Sovereignty, pragmatism & choices

India’s fraught neighbourhood places multiple constraints on its strategic choices. Americans like to underline the challenge of walking and chewing gum. For India, the China-Pakistan alliance produces a much greater complexity

- SHEKHAR GUPTA

It's early days in 2026, but the word “sovereignty” is already the most likely frontrunner for the word of the year. It’s now a key buzzword in Indian politics.

And it gets radioactive whenever US President Donald Trump makes any reference to India. Or when something as normal and reciprocal as his ambassador, Sergio Gor, visiting the Western Command headquarters at Chandimandir happens.

Mr Trump has brought sovereignty back in fashion. He's broken three decades of globalisation consensus that persuaded nations to see benefit in sharing sovereignty with their friends and allies, in groupings and alliances. This is over. Mr Trump has persuaded every nation, especially his allies or partners — from Canada to India - to rediscover that “S” word.

In India, it only recently reawakened latent emotions. You could see it as the end of the era of complacency, or a test of our national wisdom. India’s short era of strategic pragmatism is being put to the test.

You can attribute it to our colonial history. Or subsequent victimisation by the West (read America) as Pakistan became its treaty ally. Later, the wounds were made deeper and the fortress mentality stronger as India faced successive sanctions and technology denial after the two Pokhran tests in 1974 and 1998.

All the pressures on our nuclear and missile programme in the infamous “cap, rollback and eliminate” era also came from Washington. India’s larger, philosophical concept of sovereignty, therefore, came to be defined as defiance of America. This lived experience produced a nationalism that was as thin-skinned as the suspicion of the US was deep.