New Delhi, Sept. 28 -- India has, since ancient times, held a central place in the world's commercial geography. The economic historian Angus Maddison put the scale plainly: India's share of world GDP was roughly 32 per cent around 1 CE and even in 1700 it stood at 24.4 per cent. This was a country that helped shape how the world traded and grew prosperous as its partners did.
The evidence sits along every coast. In the west, Gujarat and the Malabar coast are linked to Hormuz, Aden and the Red Sea and on to eastern Africa and the Mediterranean. In the east, Indian goods moved through Sri Lanka and the Bay of Bengal to Southeast Asia and China, with Malacca growing into a great entrepot. India stood between the two halves of that ocean and played every role at once: producer, consumer, intermediary and entrepot.
Then came the rupture. Two centuries of British rule drained the country's resources and by Independence India's share of world GDP had collapsed to 4.2 per cent. That figure marks the difference between a prosperity built on exchange and a wealth taken by domination. The first lifts others; the second hollows them out.
The last decade tells a story of economic resurgence. Growing at 7.8 per cent, India is the fastest-growing major economy, called by the IMF the "only bright spot in the otherwise dark horizon". It has widened partnerships with the United States, the European Union, the United Kingdom, Japan, Australia and Southeast Asia, deepened engagement with the Gulf and Africa and preserved its ties with Russia. This is strategic maturity: expanding trade agreements and diversifying markets while safeguarding national interests and advancing the vision of Viksit Bharat.
Underneath lies a shift in what strategic autonomy means. Once it meant the freedom to keep one's own course; today that freedom rests as much on economic choices as diplomatic ones. The real objective has become strategic interdependence: relationships diverse enough that dependence on any single country or system never hardens into vulnerability. As globalisation fragments into rival blocs, India's geography suits the task of connecting economies that would otherwise drift apart.
This instinct is not new. India's approaches converge with the Shadgunya of Kautilya's Arthashastra, the six-fold policy a state selects by circumstance: sandhi (peace), vigraha (hostility), asana (watchful neutrality), yana (readiness), samshraya (seeking support) and dvaidhibhava (peace with one power while resisting another). Never a moral code but a flexible one, it aimed at yogakshema, the welfare and security of the realm. India's spread of partnerships across rival camps, its distance from others' disputes and its refusal of permanent blocs are that ancient toolkit in a modern idiom.
Last week offered a clear demonstration. India's 2026 presidency of BRICS closed with the eighteenth summit in New Delhi, where all eleven members adopted the New Delhi Declaration by consensus despite sharp differences, from tensions between Iran and the UAE to the war in Ukraine. The declaration set a development-oriented, people-centred course and a stronger voice for developing countries. It was the instinct India showed at its own G-20 consensus among nations that rarely agree and the core of its leadership of the Global South.
What is all this ultimately for? Geopolitics and geoeconomics are, at root, geo-centric: arguments about territory, routes and markets. Yet geography matters only because of the people within it. Sea lanes carry food, fuel and medicine; ports raise the towns around them. India treats these as instruments of human welfare, not ends in themselves. Much statecraft measures success in leverage gained; India measures it in lives improved, the difference between a prosperity that circulates and a power that merely accumulates. The measure is one Kautilya set down two millennia ago:
"In the happiness of his subjects lies the king's happiness; in their welfare, his welfare. What pleases the king is not his good - his good is what pleases his people."
(Kautilya's Arthashastra 1.19.34)
Closer to home, the Neighbourhood First policy favours friendly neighbours. The deeper root is civilisational: Bharat's past is bound up with its neighbours, forged over centuries of commerce, migration and cultural exchange across the Indic world. Should those neighbours align around a joint endeavour in consonance with India's growth success, in the spirit of Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam, that all the world is one family, the entire region can prosper by weaving its story with Bharat's story.
None of this is merely aspirational; the instruments already exist. Maitri, the principle of friendship, shaped Vaccine Maitri in the pandemic and India's role as first responder in regional disasters. Project Mausam (2014) seeks to reconnect the Indian Ocean world through its monsoon routes and heritage. The maritime vision has grown from SAGAR (Security and Growth for All in the Region, 2015) to MAHASAGAR (2025), carrying that commitment to the wider Global South. One idea, in several forms: a rising India rises most surely when it helps others rise with it.
Where Kautilya bent statecraft toward the yogakshema of his own realm, India's civilisational instinct widens the frame to all, echoing the old benediction that asks not for the prosperity of one people but of every living being:
"May all be prosperous and happy, may all be free from illness, may all see what is good; may no one come to suffer."
That foundational vision is now tested against harsh geopolitical realities: sharpening rivalries, energy volatility, economic sanctions and volatile borders. Bharat's response, however, is neither retreat into self-sufficiency nor submission to a single power bloc. Instead, it systematically expands its network of dependable partners, ensuring no single point of pressure becomes a stranglehold. This balance of sovereignty and alignment - sovereign yet engaged, diverse yet harmonious - reflects a statecraft refined over two millennia. This is the very essence of India's modern global posture: a Vishwa Bandhu Bharat.
Views expressed are personal. The writer is the former Chairman, HPSC and Director, Bharat Ki Soch
Published by HT Digital Content Services with permission from Millennium Post.