India

Crises have a way of shining a penetrating light and exposing the fissures in a society – or conversely, the exact nature of what holds it together. It is something we are seeing right now, the world over. While India seems to have sidestepped the worst of the pandemic for now, what the crisis

The Indian Air Force last week evacuated 112 people stranded in Wuhan, one of several operations by India to the the Chinese city at the epicentre of the coronavirus outbreak. But while India is one of many countries to help its citizens in need, what was also striking about this particular mission&

On a cold winter’s morning in November 1984, after travelling nearly 48 hours from the south of India, I stepped off a train in New Delhi. Prime Minister Indira Gandhi had been assassinated by her Sikh bodyguards, and the capital had become the epicentre of one of the most violent pogroms in

In this month’s election to the Delhi Legislative Assembly, Arvind Kejriwal’s Aam Adami Party (AAP or the Common Man Party) won another landslide victory, claiming 62 of the 70 seats. This left only eight for the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) that currently rules India under Prime Minister

Created in 2016, the Raisina Dialogue has quickly become India’s premier event on foreign policy and strategic affairs, with the aim to increase engagement of global actors with Asia and of Asia with the world. It is no coincidence that the dialogue started shortly after the Narendra Modi–led

At the moment, two of the big stories in the Indian headlines are the country’s persistent economic slowdown and the announcement that the perpetrators of the notorious 2012 bus gang rape will be hanged. For the former, India’s growth expectations have declined alarmingly. The IMF this week

India’s decision in the final months of last year to withdraw from negotiations for the mega-regional trade agreement known as the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) disappointed the countries of Southeast Asia, which are also members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (

When the Indian government imposed a communications gag on Kashmir in the middle of night on 4 August this year, no one expected it to be so prolonged. The next day, India removed the region’s autonomy, which Kashmir had secured after its king acceded to Indian union following the partition of

Bollywood beckons India is planning a more expansive approach to economic engagement with Australia just as Australia gears up to restart formal negotiations on a bilateral trade deal, which may possibly involve a narrower agreement than the previous lapsed talks. Prime Minister Scott Morrison’

It’s a testament to India’s founding fathers that the country is home to more than 200 million Muslims, and it has been a source of pride for many Indians that the country’s constitution was drafted to guarantee everyone equality under the law. Until now. Earlier this month, the world’s

The US base on the island of Diego Garcia, in the middle of the Indian Ocean, is among the most important US military facilities in the world, and is the foundation stone of the US presence in the Indian Ocean region. It’s been a vital element in Australia’s strategic position in the region for

India has long had a reputation in Australia as being a challenging negotiator that may not share the same enthusiasm for concluding free trade agreements. India may argue that Australia has generally failed to understand the drivers of obvious offensive and defensive interests in the relationship,

Last week, India’s Supreme Court decided in favour of Hindus in a decades-long dispute over a holy site in the country’s north. By doing so, the court also did a number of other things: it planted a flag in the judiciary’s siding with the Hindu right, and with it, the government, and it

Over its 18-year existence, Shanghai Cooperation Organisation has mostly been in the spotlight as a forum for security cooperation, starting with the 2001 Convention that branded crimes of extremism, separatism, and terrorism as extraditable offences. The region is still facing significant security

As India struggles to manage China’s economic and diplomatic influence in its immediate neighbourhood, it has recently made progress in building more robust ties with four crucial island states in the Indian Ocean: Mauritius, the Maldives, Seychelles, and Sri Lanka. What has been done – and what

The Indian government’s lockdown of the strategic and volatile region of Kashmir is entering into its third month. Thousands of troops are deployed in the valley with shoot on sight orders in place, the internet remains cut off, while mobile phones lines have only just been restored.

Despite the modern proliferation of free trade agreements, there is an enormous gap between free trade as it is understood and advocated by those who benefit from it, and free trade as it is practiced today. The understanding of economic integration is diverse and complicated – at its heart sits a

A rare image on social media of Indonesian paratroopers dropping into the troubled West Papua province this month was a stark reminder that, even in the age of 24/7 news, governments are good at keeping the cameras, and the world’s attention, away from persecuted communities. West Papua – the

Zakir Naik is an Indian preacher of Islam who currently calls Malaysia home. Described by the Washington Post as a “rock star of tele-evangelism”, he is also a fugitive, having evaded law enforcement in his home country of India since July 2016, when he fled the country within hours of bombers

It is impossible to know what is actually happening in Kashmir. Since 4 August, Indian forces have effectively incarcerated the region, with people kept indoors and more than 1600 “social activists” detained. Communications to, and in, the Kashmir Valley have been severed. There have been no

Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s speech last week from the ramparts of the Red Fort in New Delhi to mark India’s Independence Day carefully delineated his new strategic and foreign policy in the region. We can call this “nudge diplomacy”, and it stands in stark contrast to the more assertive

Over the past few months, sugar has featured prominently in India’s political and economic discussion. Countries such as Australia, Brazil and Guatemala are upset with the Indian government’s subsidies to its sugarcane farmers, alleging in a claim to the World Trade Organisation (WTO) that the

The agonising and often exhausting wait for the monsoon has long inspired India’s writers and poets. But it’s the country’s farmers who know all too well the impact a delayed or indeed a failed monsoon can have on millions of lives. The monsoon is India’s life-giver, its rebirth and its

The re-election of India’s Narendra Modi and Indonesia’s Joko “Jokowi” Widodo saw India-Indonesia relations take another step forward after both leaders congratulated each other on social media. The results put both leaders in a strong position to advance a comprehensive strategic