The Mimicry Trap: How India’s Quest for a ‘Savarna’ Seat at the Global Table Left It Isolated 

India’s current geopolitical isolation stems from a failed foreign policy strategy that abandoned its historical non-aligned solidarity with the Global South in favor of a flawed “sanskritisation” approach, where it mimicked the rhetoric and majoritarian politics of Western powers under the illusion that this would grant it a seat at the world’s top table.

This bet, epitomized by Modi’s chummy relationship with Trump and the ideological affinity with right-wing Western leaders, proved delusional as it misread the West’s ruthlessly self-interested and increasingly nativist stance, which views India—a primary source of immigrants—not as an ally but as a demographic threat, while simultaneously alienating its regional neighbors and traditional partners in the developing world through neglect and an inconsistent moral compass, leaving the country estranged from the very powers it courted and the peer nations it abandoned.

The Mimicry Trap: How India’s Quest for a ‘Savarna’ Seat at the Global Table Left It Isolated 

For a moment, it seemed like a masterstroke. The roaring crowd in a Houston stadium in 2019, the bear hugs, and the shared stagecraft of two populist leaders—Narendra Modi and Donald Trump appeared as ideological twins and strategic partners. “Ab ki baar, Trump sarkar,” Modi declared, a breach of diplomatic protocol that signaled a profound bet on a particular vision of the world. India, under Modi, wasn’t just aligning with the West; it was aligning with the West’s emerging, muscular, majoritarian right, believing this was the key to a permanent seat at the world’s high table. 

Half a decade later, that bet lies in tatters. The “Howdy Modi” euphoria has curdled into the cold reality of Trump’s punitive tariffs—the highest the US has imposed on any nation. Pakistan, India’s perennial rival, is fêted in both Washington and Beijing. The much-vaunted Quad feels more like a talking shop than a decisive alliance. And India finds itself diplomatically isolated in its own neighborhood, with South Asian neighbors united in their wariness. 

The question is, how did a nation with India’s immense potential and historical diplomatic stature arrive at this point of strategic loneliness? The answer lies in a profound and ultimately flawed reading of global politics, a strategy of international “sanskritisation” that prioritized mimicking the powerful over building solidarity with peers. 

The Allure of the Unipolar Fantasy 

To understand the present, we must look to the immediate post-Cold War era. The collapse of the Soviet Union, India’s primary patron, sent the Indian foreign policy establishment into a tailspin. The consensus that emerged, championed by strategic thinkers like C. Raja Mohan, was that non-alignment was a relic. The world was in a “unipolar moment,” dominated by a triumphant US-led liberal democratic order. To thrive, India needed to “get with the programme.” 

This led to a bipartisan pivot towards the US, accelerated by the nuclear deal and growing economic ties. The assumptions were seductive: 

• American Hegemony was Permanent: US economic and military supremacy was the enduring reality of the 21st century. 

• China Could Be Contained: The US was the indispensable counterweight to a rising China, and India could be a key partner in this project. 

• The Diaspora was a Bridge: The success of the Indian diaspora in the US would translate into sustained political goodwill. 

The Modi government inherited this framework but injected a potent ideological novelty. They saw in the rise of Trump, Bolsonaro, and Meloni not an aberration, but a new global order in the making—a “concert of majoritarians.” For a government building a Hindu Rashtra at home, these leaders were not just strategic partners but ideological soulmates. This fusion of strategy and ideology created a dangerous illusion: that India was becoming the West’s indispensable, non-Muslim democratic ally in the Indo-Pacific and a natural member of this exclusive club. 

The Flawed Foundations of a “Majoritarian” Foreign Policy 

This worldview blinded the establishment to several harsh realities. 

First, it overestimated the West’s ideological solidarity. The West’s alliances, for all their talk of values, have always been ruthlessly self-interested. Trump’s “America First” doctrine was merely a blunt expression of this. His transactional view of NATO—as a protection racket where allies must pay up—was a direct repudiation of the kind of benevolent hegemony India had counted on. The US was never going to underwrite India’s security out of shared ideological fervor; it would only do so if it served a clear, immediate American interest. 

Second, it misread the West’s stance on immigration and race. In its eagerness to join the “savarna” nations, Modi’s government failed to see that in the West’s nativist imagination, India itself was a primary source of the “problem.” Trump’s derogatory “shithole countries” remark, the moves to scrap the H-1B visa, and the violent attacks on Indian immigrants in Ireland were stark reminders. To a West feeling “besieged” by migration from the Global South, India, as the world’s largest exporter of people, could never be an exception. The government’s mimicry did not change the color of its passport in the eyes of Western nativists. 

Third, and most critically, it alienated the Global South. In its desperate quest for a seat at the top table, India abandoned the very foundation of its historic foreign policy: solidarity with the post-colonial world. The Non-Aligned Movement (NAM), for all its flaws, was built on a recognition of a shared predicament. It allowed India to champion critiques of US wars, apartheid, and colonial aggression from a position of moral authority. 

Under Modi, this has been replaced by a deafening silence or outright acquiescence. India’s stance on Gaza, more compliant than Israel’s staunchest Western allies, has shredded its credibility in the Arab world and across much of Africa and Latin America. Its “rock-solid” partnership with Israel, while strategically valuable, is now seen through an uncomfortably ideological lens. Meanwhile, its neighbors in SAARC view a India that cosies up to distant powers with deep suspicion, feeling the neglect and occasional bullying of the region’s Gulliver. 

Sanskritisation vs. Strategic Autonomy: A False Choice 

External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar often speaks of “strategic autonomy,” defending India’s continued trade with Russia as a prime example. But true strategic autonomy isn’t about playing all sides in a transactional game; it’s about the capacity to define one’s own destiny independently. The recent, almost compulsory, visit to China—a nation engaged in persistent border aggression—to signal this autonomy, in fact, reveals its scarcity. 

The failed strategy can be likened to the social concept of sanskritisation—where a lower caste adopts the rituals and practices of the upper castes (savarnas) in hopes of gaining social mobility. Modi’s India mimicked the rhetoric, the alliances, and the majoritarian politics of the Western powers, hoping for acceptance. But the “savarna” club, particularly in its current xenophobic iteration, was never going to grant full membership to a nation of 1.4 billion people, home to the world’s largest population of poor. 

The result is a nation caught in a strategic no-man’s-land: distrusted by the West it courted, resented by the neighbors it ignored, and viewed with caution by the Global South it abandoned. 

The Path to a Principled Realism: Reclaiming the Future 

If the old realism has failed, as Trump’s tariffs have so vividly demonstrated, what comes next? A new foreign policy must be built not on mimicry, but on a clear-eyed reassessment of India’s place in a rapidly changing world. 

• Re-prioritize the Neighborhood: The first and most urgent task is to mend fences in South Asia. This requires a combination of generous diplomacy, economic integration, and a respectful approach to smaller neighbors’ sovereignty. A peaceful, prosperous, and integrated South Asia is a far greater source of strength than any distant alliance. 

• Re-engage the Global South, Authentically: India must once again become a voice for the developing world. This means taking clear, principled stands on issues like climate justice, vaccine equity, and fair trade. It means using its G20 presence to advocate for a more equitable global financial architecture, not just to burnish its own image. 

• Decouple Strategy from Majoritarian Ideology: Foreign policy must be guided by national interest, not domestic majoritarian impulses. The relationship with Israel can be strategic without being celebratory; the stance on human rights should be consistent, not selectively applied. 

• Embrace Multi-Alignment 2.0: The original idea of multi-alignment was pragmatic but became overly US-centric. A new multi-alignment would mean a truly balanced engagement with all power centers—the US, Europe, Russia, and crucially, building new partnerships in Africa, Southeast Asia, and Latin America—without mortgaging India’s independence to any one of them. 

The world is not unipolar, and it is not bifurcating into a simple US-China duopoly. It is fragmenting into a complex, multipolar landscape. In this world, India’s greatest asset is not its ability to mimic a waning order, but its potential to help build a new one. By returning to its roots as a voice of the marginalized and a bridge-builder in the Global South, India can trade a precarious seat at someone else’s table for the power to help design a new one altogether. The alternative is to remain in the mimicry trap—forever an aspirant, never an architect.