It is almost a conventional wisdom now that the centre of gravity of global politics has shifted from Europe to the Asia-Pacific region in recent years, with the rise of China and India, gradual assertion by Jap-an of its military profile and a significant shift in the US global force posture in favour of Asia-Pacific. The debate now is whether Asia-Pacific will witness rising tensions and conflicts in the coming years, with various powers jockeying for influence in the region, or whether the forces of economic globalisation and multilateralism will lead to peace and stability. Some analysts have asked the question more directly: Will Europe’s past be Asia’s future? It is, of course, difficult to answer this question as of now when major powers in Asia such as China, India and Japan are still rising and grappling with a plethora of issues that confront any rising power in the international system. But what is clear is that all major powers are now re-evaluating their policy options vis-à-vis the international system, grappling with the rise of new powers such as China and India.

India, a World Power

By all reckoning, India has arrived on the world stage. It is being viewed as a major pole in the emerging global balance of power configuration by outsiders as well as by the Indians themselves. The US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is boldly declaiming that the United States is ‘willing and ready to assist in the growth of India’s global power . . . which [the United States] sees as largely positive’. And Indians themselves are no longer shy in arguing that India is without any doubt one of the six members in the global balance of power. India is being invited to the G-8 summits, is being called upon to shoulder global responsibilities ranging from nuclear proliferation to Iraq and is increasingly being viewed as much more than a ‘South Asian’ power.

From a nation that was mortgaging its gold reserves in 1990 to one whose foreign exchange reserves are overfull, India has indeed come a long way. Its economy is one of the fastest growing in the world; it is a nuclear weapon state, a status that is being grudgingly accepted by the world; its armed forces are highly professional and on the way towards rapid modernisation; and its vibrant democratic institutions, with the world’s second-largest Muslim population, are attracting global attention at a time when the promotion of democracy is being viewed as a remedy for much of what is wrong with a large part of the globe. However, the most significant attribute of today’s India is an attempt to carve out a foreign policy that is much more confident of Indian’s rising stature in the international system.