Why is India a “Wild Card” in Quad 2.0? A Study of India’s National Identity

Not a “natural partner” of the US, India is a “wild card” in the Quad. The grouping is built more on geopolitical pragmatism than on shared liberal-democratic norms and values.

After the 2024 Quad Leaders’ Summit in Delaware, United States in September, commentators have raised concerns over the relevance of the minilateral grouping, asking if the Quad “has lost its way” or if it “is here to stay.” Our research resonates with these concerns, and is driven by an empirical puzzle: despite the resuscitation of the Quad in November 2017, Quad 2.0 had not taken any quadrilateral collective action until 2021. In 2017-20, the four states had neither held leaders’ summit meetings nor issued joint statements after lower-level meetings.

Contrary to conventional wisdom, India’s national identity has not been built on conceptions of democratic legitimacy, but premised on a complex amalgamation of non-alignment, post-imperial ideology, Hindu nationalism, and Indian exceptionalism. India’s attitude towards the Quad is shaped by how it perceives China and the US in light of India’s evolving views on external forces that define its identity and represent a “pre-eminent danger”—the so-called “Significant Other.”

India inherited an electoral democratic system from Britain when it achieved independence in 1947. However, its post-colonial Significant Other has not been communist/autocratic countries, but rather ex-imperial Western powers. In this, it shared an anti-colonial, “victimhood” identity with China and maintained good ties with Beijing until 1959 when the Dalai Lama sought refuge in India. In 1954, both India and China jointly promoted the five principles of peaceful coexistence. During the Cold War period, India was outside of the US-led “liberal” regional order in the Asia-Pacific, and Pakistan, India’s arch-rival, was rather a US ally. Despite India’s humiliating defeat in the Sino-Indian border war of 1962, its ties with the US remained frosty. More noteworthy is that in the wake of Pakistan’s atrocities in Bangladesh in 1971, during which the Nixon administration intimidated India into not intervening in the genocidal violence, India decided to forge closer relations with the Soviet Union by signing an Indo-Soviet Treaty of Peace and Friendship and Cooperation in August 1971. These decisions show that liberal democracy was never a defining marker of India’s national identity.

In the post-Cold War era, India’s identification of the Significant Other has been contingent on which one—between the US and China—would recognise it as the regional pre-eminent power in South Asia. Indian political elites have examined whether their Chinese counterparts would regard Asia as a hierarchical order with China at the apex or as a multipolar order in which China, India, Japan, and the US are major undisputed powers. There was a subtle shift in India’s conception of its Significant Other during the Bill Clinton and George W. Bush administrations when they came to recognise India as a rising power with nuclear weapons, even though the two countries continued to have disagreements over the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, as well as disarmament. At the same time, rebuffs from China did not cease, and Beijing has repeatedly opposed India’s attempts to join the Nuclear Suppliers Group. Their long-standing border disputes and China’s growing geopolitical influence in South Asia by the means of the Belt and Road Initiative have combined to worsen the bilateral relationship. However, India’s Significant Other had yet to shift to China completely. Having straddled the West and the Global South, India was keen to maintain “strategic autonomy” from the US. This sui generis identity helps explain why Narendra Modi and Xi Jinping held two informal summits in 2018-19. It made collective inaction of Quad 2.0 possible in 2017-20.

The “pivotal” turning point in India’s changing Significant Other came in June 2020 when China and India engaged in a fatal clash in the Galwan Valley. India interpreted the skirmish as a Chinese “expansionist” move against it because the Galwan Valley, lying west of the Indian version of the Line of Actual Control, was never seen by Indians as disputed territory. This resonated strongly with a “Chinese treachery and betrayal” narrative in India: India had treated China as a friend in the 1950s but China repaid the friendship with a war against it in 1962. The clash also served to call into question, if not end, the Nehruvian imaginary that India and China would be equal partners in Asia. It demonstrated to Indians that China’s vision of Asia is unipolar, refusing to acknowledge India’s ascending social status in the region. After the Galwan Valley incident, India could no longer afford to remain ambiguous about the Quad. As a result, Australia was invited to “re-join” the Malabar Naval Exercise in November 2020.

Is there a possibility that the US will return as India’s Significant Other? It will be possible if India’s nationalist elites believe that the US behaves like a “neocolonial” ruler, “lecturing” them on how they should govern their country. Indian elites reacted strongly to US critics of India’s “democratic backsliding” around the time when Narendra Modi visited the US in June 2023. More recently, North American governments have felt threatened by a growing transnational repression originating not only in China, Russia, and Iran but also in India. Why was the aforementioned 2024 Quad Leaders’ Summit held in the US instead in India? Not due to scheduling difficulties. The undisclosed reason was Joe Biden’s decision not to visit India because of Indian intelligence officers’ alleged attempt to assassinate an American-Canadian Sikh activist on American soil, albeit thwarted by US authorities. Canada and India have similarly become ensnared in an intense diplomatic row that began with an assassination of a Canadian Sikh activist in British Columbia in June 2023. Canada has rallied its partners in the Anglosphere Five Eyes, including the US and Australia, in favour of its decision.

To conclude, we suggest revisiting the nature as well as limitations of the Quad from a non-material interest perspective.

This analysis is part of a larger study published in the Australian Journal of International Affairs. It was short listed for the 2024 Boyer Prize.

Lai-Ha Chan is Senior Lecturer in the Social and Political Sciences Program, School of Communication, Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, University of Technology Sydney, Australia. Pak K. Lee is a Senior Fellow of the Conflict Analysis Research Centre and a Research Fellow of the Global Europe Centre in the School of Politics and International Relations at the University of Kent, Canterbury, United Kingdom.

This article was originally published on https://www.internationalaffairs.org.au/australianoutlook/why-is-india-a-wild-card-in-quad-2-0-a-study-of-indias-national-identity/