India Uses Hard Power Diplomatically Yet Unapologetically
By Gajanan Khergamker
The India of 2025 bears little resemblance to the India that once endured diplomatic slights with restrained formality. The days of quietly filing protests while relations carried on unchanged are over.
Today’s India responds with a strategic precision that blends diplomatic agility, economic leverage, and — when necessary — the unapologetic use of hard power in the geopolitical arena.
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| Image for representational purpose only |
The Canada Episode
When the Canadian leadership chose to indulge in the “Khalistani card” — allowing separatist rhetoric and anti-India propaganda to gain a public platform, even in the presence of credible intelligence on extremist links — New Delhi’s reply was swift and unequivocal. Gone were the days of issuing meek demarches. Instead, India launched a full-spectrum counter-offensive.
Visa services for Canadian nationals were suspended, disrupting academic exchanges, tourism flows, and business visits. Bilateral trade negotiations — which Ottawa had been keen to push — were frozen without ceremony. Intelligence-sharing mechanisms were quietly recalibrated, limiting Canada’s access to vital security insights that had, for years, worked in both nations’ favour.
The message was unmistakable. Sovereignty was not negotiable, and domestic political pandering abroad would invite tangible costs.
It was a masterclass in 21st-century statecraft — leveraging mobility, trade, and intelligence ties as instruments of deterrence without a single public outburst.
While the Canadian issue played out in public, India’s deepening ties with the Maldives have been a quieter but strategic move. Sitting astride key Indian Ocean sea lanes, the Maldives is more than a tourist paradise—it’s a maritime outpost critical to regional security.
China’s debt diplomacy has tightened its grip on smaller Indian Ocean nations. India countered early, modernising Maldivian ports, installing radar networks, training the MNDF, and funding mega projects like the Greater Malé Connectivity Project and Hankede Bridge.
Ties soured in early 2024 after Maldivian ministers’ derogatory remarks towards PM Modi triggered a #BoycottMaldives wave and a 42% drop in Indian tourist arrivals. President Muizzu’s pivot to China, ending hydrographic cooperation with India and signing a military drone deal with Turkey, deepened the rift.
By mid-2025, a thaw was evident. Modi attended Maldives’ 60th Independence Day, extending USD 565 million in credit, renewing defence cooperation, and launching FTA talks. A joint “Comprehensive Economic and Maritime Security Partnership” now guides ties, balancing China’s influence and securing the Indian Ocean.
With Mauritius, India tightened its grip on strategic maritime cooperation in the Indian Ocean, countering Chinese debt diplomacy with unflinching precision. Ports, coastal surveillance systems, and naval training programs have cemented Mauritius not just as a friendly nation, but as an integral cog in India’s expanding Indo-Pacific security framework.
China’s debt diplomacy has tightened its grip on smaller Indian Ocean nations. India countered early, modernising Maldivian ports, installing radar networks, training the MNDF, and funding mega projects like the Greater Malé Connectivity Project and Hankede Bridge.
Ties soured in early 2024 after Maldivian ministers’ derogatory remarks towards PM Modi triggered a #BoycottMaldives wave and a 42% drop in Indian tourist arrivals. President Muizzu’s pivot to China, ending hydrographic cooperation with India and signing a military drone deal with Turkey, deepened the rift.
By mid-2025, a thaw was evident. Modi attended Maldives’ 60th Independence Day, extending USD 565 million in credit, renewing defence cooperation, and launching FTA talks. A joint “Comprehensive Economic and Maritime Security Partnership” now guides ties, balancing China’s influence and securing the Indian Ocean.
The USA Equation Under Trump
The India of 2025 is a far cry from the India that endured slights in silence. When Canadian leadership played the “Khalistani card” in global forums, New Delhi’s response was not the usual note of protest but a full-spectrum diplomatic counter-offensive. Visa services were suspended, trade negotiations frozen, and intelligence links quietly reevaluated — a display of sovereign resolve rarely seen from South Block.
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And now, with the USA under Donald Trump’s renewed presidency, the equation has shifted into even sharper relief. Trump’s decision in July 2025 to slap 50% tariffs on select Indian goods — a move meant to strong-arm New Delhi into conceding on defence procurement from US manufacturers — was met with a calculated, steel-edged response.
Instead of capitulating, India froze multiple high-ticket defence deals with US suppliers, rerouting orders to European, Israeli, and indigenous manufacturers.
It became a clear message to Washington. India is not for sale, and pressure will not dictate its sovereign decisions.
Trump’s transactional approach, once assumed to be India’s leverage point, collided head-on with Modi’s strategic nationalism. And while the US President may have banked on tariff-induced capitulation, New Delhi’s countermeasure — a blend of economic reorientation and diplomatic firmness — turned the gambit into a case study in strategic pushback.
Today, India engages with the US not as a junior partner, but as an indispensable ally whose cooperation is sought, not assumed — an ally that can say “no” and mean it.
The Larger Message
Across these episodes runs a common thread - the India of 2025 is both willing and able to apply pressure, extract concessions, and shape alliances on its own terms.
Whether in open confrontation, silent integration, or transactional negotiation, the approach is consistent — protect sovereignty, advance strategic interests, and project influence without hesitation.
It is diplomacy with an iron spine — and it has reshaped how the world deals with India.
The Spirit of an Unyielding Nation
The road to 2025 has not been paved with ease or diplomacy’s gentle handshakes; it has been carved through the thorns of provocation and adversity. Terror attacks plotted in safe havens across the border — designed to destabilise and terrorise — were not met with the muted condemnations of an earlier era.
Instead, India’s response was swift, surgical, and unapologetic. Precision strikes penetrated deep into enemy territory, dismantling the infrastructure of terror with military efficiency and political resolve.
In the invisible yet equally lethal domain of cyberspace, India’s posture has transformed from reactive defence to proactive disruption. Cyberattacks targeting critical infrastructure, financial systems, and defence networks were not just traced to their source but countered in real time, sending a message to hostile state and non-state actors: Every keystroke against India will be answered.
This shift — from a nation that “reacts” to one that “preempts” — marks a profound recalibration of national security philosophy. India no longer waits for an injury to respond; it anticipates, disrupts, and neutralises threats before they can metastasise.
Yet, the heartbeat of this transformation lies not solely in policy rooms or war rooms. It resides in the collective resilience of a billion people whose quiet determination powers the nation’s ascent.
On the farmlands, farmers have embraced agri-tech with a pragmatism born of necessity, using drones to monitor crops, AI tools to predict weather, and smart irrigation to conserve every drop of water. They are not just feeding the nation; they are feeding the future.
In the laboratories and space centres, Indian engineers and scientists lead missions that push the frontiers of human capability — from landing on the Moon’s South Pole to launching satellites for global navigation and climate monitoring. They do not merely join the space race; they set the pace.
On the borders, soldiers stand guard in some of the world’s most hostile terrains — from the icy heights of Siachen to the insurgency-prone Northeast — embodying a vigilance that never sleeps. Their presence is the nation’s living firewall.
In the cities and towns, entrepreneurs are defying global economic downturns, building companies that solve real problems — in mobility, healthcare, education — with ingenuity born from India’s own constraints. Every start-up that breaks through is a testament to the belief that innovation can thrive under pressure.
This is not the story of a government alone, nor is it the story of a handful of leaders or elite institutions. It is the story of a people — a billion beating hearts that refuse to bow, bend, or break. It is the story of a civilisation that has faced centuries of conquest, partition, poverty, and prejudice, and yet, with every trial, has emerged stronger, sharper, and more sure of its place in the world.
In 2025, the spirit of India is not defined by its challenges, but by the unyielding will to overcome them. It is a spirit forged in the fires of adversity and tempered by the unshakeable conviction that the nation’s destiny is not to follow, but to lead.
Sovereign Resolve — The Insurgent Nation Ascendant
India is no longer content with mere resilience — it is now resolute revolution.
From the revamping of a stagnating defence industry into a global exporter, to ascension in the global GDP rankings through manufacturing, renewables, and digital transformation — the country has reshaped its economic and industrial destiny.
Diplomatically, from the corridors of Ottawa to the courts of Washington, to the strategic harbors of Port Louis, it has asserted its terms, not merely tolerated theirs. And most importantly, the invincible human spirit of this nation — the farmers, engineers, soldiers, entrepreneurs — has powered every milestone, every triumph.
This, then, is the new India: Strategic in its actions, confident in its voice, uncompromising in its will.
It is a nation that preempts rather than recoils. That builds alliances of equals rather than pawns. That innovates not out of privilege, but out of persistence.
On this Independence Day, as the tricolour soars above every city, village, and sea, it symbolises more than freedom from colonisers.
It stands for a new kind of liberty: The freedom to determine one's destiny.
It whispers a message so loud it shakes the world’s complacency: We will no longer wait for a seat at the table — we will build the table. We will no longer be the subject of global strategy — we will shape it.
From defence diplomacy to economic heft, from cyber sovereignty to agricultural ingenuity — Insurgent India has arrived, unbowed, unbound, unyielding. And its story is just beginning.
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