fragile eastern neighbours, and to a vast trading and cultural opportunity with ASEAN.

In north Bengal, the mood is decidedly in favour of the BJP. Himanta Biswa Sarna, the BJP chief minister of neighbouring Assam state, is campaigning in Siliguri, the picturesque and largest city in that region. He has a captive audience, that knows his state, till recently a laggard, is now the fastest growing in India. He tells them he has generated 200,000 jobs and a vote for the BJP in Bengal will surely generate at least that. The TMC rule has driven industry out of Bengal, and welcomed in outsiders – often radicalised – who slip in from the open borders in Fulbari, barely 20 km away from Siliguri, and are treated better than residents. And he reiterates: he is not against Muslims, only illegal migrant Muslims from Bangladesh. This seems to resonate with the crowd. He promises the BJP will bring in hospitals and elite educational institutions.

The issue of jobs and income is grave in Bengal. The northern region, which houses Darjeeling, was famous for its tea and tea estates. India is the world’s second-largest producer of tea after China, and Darjeeling exports half its production. This export industry is now in an ‘existential crisis’ with tea estates neglected and production the lowest in 170 years. Climate change and underinvestment are key reasons, but so is underpaid labour – tea pickers in North Bengal are paid just Rs. 250 a day, compared to a minimum of Rs. 400 a day earned by their counterparts in South India. Bengalis who migrate to Tamil Nadu, and work in the construction industry, are paid up to Rs. 900 a day – a huge differential.

Like most in the northeast, the people are charming, carrying the beauty prevalent in most hill communities. The ubiquitous ‘beauty parlour’ is everywhere. Young women made a respectable living by providing beauty treatments and Bollywood hairdos to young brides, and the village ladies especially, during the famous Durga Puja festivals. The Indian Idol TV show is a top hit – and visiting Mumbai, the glittering city of lights and glamour, is a distant dream, but one close to their hearts. Many of the ladies are graduates – Bengal literacy levels are 73% and female participation in the labour force is reasonably high – but because jobs are hard to come by, self-employment becomes the only recourse. Pradeep Barul, whose wife Mamata runs a beauty ‘parlour’ in the farming village of Pamal Hat in Uttar Dinaspur, says he doubles up as the wedding DJ to complement his wife’s work. In a good month, they can earn Rs. 20,000. They won’t tell who they vote for, but remark cryptically, “We have hope, and we have a target.”

A beauty parlour owned by a local woman in Pamal Hat village

Harsh Shringla, a former foreign secretary of India and ambassador to the U.S. and to Bangladesh, is a native of Darjeeling and has been campaigning for change and for the ruling BJP. He reminds that the impact of Bengal on India’s foreign policy is huge: its proximity to China, has multiple ports, holds the key to sharing the waters of the Teesta River with Bangladesh and trades with Asia. He spends his time explaining the BJP blueprint for Bengal to voters: to bring change (pariborton) to the state’s youth, women, farmers, fisheries, jute, and textiles, and “bring Bengal back into the mainstream of national development.”

South of this region is the voting block of Central Bengal, which has the sharpest contrast of religious diversity. Here, 56% of the electorate is Hindu, and 43% is Muslim, and the TMC is the dominant party. Like other parts of Bengal, the roads are dismal, especially as they are predominantly rural. Crossing from North to South Bengal into the trading hub of Murshidabad requires taking the Farakka Bridge, built along with the famous Farakka Barrage over the Ganges River in 1970. It seems like no maintenance has been done in over 50 years. A new bridge is under construction, with the usual delays holding it back. The shock of seeing poor roads in a country that is rolling out 8 km a day of new highways is jarring.

Roads in Murshidabad

Even more jarring is the crossover into Murshidabad, which was the hub of global trade in the 18^th and 19^th centuries. At its peak it contributed 5% to global GDP, connecting the Mughal and British empires to Europe, Southeast Asia and the Middle East. The area was home to Jagat Seth, a Jain financier and trader who funded the Mughals and the British, as also local kingdoms, and commanded a vast global trading empire. He was often known as the Medici of Asia or the Banker to the World.

Alas, that era has long passed. Murshidabad is a distant memory of itself, with no trade and apparent poverty. In the village of Lalgola, the largely Muslim population is complaining of their vote being taken away by the SIR. While they are angry about their lack of franchise, they are also angry about the lack of development. Sinarul SK is 23, and finishing college still. He says neither his village council leader nor his candidate in the state election has completed cementing the dusty roads of his home. “They keep saying, we will do it – but it never gets done. All they do is talk politics, the development agenda is not forthcoming.” Eventually, he too will have to join his cohort and leave his home in search of a job. He says his peers are in Chennai, working in construction as carpenters, masons and solderers.

In Kolkata lies the final destination of the state election. This is the bastion of Mamata Banjerjee, and it is where her loyalists are concentrated. In the last election, the TMC won 98 seats, and the BJP won just two. The city is in a shambles, and even here, the blue and white paint of the TMC projects, is barely visible. A visit to Presidency University, one of the best in Bengal, which has produced two Nobel Prize winners, is a walk into despondency. Students of STEM feel no differently from their rural counterparts. Kolkata offers no jobs, and even those studying STEM subjects know that they will have to leave home to find work. In her annual budget, Banerjee has allocated Rs. 5,000 crores to madrasa schools, and Rs. 80 crore to science and technology. Young women say they can’t be out on the streets after 6.30pm, given the dismal security for women and the highly publicised rape cases in the state. These students too, see no future in Bengal.

A wall with political slogans at Presidency College, Kolkata

These concerns seem far from the political pitch that Mamata Banerjee and her heir apparent, nephew Abhishek Banerjee, give to their public. Her rallies are full of her die-hard supporters, and as she walks up and down the stage, equating herself with Prime Minister Narendra Modi and bludgeoning his policies, the crowd roars in approval. Her nephew’s show is more staged-managed. Not for him the natural politician’s love of pressing the flesh and plunging into the crowd. He drives up to the dais of his rally, steps onto the long ramp, and gives a lusty talk against the BJP – omitting talk of development and jobs. Once done, he steps down and is carried away in his fleet of dark cars to his next destination.

The BJP has been vigorously campaigning against this force, never failing to remind Bengalis about their great past – and their great future, should they vote for the BJP. The first small power industry in India, Triveni, was set up in Bengal, as was the first auto hub and the first satellite town, Kalyani, in independent India. Those are long gone: in the last year alone, 6,800 companies have left Bengal, frustrated with the extortion and lack of investment – just 1% of the state budget is allocated to business and investment, and most to social welfare schemes – which, too, are not enough to make up for a decent income.

Which way will Bengal vote? Prime Minister Modi is betting on the BJP. He has made eight visits in the last month alone, telling the voters that this time, the vote for Bengal will be a vote for him. His party has brought all its structure and strengths to Bengal, with a war room full of data of Bengal’s diverse communities and their desires and needs. On May 4, the results will be declared: will Bengal continue to keep to itself, or will it move to join its counterparts in the rest of India and reclaim its role as India’s most famous entrepot and trading hub?

Manjeet Kripalani is the Executive Director, Gateway House.

This article was exclusively written for Gateway House: Indian Council on Global Relations. You can read more exclusive content here.

Support our work here.

For permission to republish, please contact outreach@gatewayhouse.in

©Copyright 2026 Gateway House: Indian Council on Global Relations. All rights reserved. Any unauthorised copying or reproduction is strictly prohibited. 

[1] NITI Aayog. Fiscal Health Index 2026. New Delhi: Government of India, 2026. https://niti.gov.in/sites/default/files/2026-03/Fiscal-Health-Index-2026.pdf

[2] NITI Aayog. Macro and Fiscal Landscape of the State of West Bengal. New Delhi: Government of India, 2025. https://niti.gov.in/sites/default/files/2025-07/Macro-and-Fiscal-Landscape-of-the-State-of-West-Bengal-1.pdf p. 7

[3] Per capita GDP is Rs.181,000 or $1,900.

[4] Economic Advisory Council to the Prime Minister. State GDP: A Working Paper. New Delhi: Government of India, 2024. https://eacpm.gov.in/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/State-GDP-Working-Paper_Final.pdf p. 5

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Transcript:

Manjeet Kripalani (MK) – Going back to your time in Tehran, that was a decade ago. What was Iran like then? What was the political mood inside Iran and the outlook for ordinary people?

Ambassador Saurabh Kumar (SK) – I was in Iran in 2015, which was in fact, the year when the nuclear deal, what is commonly known as the JCPOA, had been concluded. There was a lot of optimism in the country. Of course, the deal had not been an easy process of negotiation. It had taken several years. It was a very comprehensive document and a good document, in my opinion. This is not to say that there were not any difficulties. I think implementation of the deal was not an easy process.

One example comes to my mind, which is that Iranians were really looking forward to utilising the money – their money, which was being released under the nuclear deal, to buy some new planes and renew their fleet, because the planes were old, and, in fact, there had been several crashes. Of course, under the deal, they were not permitted to buy American planes, but the deal kind of permitted them to buy airbuses, and there was a lot of enthusiasm to get a good number of airbuses, and the Europeans also were looking forward to that. But then it was discovered that in the airbus, there are parts which are made by Boeing, as a result of which these planes cannot be sold to the Iranians, and the whole initiative fell flat on its face. So this was just one example. There were other examples also of this nature, but overall, there was a great deal of optimism.

Bilaterally, we moved forward in our relationship with Iran during that period on several fronts. On Chabahar port, you know, we made a lot of progress, particularly in terms of equipping the port with cranes and other things, and also in 2018, we signed the first agreement between India Ports Global Limited and the Port and Maritime Organisation of Iran, under which, IPGL ran the port.

I think it was for a period of five years, if I remember correctly. On the International North-South Transport Corridor, we did the first dry run of a container, which, you know, moved out of Mumbai port and went right up through Iran into Russia. CIA opened its office out there, which ultimately had to be bound up when the U.S. withdrew from the deal. And we tried very hard to get an agreement with the Iranians on Farzad-B, the gas field, which you would remember had been discovered by ONGC Videsh Limited. But on that front, we were not successful and negotiations were going on till the time I left Iran.

But, you know, in a sense, the seeds to what we are seeing today were sowed during that period when the Americans withdrew from the deal and things went south from there.

MK – What is your assessment of the current situation, its roots, its causes? Are we in a stalemate now? Who controls the narrative in Iran? The clergy, the IRGC, the diaspora?

SK – We tend to think of Iran as a monolithic political entity. Those who follow Iran or those who have lived in Iran know that there are many stakeholders and each stakeholder has an opinion. And the system is kind of designed to take into account the voices of different stakeholders and then find a balance between these voices. I think structurally, in terms of organisation, I mean, there are many forums in which the synthesis of these voices is done, but the Supreme National Security Council is one of them. And ultimately what the Supreme Leader says is the final decision and that’s the way they go.

So even when the JCPOA, the earlier nuclear deal was being negotiated, there were so many different voices in Iran, but ultimately they came together and the deal was done. I think the situation this time, in a sense, is different because the Supreme Leader, the former Supreme Leader and the top leadership were taken out in the strike by the Americans and the Israelis.

So there is a new setup and, you know, once you have a new setup at the top, I think in any system, you know, to have certain kind of coherence in working would take time. And I think Iranians, in a sense, are going through a very challenging period. There are also reports that the new Supreme Leader, his medical condition is not the best and all these things bring about challenges.

So my sense would be that, I mean, there is nothing new. The traits of the Iranian political setup perhaps are more exaggerated at this point of time than they normally would have.

Now, coming to the present crisis, West Asia is a hugely complex region. I think the roots of the crisis are in the history of Iran, the Palestine issue, the creation of Israel, Iran-U.S. relationship, the revolution which took place in Iran. So, you know, it’s an amalgamation of many things. But as I said, you know, the JCPOA and the nuclear deal had proved one of the core and, or rather the core and central issue in a good place, which is the nuclear issue.

I think at the root of it is Iranian insistence that since they are a signatory to the nuclear non-proliferation treaty, as per the treaty, they have the right to enrich and use uranium for peaceful purposes. The Americans and the Israelis contest that and they question Iran’s nuclear program and whether it is for peaceful purposes or not.

And I think this is in essence where the problem arises. What the JCPOA, the nuclear deal of 2015, had done was a compromise. They had given the Iranian, or rather the agreement had given the Iranian the right to enrich up to, I think, 3.67 percent.

There were a whole range of restrictions which had been put in, including, you know, monitoring, confirmation, very intrusive inspections undertaken by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). So one knew what was happening inside Iran as far as the nuclear program was concerned through the medium of IAEA. And there were restrictions to kind of restrict Iran’s nuclear program.

So once this agreement was done away with, with the Americans pulling out of it, the Iranians started taking incremental steps not to abide by their part of the bargain, because their argument was that they are not getting the benefits which were promised to them under the nuclear deal. So this is the nuclear part of it. The Americans pulled out of the deal, and I think there was a general political opposition to the deal, also on account of the argument which was put forward by the Israelis also, that it is not a comprehensive deal. It is dealing only with the nuclear issue. It is not dealing with Iran’s missiles and ballistic missiles. It is not dealing with aspects like what are called Iran’s proxies and Iran’s call them the resistance group. So, you know, it was felt that, you know, the deal was somewhat limited in being to nuclear and was not a holistic deal. And that was one of the reasons because of which it was pulled out.

Whether there is a stalemate, I think there are several angles through which we can see the present situation. Iran blocked the Strait of Hormuz and the Americans put a blockade so that the Iranian vessels and vessels going to the Iranian ports can’t move through the Strait of Hormuz. So looking through this lens, yes, I think it is a stalemate.

But if you evaluate from the objective point of view, what were the American or the Israeli objectives in this war? I think it was regime change. It was to take care of Iran’s nuclear program, its ballistic missile program and its proxies. So while an argument can be made that the military capabilities of Iran, its missile program has been degraded to a very large extent. We know that they have sufficient stockpiles of missiles, which they have been using.

Similarly, I think while there, again, an argument can be made that there has been a degradation of the proxies, the proxies are very much still active. So in a sense, I think as far as the American objectives were concerned, an argument can be made that these have not been fulfilled.

The Iranian objective was to survive the war and they have. So in a sense, one can make the argument again that Iranians come out of this not completely destroyed and not having surrendered to the Americans. That itself kind of weighs in favor of the Iranians.

And in terms of its economy, its infrastructure, its military capability, the challenges which it was facing as a result of sanctions. I think Iran would have a lot to do as it goes ahead. So this is where we are.

Just a point on the Strait of Hormuz. Now, Iran blocking the Strait of Hormuz was not something which came out of the blue. Iranians have been talking about it. I think in strategic circles, this possibility was always a possibility, but it was a possibility. You know, that possibility as a result of this war became a reality and it’s a tool now. And I think it would require a lot of effort if it does happen to put the genie back to where it came off.

MK – Given that the economy of Iran is flattened and the people, we don’t hear a word about what Iranians are really thinking. Iranians are not the kind of people from other parts of the world that can be put down. These are highly educated people. They have STEM degrees. They’re very clever, but they’ve been remarkably quiet. And it seems that the diaspora is speaking on their behalf, or maybe not, what about them? Are they willing to, if you say that Iran is not going to recover, they will not accept that they can become, you know, as degraded as Myanmar, for instance. What about them?

SK – Let me clarify. I didn’t say that they would not recover. How soon or how slowly they recover would be an outcome of the present conflict. But see, Iranians have been living again under these sanctions for a very long time. Even when I went in 2015, there was optimism because of the nuclear deal. But I left when the mood was pretty pessimistic. And before the nuclear deal, you know, Iran faced challenges at different points of time. Then the economy was under a lot of stress. So having lived for such a long time under the sanctions regime, you know, they have found their own ways and means to survive with the sanctions. Life is not easy, but then Iranians can survive in that environment.

MK – Who are the players in this war? There’s the U.S., there are the Israelis, there are the Gulf states, through which Iran actually, Dubai, where they got some leeway to have some kind of normalcy in the economy. And there’s China, Russia and Pakistan. How are all these people interacting with these external elements?

SK – So the positive thing is that, you know, the active conflict, the active war is not taking place. There is a ceasefire. Diplomacy is being given a chance. Araghchi was two times in Pakistan. He was in Oman. He met some regional leaders while he was there. He traveled to Russia. And I think all these are positive signs.

A proposal, as we all have read in the newspapers, was given to the Americans. And President Trump’s security team deliberated on that. Reports are that President Trump is not happy. But I think, at least I have not seen that the proposal has been rejected. I did read some information that the Americans would be giving the counter proposal to that. So that was on the positive side that, you know, diplomacy is taking place.

These various stakeholders, which you referred to, are engaging with each other. Chinese, I’m sure, through the Pakistanis and otherwise also would be in touch with the Russians, would be in touch with the Iranians, with the Americans.

So in a sense, I think the positive side of the picture is that diplomacy is being given a chance. The negative is that, you know, very wide differences remain. And how these differences are narrowed, I think, would really be a challenge. As a diplomat, I’m an optimist. I think it is not that it cannot be done. But it would require deft diplomacy. Time would need to be given.

So one thing which bothers me is that this desire to get an agreement in a short span of time.

MK – Where do you think it’s going to move? Will there be some kind of arrangement? You said diplomacy is working but what could be the best kind of solution? Not optimum for everybody, but workable.

SK – One thing we’ll have to kind of understand is that, you know, this war would have changed things in a very fundamental way. I think the globe itself, the world itself was seeing very dramatic changes as far as the global order was concerned. This conflict would have only accentuated those changes, but brought in new ones also as far as the West Asia region is concerned.

If we are to think, would the Gulf states be the same after the conflict as they were before? What about their security guarantees? Will there be a haven for peace and prosperity? Or, you know, the risk and threat element would be a lot more. What kind of a state would Iran be once this conflict ends? Where would the U.S. be on the path which it has been pursuing? Would there be any change in the path which Israel has been pursuing and its own threat perceptions within the region? Would they have been assuaged or would they have been enhanced? What would be the great power dynamic within the region? Would there be shifts as far as those things are concerned? What measures would India need to take as far as its security and economic interests are concerned in the region? We have, as all of us know, around 10 million people who were living in the region. This was a region where Indians went for employment. Would that scenario remain or not? And to a very large extent, the answer to some of these questions at least would lie on the end point of this war.

Do we want a regime change? If there is regime change, what kind of a regime change? What kind of state would Iran be? Would it be a failed state or would it be a state on path to recovery under some kind of an arrangement? What kind of security framework would emerge in West Asia? So these are very big questions. I don’t think anybody at this point of time would have an answer to these questions.

But what it does point to is the enormity of the challenge which we face and the need for diplomacy to be given a chance. And regional actors, actors outside, sitting down and trying to work out a security architecture, which is a benefit for all the countries of the region.

Ambassador Saurabh Kumar is a Former Ambassador of India to Iran, European Union, Belgium, and Luxemborg.

Manjeet Kripalani is the Executuve Director at Gateway House. 

This podcast was exclusively recorded for Gateway House: Indian Council on Global Relations. You can explore more exclusive content here.

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The recent two-day visit to Sri Lanka by India’s Vice-President (VP) C. Radhakrishnan (April 19-20) has helped strengthen relations with an important neighbour. It reciprocated the earlier two high-level visits from Sri Lanka: President Anura Kumara Dissanayake in December 2024 and Prime Minister Dr Harini Amarasuriya in October 2025. The tradition of political-level exchanges and engagement continues with Sri Lanka, which enjoys a principal place in India’s Neighbourhood First Policy (NFP) and its vision of MAHASAGAR (‘Mutual And Holistic Advancement for Security and Growth Across Regions’).

In this context, Prime Minister Narendra Modi visited Sri Lanka thrice in the previous decade (in 2014, 2015, and 2019), and he paid a state visit to Sri Lanka in April 2025. Arranging the first-ever visit by the Indian VP, who belongs to Tamil Nadu and carries the same surname as that of the distinguished first incumbent of the high office – S. Radhakrishnan – therefore signified an innovative and major step. The VP was accompanied by a minister of state and Vikram Misri, foreign secretary, who also served in the Mission in Colombo. 

This bilateral has been carefully nurtured by S. Jaishankar, the external affairs minister, through his periodic visits. For him, Sri Lanka is special, as he served in the Indian High Commission in Colombo during his early years as a diplomat. 

A close reading of developments in India-Sri Lanka relations, especially in view of the discussions held by the Indian VP with the President, the Prime Minister, and the Leader of the Opposition in Sri Lanka, has particular relevance. For, all are conscious of maintaining good, stable, and cooperative ties while being aware that the search for solutions to the legacy issues may continue without disturbing the status quo.

For example, the Tamil issue in Sri Lanka boils down to the demand by Tamils in the North and East for greater devolution of power from the central government. No lasting solution has been found so far. The new trend seen in recent years is for India to keep it low-key, hoping Sri Lanka will internally find a solution for it. The relative absence of political pressure from Tamil Nadu on the government in Delhi has made the latter’s task easy. Nevertheless, the VP heard the views of the Tamil leaders in Sri Lanka. According to Sri Lanka’s Tamil Guardian newspaper, demands for “a federal political solution, rather than limited devolution, emerged as a constant theme across engagements”.

The other legacy issue – illegal fishing by Indian fishermen in Sri Lankan waters – remains unresolved. The 1976 maritime boundary demarcation agreement created a reality about Kachatheevu that cannot be changed. Demarcation placed the uninhabited 285-acre island on the Sri Lankan side, but it does not prevent Indian fishermen from fishing in areas where they have done so for centuries. Political leaders and officials continue to jointly deliberate on the subject from time to time, and fishermen are apprehended and then released, depending on the exigencies of the situation. Accordingly, the VP expressed appreciation for the Sri Lankan government’s decision to release 47 Indian fishermen from its custody, and both sides agreed on the need for more frequent contacts through the joint working group.

A third status quo issue is the Economic and Technology Cooperation Agreement (ETCA). Even after 14 rounds of talks, it has not been finalised yet due to resistance from the Sri Lankan side. No indications are available as to when the dialogue will be finalised. Certainly, its chances of becoming a reality will be helped along by a greater interest and support from business and industry in both countries, which need to increase bilateral trade. India’s trade with Sri Lanka is $5.54 billion in FY 2023-24. As one of the largest sources of foreign direct investment (FDI) in Sri Lanka, India had cumulative investments of $2.25 billion as of 2023.

Apart from these issues, several discussions focused on India’s role as ‘a first responder’ and the broadening contours of development cooperation.

Colombo has often expressed its deep appreciation for India’s quick and generous assistance on at least three recent occasions: the $4 billion-package to manage the economic crisis of 2022; financial lifelines extended for Sri Lanka’s debt crisis; and the $450 million package for recovery from the havoc wreaked by Cyclone Ditwah of 2025.

Development cooperation has been a key pillar of the relationship, with the following features: overall assistance amounts to $7 billion, including concessional loans, payment deferrals, and swap agreements, while grants stand at almost $780 million. Grants have been utilised for people-orientated development projects across 25 districts of Sri Lanka, spanning sectors such as infrastructure, housing, health, livelihoods, and education. The largest grant-assisted project involves the construction of 60,000 houses in four phases. Of them, 50,000 houses have already been built.

Connectivity of various kinds forms an important part of bilateral interaction with Sri Lanka. In the past three years (2022-25), ferry services have been introduced between Tamil Nadu and Sri Lanka; flights have begun between Chennai and Jaffna; and digital connectivity has been established through the launch of UPI QR-based payments in Sri Lanka.

Energy connectivity, a hot topic, was discussed, like the “Economic Land Corridor for developing land access to Trincomalee and Colombo, multi-product pipeline connecting India and Sri Lanka, and the power grid interconnection”. Various facets of ‘the energy hub’ were discussed during the VP’s visit. Foreign Secretary Misri observed that it was “a subject of fairly detailed conversation”, with India stressing the long-term strategic benefits for both sides. Making this a reality will be slower, given the complexity of the project and requirement of significant financial outlays.

Naturally, cooperation on a host of Indian Ocean-related issues was also discussed. Both countries are working in tandem to strengthen the Colombo Security Conclave (CSC) and its institutional underpinnings. This dialogue forum, with its secretariat based in Colombo, will soon be given the status of an international organisation, once the headquarters agreement is signed. Its first secretary general is likely to be an Indian national. The CSC has six members: India, Sri Lanka, the Maldives, Mauritius, Bangladesh, and Seychelles. Malaysia participated as a guest country for the first time during the 7th NSA-level meeting in November 2025.

The VP’s announcement of the relaxation of provisions to grant OCI cards to the fifth and sixth generations of Indian-origin Tamils in Sri Lanka has been widely welcomed. Such gestures reinforce the hope that the people-to-people ties will reach new heights and that the shift from grant-based to investment-driven partnerships may gain momentum in due course. The Vice President’s urging of Sri Lanka “to grow and grow together” in a joint journey towards inclusive development seems to have gone down well.

Rajiv Bhatia is the Distinguished Fellow for Foreign Policy Studies and a former ambassador.

This article was exclusively written for Gateway House: Indian Council on Global Relations. You can read more exclusive content here. 

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When Indian foreign policy is referred to today, the references are usually of trade balances, defence pacts, and strategic alliances. But behind the language of diplomats lies something deeper: a country’s sense of itself. For a civilisational state like India, that sense of self is not born in one election cycle. It emerges over generations, from ideas patiently nurtured by institutions that often work quietly in the background.

The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), now in its 100th year, is one such institution. It is impossible to understand the evolution of India’s foreign policy in the last few decades without understanding the mental world that the RSS has helped shape – among policymakers, intellectuals, the diaspora, and many ordinary citizens – over the 100 years of its existence. At its core, the RSS has always held a simple but profound belief: that India is not just a post-1947 republic but a many-millennia-old civilisation which once had global cultural influence and can have it again if it is anchored in its own ethos. This civilisational understanding, depth and self-confidence, more than any specific policy memo, is the RSS’ biggest contribution to Indian foreign policy thought and projection. In essence, unless India’s civilisational way is not deeply understood, it is not possible to manage well the nation’s policies, be they domestic or foreign.

For much of the 20th century, India’s external posture carried traces of a colonised mind. The country was free politically, but mentally, Indians often sought Western approval – in economics, culture, and even in defining their own history. The RSS worldview challenged this. It insisted that India’s place in the world would never be secure if Indians themselves remained uncertain about the worth of their ancient civilisation and selves.

In practical terms, this civilisational confidence is evinced in several ways. It underpins the idea that India can maintain friendly ties with the West while still firmly disagreeing with them on issues like terrorism, trade, climate, or the Ukraine conflict. It allows Indian leaders to say, respectfully but clearly, that European or American priorities are not automatically global priorities^[1] – and that India will pursue its own interests, rooted in its own experience of colonisation and civilisational survival. This is translated into a core foreign policy perspective: that India is non-West, not anti-West,^[2] a position that many in the Global South today are also comfortable aligning with.

This confidence is also visible in the way Indian leaders talk about the past. The celebration of indigenous empires like the Cholas, Vijayanagar, the Marathas, is not antiquarian nostalgia. It is a reminder that Indian power projection – whether through trade, culture, or occasionally military power – is not new. It has precedent. India’s ancestors once sailed across the seas, taking their gods, trade, and ideas to Southeast Asia, China, Japan, and many other places. They built temples in stone and trust in people’s hearts. That memory changes how a country negotiates in the present. A civilisation that remembers its strengths sits differently at the table.

How does this civilisational mindset manifest in real, measurable foreign policy choices?

Politically and on security, consider the 1998 nuclear tests under Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee. The tests were, of course, decisions of an elected government answering to the Constitution, not to any outside organisation. But they were in harmony with a world view long espoused in nationalist circles close to the RSS: that a nation with India’s size, history, and security environment could not rely indefinitely on moral lectures and foreign guarantees. It had to have credible strategic deterrence, even if that meant short-term sanctions and diplomatic pressure. The tests symbolised India’s willingness to bear costs for long-term autonomy – a classically Chanakyan willingness to think in decades, not news cycles.

Then there’s trade policy. The more recent push for multiple free trade agreements – with the UAE, Australia, the UK, the EU, Oman, and a framework for an Interim Agreement with the U.S.^[3] and others – is not simply technocratic enthusiasm for globalisation. It rests on a belief that India must reclaim its historic role as a hub of commerce, ideas, and people. That means being confident enough to open up, but also firm enough to negotiate terms that protect our core interests in agriculture, manufacturing, and data. The move from hesitant engagement to proactive, interest-based deal-making reflects a mindset that sees India not as a rule-taker, but as a future rule-shaper.

Finally, there is the diaspora. For decades, Indians abroad were largely seen as individuals who had “left” the country. Today, they are rightly seen as an extension of India’s soft power – entrepreneurs, academics, politicians, and professionals who are rooted in Indian values yet fluent in global systems. Over the last century, the RSS has invested heavily in building cultural and community networks among the diaspora – through shakhas, schools, cultural events, and allied organisations. This has created a global ecosystem of people who are emotionally connected to India and who can explain India’s perspective to local societies in a language they understand. You can see this in how quickly Indian narratives now find space in foreign media, think tanks, and parliaments. Leaders like Kamla Persad-Bissessar of Trinidad and Tobago, of Bihari origin, still wear the saree for ceremonial occasions. Measured over decades, this quiet but steady shift suggests that the RSS’ civilisational lens has, on balance, been successful in influencing India’s foreign policy posture.

Geographically, the RSS perspective has always been clear on a few points. First, that India’s immediate neighbourhood – the subcontinent and the Indian Ocean region – is vital. A civilised India cannot be secure if its neighbourhood is unstable or dominated by hostile powers. This emphasis is visible in the renewed focus on the Indian Ocean, on the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, on relationships with Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Nepal, Bhutan and the Maldives, and in the Act East policy engaging Southeast Asia, alongside initiatives that strengthen India’s maritime presence and partnerships in the wider Indian Ocean Region.

Second, there is a natural emphasis on reconnecting with regions where Indian civilisation once had a deep footprint – Southeast Asia, Central Asia, parts of Africa, the Caribbean and West Asia. Whether it is temple restoration in Cambodia, cultural festivals in Bali, or projects in East Africa, the underlying theme is, “We are not strangers here. Our relationship goes back centuries.” The renewed and strategic engagement with the Gulf countries, which even used Indian currency till the 1960s, is another case in point.

Ideologically, the RSS’s influence is most visible in three thematic leanings.

One, a rejection of civilisational self-loathing. Indian foreign policy is more willing now to push back when external actors lecture India on democracy, secularism, or human rights from a position of arrogance, ignorance or hypocrisy. There is a quiet insistence that Indian democracy is rooted in our own traditions of argument, pluralism, and decentralisation, not in imported models alone.

Two, a preference for strategic multi-alignment rather than camp-following. The RSS worldview, shaped by a history of colonisation and partition, is deeply suspicious of great-power paternalism. This dovetails with the current policy of multi-alignment, engaging the U.S., Russia, Europe, the Middle East, and East Asia simultaneously – buying oil from one, defence equipment from another, technology from a third – while keeping India’s autonomy intact.

Three, an emphasis on dharmic framing. When India speaks of “Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam – the world is one family” in global forums, it is not mere sloganeering. It signals a willingness to provide global public goods – vaccines, disaster relief, technology partnerships, and development finance – but without the missionary impulse of remaking other societies in one’s own image. This is a very Indian, and very RSS-compatible, way of being a major power: firm on one’s interests, yet respectful of other civilisations’ choices.

The RSS is not a foreign ministry. It does not sign treaties or draft joint statements. But it shapes the ecosystem in which diplomacy operates. Its networks connect politicians, civil servants, scholars, community leaders, artists, and influencers. Its affiliates run schools, think tanks, and social organisations that engage visiting diplomats, foreign journalists, and international NGOs. These conversations do not always make headlines, but they slowly change how India is explained to the world – as a civilisation rediscovering itself, not as a weak state seeking patronage.

How is the RSS perceived abroad? Views vary widely. In some Western academic and media circles, it is often caricatured through simplistic labels, projected through the lens of their own ideological battles. In other quarters – especially in parts of Asia, Africa, and the Middle East – there is a more nuanced understanding: that the RSS is part of a broader Indian attempt to heal the wounds of history and rebuild confidence after centuries of invasions and colonial rule. As India’s economic and strategic weight grows, the world is compelled to take these internal currents more seriously, even if it doesn’t always agree with them.

Over a hundred years, the RSS has not written India’s foreign policy; elected governments of different hues have. But it has helped provide a compass. That compass points towards a few enduring directions: pride without arrogance, autonomy without isolation, engagement without surrender, and a deep civilisational faith that India’s rise need not threaten others – it can instead rebalance a world that has been lopsided for too long. Of course, India’s foreign policy is shaped by many currents – economic pressures, bureaucratic traditions, political compulsions – but the RSS’ civilisational lens has become one of the more durable anchors in this mix.

Foreign policy, at its best, is the art of aligning power with purpose. The RSS has played a role in clarifying that purpose: that India is not merely seeking a bigger share of global GDP or a seat at some high table. It is seeking the space to be itself – an ancient, plural, argumentative civilisation, confident of its past and therefore unafraid of its future. In that journey of civilisational awakening, the RSS has been one of the voices quietly saying, ‘Uttishtha Bharat’.

Amish Tripathi is a bestselling author of the novel ‘The Immortals of Meluha’, award-winning broadcaster and former diplomat

This article was exclusively written for Gateway House: Indian Council on Global Relations. You can read more exclusive content here. 

For permission to republish, please contact outreach@gatewayhouse.in. 

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References:

^[1] GLOBSEC. “GLOBSEC 2022 Bratislava Forum – EAM S Jaishankar on why Europe’s perspective of world’s problems is flawed.” YouTube video, 2022. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GmsQaWZPvtQ.

^[2] “Broadcast from GLOBSEC 2022 Bratislava Forum.” Video, June 2022. https://x.com/i/broadcasts/1yNxaZabQDWKj

^[3] United States Government. “Fact Sheet: The United States and India Announce Historic Trade Deal.” U.S. Embassy & Consulates in India, February 2026. https://in.usembassy.gov/fact-sheet-the-united-states-and-india-announce-historic-trade-deal

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Transcript:

Sifra Lentin (SL) – Welcome to the 31st episode of Unfolding Geopolitics. Today I have with me special guests Roger Jeffrey, Professor Emeritus of Sociology of South Asia at the University of Edinburgh and Friederike Voigt who is the Principal Curator for West, South and Southeast Asia at the National Museums Scotland in Edinburgh. Roger and Frederic have just published a new book, Perceptions of Empire, Edinburgh’s Engagement with India and are here for a few days to learn more about the history of the Scottish presence in Mumbai.

We’ve had a quick three-day visit to Mumbai and what are your impressions of the heritage city that we walked through yesterday and its Scottish heritage. Roger, you’d like to take that first?

Roger Jeffery (RJ) – Yes, thank you and thank you for inviting us here today. So yes, yesterday as you took us through areas of the Fort, what impressed me particularly was the extent to which there was some connection to Scotland around almost every corner, either as an architect or through the churches or through the schools that we went past. So, it’s very interesting to us to think about how Scottish connections in the past are still visible in Mumbai at present.

SL Friederike, you’d like to add something to that.

Friederike Voigt (FV); Yes, thank you. Walking through a city and experiencing the heritage is a very special event and experience. It’s very different from the world in which I normally live within museums and small objects, but what reminded me of experiencing the space and the person is really that we need an explanation, so a city doesn’t explain itself just by walking through. So having your voice as part of our talk and walk has very much opened up a new insight into Bombay’s heritage.

SL – It was also interesting actually before we went for the walk when I studied some of your work that – a lot of your work is on the connections and exchanges between Scotland and India and how these influence both countries, I mean Scotland and India as a nation. You were separating the Scottish exchange from the overall British colonial one. Is there a reason for this, Roger?

RJ – Yes, thank you. This is something which we grapple with – is to understand to what extent the Scottish connection was part of the British connection and to what extent it differed in important ways. So, we would say that the Scots have made particular contributions to the exchange between Britain and India. Not all good. There were many Scots in the army, many Scots probably in the police. I’m not sure about that but the kinds of people from Scotland who came here weren’t exactly the same as those who came from England. They’re particularly well represented in education, in missionary activities of the Church of Scotland and the Free Church of Scotland.

Issues around the education that was available to Scots at a time when England had a much poorer developed education meant that, for example, doctors were more likely to have trained in Scotland than in England. And that kind of input into what’s happened in the course of 200 years, 300 years of colonial rule makes for a distinctive twist, perhaps, to how the impact was affecting both India and Scotland.

So, we had different kinds of people, and they came back with different kinds of objects perhaps, or they took different ideas, they brought back different ideas. And the people who came and went were often around issues of education so that the university and schooling here had very close connections with the university and schooling in Edinburgh. And I think that’s something which makes a particular kind of contribution to what happened during the Empire.

But as I say, I wouldn’t like anybody to go away with the idea that the Scots were the good ones and the English were the bad ones. They were good and bad on both sides but there’s a sense in which the Scots nonetheless have a particular kind of contribution. And, for example, the contribution of Burns and his egalitarianism, the Church of Scotland being a much more democratic institution. I think that kind of contribution, I think, is worth remembering.

FV – I would like to add a little perspective from the museum side. As you know, the institution at which I work is the National Museum of Scotland today. But when it was founded in 1854, it was a sister institution of the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, so what was at the time the South Kensington Museum. But still, despite a similar idea, there was a very Scottish angle to it, how it was set up, how its mission was perceived, much more from an industrial perspective, so oriented towards traders, craftspeople, and that had an influence on how the museum collected, why it collected certain things, and what people wanted to contribute. So, quite a lot of our collections originated from Scottish people. So, there’s a different idea, a different intention often behind it was very much to address the needs of Scotland and that justifies in my book this very specific angle on Scotland.

SL – Friederike, when you talk about basically your museum, collecting artifacts, collecting commercial goods, industrial goods, showing the people who worked, isn’t that also reflected in Mumbai’s Dr. Bhau Daji Lad Museum which was formerly the Victoria and Albert Museum, at Byculla?

FV – Yes, there is a lot of connection, or it’s the collections as they were built originally have parallels, so particularly focusing on certain crafts like pottery, metalwork, lacquer work. So, when I last went a few years ago to see the collections there, I was very much surprised to see similar items to what I know from the collections that I care for.

SL – You’ve come to India, and you’ve just collected the first copies of your book in Delhi, Perceptions of Empire, Edinburgh’s Engagement with India. And in that book, I mean, I found the introduction extremely interesting, because what you’ve done is put together around 15 to 16 original writings from the Scots who had engagements with India and Indians who had engagements with Scotland. In particular, what I found of interest were the letters of Reverend John Wilson’s wife, Margaret Bayne Wilson, published under the chapter Missionary Letters from India. Can you tell us a little about the work that Reverend Wilson and his wife did in India?

RJ – Yes, I mean, they are a very interesting couple. They come out of a very Scottish background, Glasgow, Edinburgh, and the surrounding areas. They’re trained in Edinburgh. And their mission is to do things for the people of India as they saw it, because they saw them as steeped in sin, inevitably going to hell after they died, and carrying out activities which they found obnoxious.

So that chapter is not easy to read. And we’re not suggesting that this is an accurate description of this part of the world 200 years ago. It’s a description fed through a very strong missionary zeal that was characteristic of the Scottish Church at the time. So they really wanted to change what was going on here, partly as a justification for the empire. Why is the empire, why was the East India Company at the time here? What could possibly justify this? So a series, it’s also true for the chapter on Alexander Duff. The significance of Christianity was as a justification for the empire, to give it a strong moral cast.

So I think one of the things that’s different between the two, the husband and the wife, is that the husband was out in the public sphere negotiating, getting on with people, and his wife was writing letters to her family and really giving voice to how she felt about what the challenge was. Margaret, unfortunately, died quite young. And so these letters were in memory of her. But both of them quite quickly saw that it was important to focus on education. And that’s something, again, which is, as I said, very characteristic of Scotland. So, Wilson High School, still there. Columbus School for Girls, again, something that Margaret Wilson was engaged in creating. So this was really a justification for their coming. And they committed themselves to it.

And over several years, John Wilson was here. And he would go back to Edinburgh, talk about it, come back here, and so on. We actually have a picture of one of the first converts that he made, a man called Dhanjibhai Naoroji who was in Edinburgh in 1843, at exactly the time when the city began its engagement with photography. And there he is. We have a picture of him sitting in a studio in central Edinburgh. So this, the beginnings of an exchange, and a very early student who came to Edinburgh as a result of this engagement.

And of course, after that, particularly from the 1880s onwards, you get more and more Indians coming to Edinburgh to study, and eventually going back, or not, as the case might be.

SL – So, Roger, it’s actually quite interesting, because we still have a lot of landmarks. I mean, Friederike mentioned it earlier, that we have schools here. Especially what is noteworthy are the two premier schools of Mumbai, the Bombay Scottish School and the John Connan School, which is part of the Cathedral. And of course, Governor Mountstuart Elphinstone was a pioneer of secular scientific education for Indians, and an endeavor which was supported by big merchants like Jagannath Shankar Seth. So is education really part of the Presbyterian ethos?

RJ– Presbyterians have a very strong ethos around education. So, again, much before England had a system of mass schooling, there was a system through the parishes, through the ministers in Scotland, to educate their parishioners. And this, again, I think feeds back into this democratic approach, egalitarian relative to England, in which you don’t have bishops, you don’t have somebody telling you what to do.

You have a group of people who call a minister and decide how much he would be paid and so on. So, yes, it’s very specifically about being able to read the Bible in Scotland, and I think here also they carried this along, and made a personal connection to a personal God. And that’s very much the Protestantism that is behind Presbyterian Christianity as it developed in Scotland over the period from the 17th century onwards.

SL – Friederike, could you tell us a little about how Edinburgh learnt about India through material objects as they’re kept today in the National Museum of Scotland?

FV – One of the benefits, so to speak, of the book as I see it, is really that it sets a context for the many different ways in which India is still represented in the city. So often you have traces in the city, but they are not necessarily visible, or if they are visible, you don’t know how they are linked to each other, why this material is there, and how it was collected. So for me that is one of the strengths that the book can actually provide us with a bit of a context for these connections. So the museum, also it was founded in the middle of the 19th century, has also received overtime collections that date back 50, 70 years, as we took in collections from other much older learnt institutions in Edinburgh. And one of the really outstanding collections that represent India in the museum is a collection of models that was brought together by a Scottish woman, Margaret Tytler.

Tytler is really a case that exemplifies how, in this case, a woman was educated, took ideas from Edinburgh with her to India, and sent back what she had learnt there. So she was originally born in a small town on the east coast of Scotland. She died in Munger in 1822, but the longest period of her life she actually spent in India, in Patna and in Tirhut. And as part of her interest in the environment, in what people did around her, she studied the crafts and agricultural methods and turned this knowledge and her thinking into models. Not only for her own entertainment, some of them she used in order to produce her own silk thread, for example. But the main reason was that she wanted to educate Scottish people so in her bequest she wrote down or had it written down that her set of models should be sent back to Scotland after her death. When it arrived in Edinburgh it was put on display, it was very much valued. People, a certain group of people, so the educated class would have seen it on display and seen how Indian people did certain things. And the models were there, they are scale models, they are there in order to learn about methods in which you can do things in the best way. This is how she talks about it, so what are good ways of doing something so that Scottish methods could be improved.

SL – That’s really interesting because she talks about how Scottish methods can be improved, making scale models for off Indian metallurgy, cloth making, weaving. So that’s really interesting that there was this kind of exchange because one would have thought that they were there to trade and not to learn. In the introduction to the book, you make the point that the Indian subcontinent had very specific trades with each Scottish city except for Edinburgh which encompassed everything. So Roger, can you tell us a little more about that?

RJ Yes, so I mean there are four big cities, we think of them as big but not in Indian terms. And they have different positions in the country with different access to the wider world. Glasgow, which is the biggest city, has very strong commercial links and a number of companies that we talked about on the walking tour yesterday, Forbes and so on, were companies where the Glasgow merchants, it’s often called a merchant city in the centre, were involved. But they also had cotton mills, they had engineering works, you can find engineering products from Glasgow still across North India, keeping sugar factories going for example. So that’s the particular form that Glasgow has.

Dundee, very strong links with Calcutta and with jute mills. Most of the jute mills around the 1880s, 1900, were owned by people from Dundee and a lot of coming and going between Dundee and Calcutta as a result.

Aberdeen and Inverness were more around, these were farming areas, so a lot of men went into the army. But also as cultivation plantations went forward, you find them in tea plantations, in rubber plantations, in coffee plantations, so a lot of the plantation economy is linked to that part.

But across all of them you get, certainly, recruits into the army. What happens in Edinburgh is a greater proportion of area around certainly science, medicine, education in general, but also the kind of education that would equip a young man to get a job in the East India Company’s civil service and eventually the Indian civil service. So that’s the kind of difference that Edinburgh has, because it was the capital.

So you get more missionaries, you get more doctors, you get more skilled people who are able to run a bureaucracy proportionately, but of course you also get recruits from other parts of the country as well.

SL – So we also talked about Indians starting to come to Edinburgh in large numbers in the 1880s onward. Why did they come to Edinburgh? What was their experience like?

RJ – So they came to Edinburgh for the schooling, for the education in the earlier period. So, a man called Prafulla Chandra Ray, who was a very leading early Indian chemist, established his Bengal Chemicals around the turn of the century. He was in Edinburgh for four or five years doing chemistry and took that knowledge back with him to establish better training facilities in the University of Calcutta, but also this factory, which is a pioneer in pharmaceuticals. Medical students – they were the largest single category, certainly by the turn of the century, because Edinburgh was a real centre of medical education from about the 1800s onwards, the early 1800s onwards. So even until the 1920s or the 1930s, they came for medical education, but also engineering, education, etc. So those were the major reasons for coming.

But by the 1930s, the 1940s, so this tails off, they don’t come so much. If they come to Britain, they go to London or to Oxford or Cambridge, and the numbers coming to Edinburgh decline. So that the post-Second World War migration is rather different. These are people who come to stay, they come to live and work. And those are the people whose testimonies we include in the final chapter on South Asians of various kinds in the city and their experiences. So, in general, I think it’s fair to say that Edinburgh was a relatively friendly place to come to. But you hear all of the qualifications.

There was certainly racism. Sometimes this comes out in public. So in the 1920s, there’s a colour bar put on by some restaurants and dance clubs in the city against not only Indian students, but anybody of colour. And the people who come in the 1950s and the 1960s also talk about Edinburgh as cold, not just cold climatically, but the people of Edinburgh are relatively cold compared to other people in Scotland. Not that they are unfriendly in general, but there’s a reserve. They aren’t as warm and welcoming as some others. And so there are definitely, almost all the accounts we have mention episodes of racist abuse or of discrimination. And yet these people stay and make a life and are now, I think, in large measure, well accepted.

An interesting fact for you to think about is that the tourist shops along the centre of Edinburgh, in the heart of the old town, the heart of tourist Edinburgh, many of them are owned by Sikhs. So, the Sardars are selling Scotland to foreigners from all over the world. But behind those shop fronts, there is a Punjabi.

SL – That’s interesting, Roger. So, I think my last question is for Friederike. As we talked about the historical connections, it might be useful to consider the significance of these historical links for Edinburgh, Scotland and India today. How would you sort of frame these links in the contemporary world?

FV – If we don’t know history, we can hardly understand what is important in the present, so looking back at these existing links from the late 18th century onwards, as we do in the book, has certainly helped me to understand better what I can do as a curator at the museum with the collections that I care for. One of our main areas of work is to make these collections accessible to communities, to the South Asian community, but to all other communities in Edinburgh and in Scotland too. So, seeing where we have come from and why South Asians, as Roger has just explained, live in the city, is clearly an easier way into imagining what we can do with these collections in the future.

So, if you think about the 18th, 19th and early 20th century as still collections built during the colonial and imperial periods, the character was shaped by thinking at these times. The 21st century is very different, so how can we engage with these collections today and make them useful for society and society in its plurality, so a multicultural society. And this is what I’m trying to do with my work at the museum, to engage with these different parts of society, to learn from whoever lives around me what is important to them, how they respond to the collections, how they want to be involved and represented in museums. So, these are all aspects that are of significance to my work and to how I can develop the collections, but also the relationships with India in this particular case and with South Asians living in Edinburgh.

So, it’s a two-way process. I want to invite other people to come and engage with these collections, but also for me to learn what I can do with these collections and make them a shared resource. They are a shared heritage, but how can we actually then also work with these sources together?

RJ – So, I think that’s a very important part of what we’re doing, is to build better relationships, help to build better relationships between local South Asians and cultural institutions in general, starting particularly with the museum. So, the city is now concerned about the legacy of colonialism in the city and the extent to which that legacy forms barriers to full inclusion of the whole diverse population that we have. So, this book, we hope, will contribute to that process of building a more inclusive, more egalitarian, more welcoming city for its current residents and for the future in ways in which their skills that we will benefit from will benefit from in ways that currently we don’t do as much as we should. So, this is a contribution to a process that we’re part of in various ways.

SL – Thank you both so much. And I’d just like to add a little factoid at the end. Where we are recording this, at our office, Gateway House, is actually under the Wankhede Stadium stands. And for the first time, we’re having the Scottish cricket team playing in the T20 World Cup. So, it’s a good way to really start a relationship because cricket is actually something Indians are absolutely crazy about. England is crazy about it. I mean, it came from England- cricket. So, with the Scottish team also in the mix, we’ve got a lot to look forward to. Thank you so much.

Dr Roger Jeffery is Professor Emeritus of Sociology of South Asia at the University of Edinburgh.

Friederike Voigt is Principal Curator for the West, South and Southeast Asia collections and Head of the Asia Section at the National Museum of Scotland.

Sifra Lentin is the Bombay History Fellow at Gateway House.

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