INDIA AT THE LAGRANGE POINT

A recent message from a former foreign secretary offered a striking metaphor: India, she suggested, might be at a Lagrange point.

- SHASHI THAROOR

Not having been the most attentive science student, I had to look the term up. A Lagrange point is one of five positions in space where the gravitational forces of two large orbiting bodies—say, the Sun and Earth—balance out. This equilibrium allows a smaller object, like a spacecraft, to remain stable between the two, requiring minimal fuel to stay in place. These points are often described as ‘parking spots’ in space.

It’s a compelling image for India’s current geopolitical predicament. In the intricate and often tempestuous world of international relations, few relationships are as complex and consequential as the one between China and the United States. And India, caught between the gravitational pulls of these two superpowers—an unpredictable and transactional America and an overweening and assertive China—must chart a course that preserves its autonomy, advances its interests, and avoids being drawn too close to either orbit.

The challenge has become more acute in recent months. The current American administration’s approach to India is not only misguided, but destructive too. It risks fracturing a partnership that has been carefully built over three decades and which had enjoyed deep bipartisan support in Washington.

While America’s strategy once rested on the geopolitical imperative of countering China, the new Trumpian transactionalism fails to recognise that India is not a junior partner in someone else’s strategic design. It is a power in its own right—with its own ambitions, constraints, and a fierce commitment, sharpened by 200 years of colonialism, to safeguard its own independence and strategic autonomy.