MUTUAL RESPECT AND UNDERSTANDING NEEDED IN UK-INDIA RELATIONS

What prompts the negative sentiment towards India across British society, spanning from parliamentarians to media outlets? Could this perhaps be attributed to a lingering colonial legacy, an inability to view India as a partner rather than a former subject?

- CHARLOTTE LITTLEWOOD

Recent developments have positioned India as the world’s fifth-largest economy, surpassing the UK’s standing, and it has also beaten Russia, the United States and China in their efforts to be the first to land a spacecraft near the South Pole of the moon. The landing of Chandrayaan-3, where craters hold frozen water, may well be the first step towards humanity’s future and an insight into its very beginning. Amidst this landscape, given India’s G20 presidency and the imperative for new trade avenues, alongside the significant presence of our 1.8 million strong Indian diaspora, there is a real sense of now or never for optimising trade and co-operation with India. India’s burgeoning global economic status coincides with its role as a pivotal ally in the strategic challenge presented by China’s ascendancy. The Chinese Communist Party’s explicit drive to cultivate a China-centric international order favouring its authoritarian paradigm has far-reaching implications, compromising individual rights and liberties. The strategic imperative of countering this Chinese trajectory resonates both in Western defence priorities and within India’s own policy framework.