Revisiting Non-Alignment: India’s Cold War Approach to Regional Politics
During the Cold War, the United States and the Soviet Union utilized economic power as a political tool, attempting to assert their agendas in the developing third world.[1] Through recent meetings with Afghanistan's Taliban government, India attempted to exert similar influence, leveraging economic investment to gain political control in South Asia and establishing itself as a non-aligned global power.
In 1947, the year of India’s independence, both the democratic Western bloc and the communist Eastern bloc were vying for global control, targeting newly decolonized nations.[2] At a conference in Bandung, Indonesia, in 1955, Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru of India called for a strategy of non-alignment in the third world. In his speech, Nehru argued that if subject to the ideological restrictions of free-market democracy or communism, the very identities of third-world nations would be compromised: “If I join any of these big groups I lose my identity… I have no views left.” Emerging from hundreds of years of colonial rule, this was a logical strategy. Both philosophies emerged from a European political context and submitting to either “Great Power” would again deprive India of self-determination. Yet, Nehru also acknowledged the power of the Western and Eastern blocs, "they are not only great in military might but in development, in culture, in civilization."[3] In acknowledging the socio-cultural influence of each prominent political force, Nehru hinted at a future for India as an independent global player and a political-economic force.
Establishing diplomatic contact with the Taliban government of Afghanistan within the past week, India continues its crusade to establish global political prominence. In the two decades before the fall of Kabul, India, the largest democracy in the world, invested more than $3 billion towards developing Afghanistan’s infrastructure.[4] Just as the Cold War blocs attempted to economically insert themselves into the third world to cultivate political influence, India’s investment in Afghanistan’s democratic government allowed it a stake in Afghani development.[5] Although Afghanistan is no longer under democratic leadership, India’s recent engagement with the Taliban signals an attempt to continue leveraging this historical economic investment for political power.
India’s talks with the Taliban also provide the regime with the “de facto legitimacy” they have been denied by the broader global community. Although 40 countries maintain diplomatic or informal relations with the Taliban government in Afghanistan, no nation has formally recognized them.[6] By electing to diverge from the non-engagement approaches of the Western powers, India utilizes the non-alignment philosophy for its own political gain.
Through decades of economic investment in Afghanistan’s development, India has secured its sociopolitical influence with the Afghani public despite threats of a future political turnover.[7] This strategy of control, utilized by both the Eastern and Western blocs during the Cold War, was unattractive to a newly independent India, which advocated instead for a strategy of non-alignment.[8] Decades later, the Modi government has reframed Nehru’s principles of non-alignment to justify India’s divergence from the Western political powers. While this approach has allowed for India’s rise to global prominence, it is coupled with disregard for the Taliban’s significant human and women’s rights violations, boding poorly for the worldwide pursuit of justice.[9]
References
[1] Alex Langer, “The Third World Movement”, International Relations (class lecture, Eastside Preparatory School, Kirkland, WA, January 16, 2025).
[2] Langer, “Third World Movement.”
[3] Jawaharlal Nehru, “World Peace and Cooperation” (1955), in America in the World, ed. Jeffery A. Engel, Mark Atwood Lawrence, and Andrew Preston.
[4] Soutik Biswas, “Why India is reaching out the Taliban now,” BBC, January 15, 2025, https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cp8ke9e27dxo.
[5] Langer, “Third World Movement.”
[6] Biswas, “Why India is reaching out to Taliban now.”
[7] Biswas, “Why India is reaching out to Taliban now.”
[8] Nehru, “World Peace and Cooperation.”
[9] Vanda Felbab-Brown, “The Taliban’s three years in power and what lies ahead,” Brookings, August 14, 2024, https://www.brookings.edu/articles/the-talibans-three-years-in-power-and-what-lies-ahead/.