Why is the BJP celebrating Bengal’s Partition?

24 Jun, 2026

 

Dibyangshu Sarkar/AFP

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In 1940, Mohamed Ali Jinnah rose to deliver his infamous two-nation theory speech in Lahore.

It is a “dream that the Hindus and Muslims can ever evolve a common nationality” since they “belong to two different religious philosophies, social customs, and literatures”, the soon-to-be founder of Pakistan claimed.

Jinnah’s speech was likely one of the most consequential in history. Seven years later, British India was divided on communal lines in a partition so bloody that South Asians are still grappling with its consequences.

Lahore 1940 to Bengal 2026

Given this history, it is remarkable to see a minister from West Bengal – a state that is the outcome of Bengal’s Partition in 1947 – write a piece backing the two-nation theory. The idea of a “composite cultural community spanning religious fault lines” was a “myth”, Swapan Dasgupta held. He repeated a few paragraphs later that a “composite Bengali identity was a nice, serving myth”.

That Hindus and Muslim in Bengal spoke a common language “separated two distinct communities that were not in any meaningful conversion”.

Dasgupta, West Bengal’s finance minister, was all but paraphrasing Jinnah’s infamous Lahore thesis. Hindus and Muslim being “distinct” and any “composite identity” being a “myth” is not very different from saying that the two communities “belong to two different religious philosophies, social customs, and literatures”.

Given the formal Indian rejection of the two-nation theory, this might seem surprising. But Hindutva’s endorsement of the two-nation theory is a position as old as the ideology itself. Vinayak Savarkar, who wrote the ideology’s foundation text, was quite clear on this. “I have no quarrel with Mr Jinnah’s two-nation theory,” he said in 1943. “We Hindus are a nation by ourselves and it is a historical fact that Hindus and Muslims are two nations.”

Savarkar, in fact, went a step further and made it clear that his version of two-nation theory would involve second-class citizenship for Indian Muslims. He told an American journalist that Muslims would be “a minority in the position of your Negroes” – at a time when the United States had racial segregation.

Theory to policy

The Bharatiya Janata Party has, in fact, gone quite some way in implementing Savarkar’s version of the two-nation theory. Muslims in BJP-ruled states now enjoy fewer rights and privileges than other citizens. The justice system is most impacted. Muslims accused of even minor crimes can expect harsh, often extra legal punishments.

Muslims in states such as Uttar Pradesh face the prospect of their homes being bulldozed if they are accused of crimes. In such states, Muslims form a disproportionate number of the victims killed by the police in extra-judicial “encounters”.

At the same time, people accused of crimes against Muslims are treated more leniently or often not punished by the justice system at all. This affords an incredible amount of impunity to Hindutva vigilantism to the extent where people carrying out anti-Muslim violence often post videos of the attacks themselves, secure in the knowledge that little action will follow.

The courts do little to stem this or, in some cases, join in themselves. In March, for example, Muslims were denied bail by a court for the “crime” of eating chicken on the Ganga – an act that would bring no censure if the identities of the people eating the chicken had been different.

In the 2019 Citizenship Amendment Act, the two-nation theory has been enshrined in law, bringing religion for the first time into Indian citizenship law. At the time, BJP leaders threatened Indian Muslims that the Citizenship Amendment Act combined with a potential National Register of Citizens would impact their citizenship claims.

Eventually, even that was not required. In Bengal, the Election Commission’s Special Intensive Revision quite openly targeted the state’s Muslims and removed them from the roll. Since then, the new BJP government in the state has passed orders that bar people left out of the SIR from welfare benefits and even backward caste schemes.

A new outlook in 1947

So it is not surprising that, as part of the BJP’s espousal of the two-nation theory, the party is now openly celebrating Partition. One of the first acts of the new BJP government in West Bengal was to declare June 20 as “West Bengal day”. It was on that day in 1947 that the Bengal Assembly had met to decide on Partition.

The BJP has portrayed this vote as one that “saved” Bengal from becoming a part of Pakistan and credited SP Mookerjee, its founder, for the outcome. Both of these claims are less than accurate. The June 20 vote was a fait accompli.

The Mountbatten Plan, the scheme that decided upon Partition, had envisaged that the Bengal Assembly would divide into east and west sections and vote. Even if one section decided in favour of Partition and India, that would be enough.

The Congress had approved the Mountbatten plan and it had a comfortable majority in the western section of the Assembly. The June 20 vote was, therefore, a formality. Moreover, SP Mookerjee’s Hindu Mahasabha had exactly one seat. He had, at best, a minor role to play in the vote. In fact, it is on record that Mookerjee wanted Bengal to be partitioned on communal lines “even if India was not”. So the BJP’s argument that he supported Partition to prevent Bengal from entering Pakistan is not true.

Till now, India’s official position has always been that Partition was a necessary evil that the Congress had to agree to in 1947. Partition was only celebrated by one state in South Asia: Pakistan, which officially saw the act as the culmination of the two-nation theory. With the declaration of 20 June as “West Bengal day”, India now also joins that list.

We welcome your comments at letters@scroll.in.

Source: https://tinyurl.com/368tpna9

Data analysis: How SIR deletions shaped BJP’s landslide in Bengal

• 16 Jun, 2026

 

We have a guest post on the India Fix by academics Bhanu Joshi and Neelanjan Sircar. It's a fantastic, thorough data breakdown of the SIR and its impact on the Bengal results. They show, quite clearly, that constituencies where the SIR deleted more names also tended to be seats where the BJP gained relative to the TMC.

From November to February, more than nine million names were deleted from the Bengal electoral rolls in the space as part of what the Election Commission of India calls a Special Intensive Revision.

This was followed by a shock landslide win by the Bharatiya Janata Party on May 4, where the Hindutva party won 70% of the seats in the Assembly.

In this piece, we use statistical methods to examine whether SIR deletions were associated with electoral outcomes. We also build a simple model to try and quantify the extent of the impact.

Our analysis shows a strong relationship between SIR deletions and electoral performance in Bengal: constituencies where the electoral roll shrank more also saw the BJP do better relative to its main challenger, the Trinamool Congress. Notably, a comparable exercise in Bihar, which also underwent an SIR, shows no equivalent pro-ruling alliance pattern linked to roll shrinkage.

Our method

We seek to find the relationship between voters deleted during the SIR and the relative performance of the BJP and Trinamool: the two main players in this election.

This approach differs from much of the existing discussion, which compares the number of deleted voters with the final winning margin. In our view, that arithmetic misses how rolls actually shape elections. Roll deletion does not merely subtract names from a list. It can change the composition of the electorate that remains, the balance of local coalitions and the signals voters and parties read about who is strong.

The better test, then, is whether roll shrinkage was systematically associated with changes in party margins.

To do this, we must understand the relationship between roll shrinkage and the relative electoral performance of the BJP vis a vis the Trinamool, using Assembly constituency level data.

In West Bengal, “all-cause” roll shrinkage is measured as the percentage fall in total electors from the 2024 Lok Sabha divided by assembly segments to the final post-SIR roll before the 2026 Assembly election. For example, in Kolkata’s Bhabanipur assembly constituency, the number of electors shrank from 2,05,553 in the 2024 general election to 1,60,313 in the final post-SIR roll before the 2026 election – a roll shrinkage of 22%.

“All-cause” means the total fall in registered electors, whatever reason was recorded for deletion. It includes valid removals like deaths, migration, duplicates but can also include erroneous removals of eligible citizens. It is, therefore, simply a measure of how much the formal electorate contracted over the administrative exercise.

What we are tracking is the relative change in the electoral performance of the BJP vis-a-vis the Trinamool from 2021 to 2026. We measure this as the change in the BJP minus Trinamool vote share from 2021 to 2026. If it becomes less negative or more positive, the constituency has shifted toward the BJP relative to the TMC.

For example, in Bhabanipur, the BJP received 35.2% of the vote in 2021 and the Trinamool received 57.7%, giving the BJP a margin of −22.5 percentage points. In 2026, the BJP received 53.0% and the Trinamool received 42.2%, a margin of +10.8 points. The constituency thus moved 33.3 percentage points toward the BJP relative to the Trinamool.

We replicate the same logic for Bihar, another state where parties raised concerns about the SIR process. There, all-cause roll shrinkage compares the 2024 Lok Sabha elector count divided by assembly segments with the 2025 Assembly elector count. The electoral outcome is the change in the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance minus the opposition Mahagathbandhan margin between the 2020 and 2025 Assembly elections.

Because Bihar’s alliances changed over this period, we rebuilt National Democratic Alliance and Mahagathbandhan vote shares from party-level results separately for each year, using year-specific alliance membership.

The data cannot establish intent behind deletions, nor show how deleted voters would have voted, but they can tell us whether the geography of roll shrinkage lined up with the geography of electoral change.

What the data shows

The first difference between Bengal and Bihar is the scale of deletions (see Figure 1).

In West Bengal, the median constituency saw roll shrinkage of 9.6% – which means half the constituencies had lower shrinkage and half had higher shrinkage.

Bihar’s median, on the other hand, was only 3.0%. Positive values mean the electoral roll got smaller. This does not prove that any particular deletion was improper. It just shows that Bengal’s contraction was much larger – all the more stark given that the West Bengal election was a year later, and the rolls should have gained an extra year of newly registered voters.

 

Figure 1: Distribution of roll shrinkage in West Bengal and Bihar.The figure shows a histogram where the x-axis shows the percentage fall in registered electors from the 2024 Lok Sabha assembly-segment roll to the later Assembly roll; positive values mean the roll got smaller. The y-axis is a density scale, so the bars show where constituencies are concentrated rather than raw counts. This allows the distributions in the two states to be compared directly. The orange line marks the median constituency shrinkage.

To estimate the relationship between all-cause roll shrinkage and electoral outcomes, we use a vote-weighted linear regression – constituencies with more voters count more in estimating the line, since a margin shift there involves more people. In practice, the weighting makes little difference.

In West Bengal, there is a noticeable relationship between SIR’s roll shrinkage and electoral outcomes: each percentage point of roll shrinkage is associated with a 0.377 percentage-point shift in the BJP-Trinamool margin toward the BJP (see Figure 2). A constituency moving from 0 to ten percent roll shrinkage would thus be associated with roughly a 3.8 point movement toward the BJP and away from the Trinamool.

In contrast, Bihar shows no equivalent pro-National Development Alliance pattern – the weighted slope is in fact negative.

The West Bengal relationship is statistically strong. Bihar’s relationship is weaker and not statistically significant (the p-value is typically expected to be less than 0.05 for statistical significance). The Bihar comparison matters because it rules out one easy explanation. If roll shrinkage mechanically produced a pro-ruling-party swing wherever it occurred, Bihar should show the same pattern. It does not. The Bengal result remains an association rather than proof of causality but the Bihar comparison makes it harder to dismiss the pattern as a statistical accident.

 

Figure 2: Vote-weighted relationship between roll shrinkage and margin shift.Each point is an Assembly constituency. The x-axis shows roll shrinkage or net deletions rate, in per cent. The y-axis shows the change in the BJP-minus-TMC margin in West Bengal and the NDA-minus-MGB margin in Bihar, in percentage points; positive values mean the BJP margin improved in West Bengal and the NDA margin improved in Bihar. Lines are weighted by valid votes in the later Assembly election.

We then break down the deletion data because all-cause shrinkage is deliberately broad. Table 1 asks whether the association appears only in that broad measure, or also when we use the official deletion categories.

Non-death deletions are removals not recorded as deaths. The distinction matters because death deletion is routine roll correction, while non-death deletion is where questions of residence, shifting, duplication, documentation or error are more likely to arise. The data also contains an ASDD-labelled category – voters marked “absent, shifted, dead or duplicate”. Because deaths are reported separately, we treat ASDD as an official category, not as proof of why any one voter was removed. Finally, supplementary-list deletions are those made right at the end, including through the controversial "logical discrepancy" protocol. To make these measures comparable across constituencies, each count is divided by the constituency's 2024 elector total.

The narrower measures point in the same direction as the broad one. Non-death deletions, ASDD deletions and supplementary-list deletions are all positively associated with a BJP-favourable margin shift.

This does not identify wrongful deletions. It shows the Bengal pattern is not driven by one broad variable – it persists when the deletion file is broken into narrower categories.

Table 1: Weighted West Bengal deletion regressions. Each row reports a separate vote-weighted regression for West Bengal, excluding Falta. The outcome is the change in the BJP-minus-TMC margin from 2021 to 2026. Each slope is the BJP-favourable margin shift, in percentage points, associated with a one percentage-point increase in the deletion rate, measured against 2024 electors. Regressions are weighted by 2026 valid votes. Source: ECI/CEO data and the Sabar Institute deletion file, included in the replication package.

Measuring the scale of impact

How consequential are these shifts for seats? Any conversion from vote share to seat share is necessarily speculative: it is a model, not reality. But the exercise helps us clarify the scale of the association we find.

For this exercise we make use of a uniform swing model. The model calculates the average shift in vote margins or swing between two elections and applies that shift uniformly across all assembly constituencies. For instance, if a model finds a 10 percentage point shift in margin towards the BJP, then we assume each Assembly constituency experienced that same 10 point shift from 2021 to 2026. Of course, swings are not uniform in the real world, but the model is widely used because it does not build in any partisan advantage in translating vote swings into seat outcomes.

We find across constituencies, weighted by valid votes, the BJP-Trinamool margin moved 14.8 percentage points toward the BJP between 2021 and 2026. The regression line estimates that in a constituency with no roll shrinkage (the intercept of the line in the left panel of figure 2), the BJP-Trinamool margin would still have moved 11.0 points towards the BJP. In other words, the model associated roughly 3.8 points of the observed margin swing with roll shrinkage. Applying the 11.0 point no shrinkage swing to 2021 constituency margins, the BJP would still be expected to win about 163 seats, above the 148 seat majority mark. When we simulate the swing under no shrinkage using the regression output and uncertainties, the BJP would be expected to form the government 89% of the time.

This is a deliberately narrow counterfactual. It removes only the constituency level association between roll shrinkage and margin shift. It does not capture broader political effects: whether the SIR changed campaign attention, voter expectations, perceptions of party strength, or the broader political environment.

For instance, if voters in Bhabanipur saw that the BJP had become more competitive in surrounding areas due to the SIR, then they too could believe that the BJP had a better chance of winning this time and switch their vote from Trinamool to BJP. This would yield an equilibrium swing away from the TMC to the BJP across the constituencies of South Kolkata. If the process made the BJP appear stronger statewide, for instance, that effect would not be measured by the constituency-level regression and could only be accounted for in an equilibrium or statewide effect.

Figure 3 therefore asks: under a no-roll-shrinkage scenario, how much additional statewide movement back toward the Trinamool would be needed to make the result uncertain? In this model, just a 2 percentage-point statewide shift back toward the Trinamool would be enough to bring down the probability of the BJP getting a majority in the Assembly below 50%.

We are not claiming this counterfactual happened. The statewide, or "equilibrium", effects of the SIR are impossible to quantify. What the exercise shows is that the margin shifts associated with roll shrinkage were large enough to matter for seats, and that under some plausible scenarios the outcome itself would have been in doubt. Readers can judge the plausibility of those scenarios for themselves.

 

Figure 3: Seat consequences under a no-roll-shrinkage scenario. The model first estimates the BJP-TMC margin swing expected in a constituency with no roll shrinkage: 11.0 percentage points toward the BJP. It then applies that swing to 2021 constituency margins and asks how much additional statewide swing back toward the TMC, in percentage points, would make the result uncertain. The left panel shows the BJP’s probability of reaching the 148-seat majority mark. The right panel shows expected BJP seats. The dotted vertical lines mark the points where the BJP majority probability falls to half and where expected BJP seats fall to 148. Falta is excluded.

What this means

The first implication of this analysis is that margins should not be interpreted mechanically, as though the only question were whether the number of deleted voters exceeded the final winning margin.

Changes to the rolls operate on an election before a single vote is counted: they alter the composition of the electorate, shift the local balance of party strength, and shape how parties and voters read the contest and respond to it. It is for this reason that our analysis asks whether roll shrinkage was associated with changes in party margins rather than merely whether deletions outnumbered the margins that resulted, and it is arguably why our estimates of the electoral consequences of roll shrinkage run larger than those produced by more mechanical comparisons.

None of this evidence proves fraud, establishes that the SIR caused the BJP's victory, or shows that the deleted voters would have voted for the Trinamool. What it establishes is narrower but, we would argue, harder to set aside: that the constituencies where the roll contracted more also tended to move further toward the BJP relative to the Trinamool, and that a comparable exercise in Bihar yields no equivalent pro-ruling-alliance pattern that might explain the Bengal result away as a generic artefact.

That Bengal's roll contraction was unusually large by any comparative standard, makes this result even starker.

This is why the question raised by the SIR is institutional as much as it is electoral. Electoral rolls in any large democracy must be cleaned, because large democracies accumulate deaths, duplicates, migration and error, and a roll that is never revised eventually misrepresents the electorate it is meant to record. But the opposite error is equally real: an eligible citizen can be struck from the list and thereby lose the practical ability to vote, and when such removals cluster geographically in ways that track electoral change, the cost is borne not only by individuals but by the credibility of the contest itself. In a democracy, the election body's task is to administer the competition, not to alter the field on which it is fought.

Bhanu Joshi is an incoming Assistant Professor in the Department of Politics and Social Change at Australian National University and co-founder of DALES (PhD, Political Science, Brown University). Neelanjan Sircar is an Associate Professor in the Division of Social Sciences at Ahmedabad University.

Data Sources: For West Bengal, election results and elector roll totals come from public Election Commission of India and West Bengal Chief Electoral Officer sources. The deletion category table later in this section uses an assembly-wise deletion file provided by the Sabar Institute from documents published by the Election Commission during the SIR process. For Bihar, election results and elector counts come from Election Commission sources. We group party-level votes into the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance and the Rashtriya Janata Dal-led Mahagathbandhan according to which parties belonged to each alliance in each election year, because several parties changed sides or contested separately between 2020 and 2025. The West Bengal analysis excludes one constituency, Falta, where a repoll produced an anomalous contest, leaving 293 constituencies. All data and code are available in our replication package.

Source: https://tinyurl.com/3xev4hjf

శ్రీ కౌముది జూన్ 2026

 

Why has India's 'sweet spot' turned into so bitter?

 Economically and geopolitically, the wheel has turned.

Rohan Venkat May 23

 

Four years ago – not long after we moved from Delhi to Cairo – I wrote about how, from the global lens, India appeared to be occupying a ‘sweet spot’, both geopolitically and economically.

The world was “wooing India,” said the Hindustan Times. This was the “golden era” of Indian foreign policy, said another international observer. Deutsche Bank called India the “shining star” of the global economy. You can “feel India’s superpower potential being realised” said Citibank.

Even at the time, there were plenty of questions about how much that economic performance was just a post-Covid mirage, and how long New Delhi could walk the ‘multipolarity’ tightrope. But as recently as March 2025, it was being said that “just about everyone it seems (apart from maybe China and a few South Asian neighbours) needs more of India.”

Now, as our four-year stint in Egypt is coming to an end and as we prepare a shift to Brussels this summer (get in touch if you will be there or have recommendations of whom to meet!) the wheel appears to have turned completely.

A few recent headlines, covering foreign policy and the economy:

·        ‘India missed out on AI and now its run as market darling may be over’

·        Indian economy faces perfect storm with oil above $100, rupee in freefall, inflation back

·        Indian Central Bank intervenes as rupee drops to record low

·        India’s weak currency reflects deeper problems than the Iran war

·        Winter is coming for Indian inflation

·        Iran War and India’s diplomatic failures

·        India’s diplomats are hosting the world, but what is getting done?

Look first at the economy, where the government – having attempted to ignore the West Asian crisis while elections were ongoing has now pivoted to top-down demand destruction.

“Prime Minister Narendra Modi has appealed to Indians to revive working from home, buy less gold and limit foreign travel to deal with a surge in global energy ​prices because of the continuing crisis in the Middle East.

Modi said the austerity measures, reminiscent of the Covid era, would reduce India’s fuel use and help save foreign exchange.

“Patriotism is not only about the willingness to sacrifice one’s life on the border. In these times, it is about living responsibly and fulfilling our duties to the nation in our daily lives,” Modi said.

Menaka Doshi and Preeti Soni write:

“Modi’s advice comes two months too late. Many Asian peers began conservation measures in March whereas in India, which imports well over 90% of its oil and gas requirements, state-owned fuel retailers have held local prices steady despite higher import costs since the start of the Iran war… Had Modi’s government allowed for a gradual pass-through of higher import costs, it would have helped curtail domestic demand and conserve fuel for essential purposes… [Now] With no election in sight for months and global energy leaders warning of a long oil market disruption, Indians should expect local fuel prices to climb... quickly.”

The West Asian crisis has caused severe pressure on the country’s balance of payments, the rupee and, as the headlines above indicate, the broader India story.

Ajit Ranade explains:

“There are moments when a currency tells a story more honestly than official statements do. The Indian rupee is doing exactly that. It has lost more than 12 percent against the US dollar in 12 months and has been sliding relentlessly even though India’s macroeconomic fundamentals are not in obvious crisis territory. Growth is still respectable. Inflation is not runaway. The current account deficit, at least in headline terms, is manageable. Forex reserves remain robust. This is not 1991.

But that is precisely why the rupee’s fall is worrying. If a currency weakens sharply despite decent growth and contained inflation, it is telling us that the problem lies elsewhere: in the balance of payments, capital flows, investor confidence, oil vulnerability and the structure of India’s external dependence.”

(In his full post, Madhusudhan does spell out his reasons to be ‘long India’, but his reference to the level of pessimism here is the relevant bit)

Here is Surjit Bhalla, long a pro-Modi voice on economic matters:

“No matter how one slices the data, it is time to dispense with the moniker of the fastest-growing major economy. India has also moved from being one of five “Fragile Five” economies in 2013 to possibly becoming one of just two (along with Turkey).”

The US-Israel war on Iran, and the subsequent blockade of Hormuz, may be the immediate trigger, but as numerous analysts have pointed out, there are structural issues at hand. Here is JP Morgan’s Sajjid Chinoy:

"Pressures have long pre-dated the West Asia conflict. For the first time in more than three decades, the Balance of Payments has been in deficit for two consecutive years and we are on course for a third consecutive deficit. There is a more chronic phenomenon underlying these pressures that we have to address...

In turn, a collapse in FDI is at the heart of the capital flow story, with net FDI — which used to average 1.5 per cent — completely drying up since 2024. What’s driving this? Between 2010 and 2025, India’s net FDI is strongly correlated with US 10-Year Treasuries — a proxy for global financial conditions. When yields are low India tends to get a gush of FDI; when yields harden — like the last two years — net FDI has completely dried up. Recall, FDI is typically governed by both (global) “push” and (country-specific) “pull-factors.” What India’s FDI trajectory suggests it has largely been governed by push factors since 2010. The last time it was driven by pull-factors was in 2005-10 when a strong corporate capex cycle catalysed strong FDI.”

In other words, when cash was plentiful and cheap, it flowed into places like India looking for yields. As conditions tighten, it has flowed back out – since there are no reasons keeping it there. Chinoy says that this wasn’t the case between 2005-10, because businesses were actually investing in India, which they haven’t been doing over the last decade despite the major clean-up of balance sheets and stabilising of macro fundamentals over the last decade.

This is a concern we have flagged for years now, including back during the sweet spot moment (and before when India’s pre-Covid growth had fallen to 4% and the government unveiled what turned out to be spectacularly badly timed corporate tax cuts), and continuously over the last half decade, as the Indian government kept urging and exhorting businesses to invest – never a good sign:

As I read Chinoy’s push/pull analysis, though, it got me thinking of a piece by Kate Sullivan de Estrada that we published on India in Transition a few weeks ago, entitled ‘India’s Foreign Policy Relocations in the Trump Tariff Era.’

“From roughly 2017 until recently, India’s growing international recognition was closely tied to the geopolitical salience of the Indo-Pacific. As External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar observed in June 2022, the region had moved to “the centre of the geo-strategic and geo-economic discourse,” placing India at the heart of an emerging strategic frame. The Indo-Pacific not only reflected the sharpening rivalry between the US and China, but key regional actors—including the US, Japan, Australia, and India through the Quad—framed the Indo-Pacific as a space defined by shared values of “freedom and openness.”

Against this backdrop, India stood as both a material and an ideological swing state. The Indo-Pacific became a high-yield recognition domain, delivering status, trust, and material benefits, even as India’s leadership interpreted elements of freedom and openness in distinctive ways. It conferred strategic indispensability, elevated India through association with major powers, and created opportunities for India to shape the norms and institutions of an emergent regional order…

But the recognition dividends of the Indo-Pacific frame depended heavily on the strategic priorities of external actors, particularly the US. Under the second Trump administration, advocates describe US policy attention as having gravitated toward the Western Hemisphere, even if more conventional commitments to American primacy persist. The background recognition context that underpinned India’s Indo-Pacific centrality began to shift.”

You should read the whole piece, including an analysis of how India moved its focus from the Indo-Pacific to trade deals, de Estrada noting that “India-as-trade-partner does not strike quite the same note of indispensability as did its role as a key balancer in the Indo-Pacific.”

The analogy here is that the attention on the Indo-Pacific was a push factor, which inflated India’s sense of importance, its ‘vishwaguru’ status and built the idea that its rise was inevitable – fully imbibed at home and translated into domestic messaging. But this was a flawed reading of what was going on.

And Trump, as we have discussed many a time on the newsletter, changed all of that.

Not just because of his affinity for Pakistani generals or his erratic trade wars but also because, at a more structural level, the Indo-Pacific theatre became a less immediate concern, and suddenly India’s stock dropped. The US-Israel war on Iran has added to that, and though the Western Indian Ocean should also be a key theatre for Indian interests, it simply isn’t a space into which New Delhi can project much leverage.

You get the sense from many a policymaker that they expect that the US, once it is done with its ‘Middle Eastern dalliances’, will eventually come to its senses and start focusing (pivoting?) to Indo-Pacific competition with China once again, and then India will return to its rightful place in the order of things. The ‘push’ will come back, while India works on trade deals to shore up the slower process of building a ‘pull’ factor.

Is that a given? There are already those who have argued that the Indo-Pacific and the ‘pivot’ are dead, or worse, ‘zombies’. And then there was the ‘G2’ in Beijing this month. Here’s India’s former foreign secretary Shyam Saran:

“The May 14-15 summit in Beijing between Chinese President Xi Jinping and his US counterpart Donald Trump was a landmark geopolitical event, whose impact will reverberate across the Asian region and the world for years to come. This is an inflection point, and one is not using the term lightly. It is perhaps for this reason that there is a reluctance not only in the US and the West but also in our own region to grasp the full significance of just what happened in those two days of early spring in the Chinese capital.”

It will take time to understand the implications of the US-Israel war on Iran, but perhaps the biggest challenge for New Delhi is to take the right bet on how important the Indo-Pacific will be for its Western partners over the next few decades. Good thing US Secretary of State Marco Rubio is about to visit – from May 23 to May 26 – with, among other things, the question of the Quad hanging in the air.

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Source:  https://rohanvenkat.substack.com/p/why-has-indias-sweet-spot-turned