India’s policy towards its South Asian neighbours has been a product of big shifts in the global and regional political order in Asia and political developments across the region. While changes in New Delhi’s policies have aimed to solidify and maintain India’s position in South Asia, India faces big challenges — both of its own making and stemming from external factors — in its territorial backyard.

Postcolonial Indian leadership continued to keep the country’s influence intact in South Asia. New Delhi, after weighing the options, followed realist or idealist policies to serve its interests. During the early years of independence, New Delhi signed friendship treaties with Afghanistan (1950), Nepal (1950) and Bhutan (1949) to maintain close political ties with its neighbours. But political bitterness due to partition related communal violence and unresolved territorial questions led to the India-Pakistan war over Kashmir in 1947–1948. 

In changed circumstances, India and Pakistan signed the World Bank-mediated Indus Waters Treaty and engaged in five rounds of talks in the 1960s to resolve the Jammu and Kashmir issue. Nevertheless, that didn’t prevent the two countries entering another war in 1965. New Delhi also engaged with Sri Lanka to resolve Tamil citizenship-related matters. In 1971, India extended help to Bengali fighters under the leadership of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman that eventually led to liberation of East Pakistan and birth of Bangladesh. 

In 1977, the Janata Party formed India’s first non-Congress Party government and called for deeper engagement with India’s neighbours. Ten years later, in 1987, the Indian Peace Keeping Force landed in Sri Lanka to help resolve the civil war, but New Delhi’s main objective was to keep other foreign actors away from Colombo’s affairs. Indian forces also carried out ‘Operation Cactus’ in the Maldives to protect former president Maumoon Abdul Gayoom’s government from the attempted coup in 1988.

The end of the Cold War in 1991 saw the emergence of a unipolar world. In the early days of the post-Cold War era, India adopted new economic policy based on a liberal-capitalist model and restructured its ties with the Western world. For South Asia, in 1996, India announced the Gujral Doctrine, that called for India to seek no reciprocity for helping countries such as Nepal, Maldives, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka. It also called on South Asian countries to respect each other’s territorial sovereignty and not interfere in the internal matters of others. The Gujral Doctrine sought, as Gujral later wrote, to established ‘total peace’ with India’s neighbours so that it could contain the influence of Pakistan and China in the region.

The effect of growing Chinese influence, preoccupied successive Indian governments who tried to improve ties with its South Asian neighbours including Pakistan, though efforts to mend ties with Islamabad had repeatedly failed. 

In 2014, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi invited leaders from all South Asian countries to his swearing in ceremony. The Modi government unveiled its ‘Neighbourhood First’ policy emphasising security, economics, culture and people-to-people contact. This commitment was backed by attempts to strengthen India’s regional foreign relations. Modi’s first foreign trip as prime minister was to Bhutan and, in 2015, the Indian parliament ratified the 2011 Land Boundary Agreement between India and Bangladesh. In 2014, Modi was the first prime minister to visit Nepal after a gap of 17 years. India also provided assistance in developing the Maldives’ civil infrastructure when Ibrahim Mohamed Solih was president and provided much needed aid to Sri Lanka in 2022 when it was battling severe economic crisis.

Despite these ties, South Asian nations remain suspicious of India’s political motives.

India’s foremost challenge in South Asia is seen as China’s influence. Soon after New Delhi’s defeat in the 1962 China–India war, some of India’s neighbours made a beeline for Beijing to balance Indian power. Since then, China has gradually strengthened its position in almost all South Asian capitals. Amid China’s increasing economic and political footprint in South Asia, India’s neighbours routinely use the ‘China Card’ in dealing with New Delhi. Until now, Bhutan has been the only country outside of China’s political radar. However, Thimphu and Beijing are now engaged in serious talks to resolve their boundary disputes and differences. 

More recently, New Delhi has faced challenges in South Asia because of its mishandling of major political developments in the region. New Delhi’s 6-month blockade of Nepal in 2015–16 to support the Madheshi people’s protests against provisions in Nepal’s new constitution and the inclusion of Nepal’s Kalpani region in an updated map of India released in 2019 created ripples in ties with Nepal.

The India–Bangladesh relationship faces a number of issues including protests in Bangladesh over the National Register of Citizens exercise carried out in the Indian state of Assam, the Citizenship (Amendment) Act of 2019, the movement of people and cattle across their boundary and the inconclusive Teesta Water deal.

An ‘India Out’ campaign simmers amid allegations of Indian interference in the Bangladesh’s general election in 2024 to keep Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina in power. With President Mohamed Muizzu favouring China over India and continuing to pursue his anti-India electoral campaign in office, New Delhi’s ties with the Maldives have plummeted. 

And Modi’s initial attempts to engage with Pakistan have proven unsuccessful. In 2019 Islamabad–New Delhi ties reached a new low after New Delhi revoked the special status of Jammu and Kashmir. Some of India’s neighbours were taken aback over the united India (Akhand Bharat) mural unveiled in May 2023 in New Delhi’s new parliament building.

Despite the challenges it faces, India has strong presence in South Asia. But New Delhi must not take its neighbours for granted. To remain a regional leader, New Delhi needs to refrain from meddling in the internal affairs of neighbouring countries unless they threaten its core national interests. New Delhi should take responsibility for leading — not policing — the region and become more conscious of its regional identity. Hyper nationalistic and xenophobic views expressed by many Indian social media users among other things imperil India’s ties with its neighbours. 

Amit Ranjan is Research Fellow at the Institute of South Asian Studies, National University of Singapore.

This article appears in the most recent edition of East Asia Forum Quarterly, ‘India’s Sweet Spot‘, Vol 16, No 1.