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