As the lines in the New Cold War continue to be drawn, policymakers in Washington, Beijing, Moscow and Brussels have been asking that question of the world’s largest democracy.

Historically, India resisted being drawn into either the communist or capitalist world orders of the First Cold War. Jawaharlal Nehru’s 1948 speech to the Constituent Assembly entitled “We Lead Ourselves” laid out the policy of non-alignment that was central to Indian foreign policy through the Cold War.

In 1949 he told the Assembly: “We have stated repeatedly that our foreign policy is one of keeping aloof from the big blocs.”

India would go on to become the keystone of the Non-Aligned Movement and was successful in avoiding entrenchment in either major camp of the conflict.

The New Cold War is very different, but India seems to be maintaining that core policy.

Allow me to illustrate. Today, India is a member of the Quad with the US, Japan and Australia, conducting increasingly sophisticated maritime and military cooperation. It is a member of both BRICS and the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation with China and Russia. It refused to join the democratic bloc’s isolation of Russia following the 2022 full-scale invasion of Ukraine, trading hydrocarbons at prices favourable to India. It is an increasingly important American strategic and technological partner. Indians are among the most numerous beneficiaries of coveted US H-1B speciality visas, securing 71% of approvals in 2024. It is also a major economic partner of China while recognising China as its first-order long-term security challenge.

Therefore, leaders around the world asking, “Whose side are they on?” may well be asking the wrong question.

India’s response to the New Cold War appears to be an evolution of Nehru’s strategy. It aims to achieve strategic autonomy: balancing China with the US, trading with Russia if beneficial and maintaining membership of competing international institutions.

This was highlighted by External Affairs Minister Jaishankar at the Munich Security Conference this year.

He said: “We are very much wedded to strategic autonomy because it is very much a part of our history and our evolution.”

In doing so, he stated in 2025 that India aims to maintain “as many productive relationships as possible” while avoiding exclusivity.

However, balancing that today is a very different challenge than during the Cold War.

The China Problem

While Pakistan has long been India’s key local rival and the more immediate security challenge, China has been recognised as its primary long-term strategic rival. This was brought into sharp relief in last year’s four-day war between India and Pakistan. Chinese weapons supplied to Pakistan performed well. China has expanded its investment in Pakistan through its Belt and Road Initiative.

As laid out above, India has significant trade relationships with China, and overall relations have improved since the 2024 border agreement aimed at resetting relations after the 2020 clashes at the Sino-Indian border in the Galwan River valley, which cost soldiers’ lives on both sides. Those clashes were the worst along the Line of Actual Control in decades and marked a low point in post-Cold War India-China relations. They instigated a sea change away from compartmentalisation, whereby issues of the border were considered separate from other issues, to a state where they could not be separated from wider policy. Despite the recent thaw starting in 2024, none of the core issues in the relationship have been fully resolved.

That trade is weighted in China’s favour. While it had passed $150bn as of 2025, two-thirds of that was China’s exports to India. Add hydrological concerns from New Delhi over China’s hydropower projects, China’s aforementioned relationship with Pakistan and issues over Tibet, especially as the Dalai Lama ages. All these project a lattice of fault lines in the future bilateral relationship.

That lattice has to be viewed through the key metric of the balance of hard power. China is, by far, wealthier, with a nominal GDP of $20.85 trillion to India’s $4.15 trillion. Taking PPP into account, China’s economy is still roughly 2.3 times India’s. This significant wealth disparity allows China to outspend India on defence, allocating $281 billion to India’s $78 billion. China has pushed especially in shipbuilding, with the People’s Liberation Army Navy launching new hulls at a staggering pace, to such a point that it now outnumbers the United States Navy on hulls alone.

These key disparities, divergent from China’s relative weakness during the Cold War, leave India in a more difficult position when it comes to maintaining its strategic autonomy and effectively balancing against China. To do so, it may struggle to succeed alone.

The China question that India needs to answer is how far to integrate with alliance (or pseudo-alliance) networks balancing against China, such as the Quad, and how much it can keep these alliances at a distance and retain full autonomy.

The Northern Axis

During the First Cold War, India invested heavily in Soviet procurement and relationships. Today, India has maintained relationships with Russia that have caused significant frustration amongst the democratic bloc, especially in Europe.

Following the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, India refused to join the sanctions regime against Russia. This has provided a vital lifeline for Russian industries, especially hydrocarbon exports that have helped Russia maintain its war while other sectors of its economy have been significantly attrited through the sanctions regime.

There are three key structural explanations. Firstly, there is defence. India’s military hardware is heavily Russian. That equipment needs maintenance, expertise and components which cannot be replaced overnight, despite the fact that what Russia can manufacture, it overwhelmingly has to keep for use in Ukraine.

Secondly, Russia is an active supporter of any bloc or nation which stands apart from the democratic bloc. This aligns with India’s lean towards multipolarity, referenced by Indian PM Modi in a 2018 speech: “It is a measure of our strategic autonomy that India's Strategic Partnership, with Russia, has matured to be special and privileged.”

The same speech noted “the need for a strong multi-polar world order”, which may go some way to explaining why Modi added, almost immediately after praising India’s relationship with Russia: “India's global strategic partnership with the United States has overcome the hesitations of history and continues to deepen.”

Finally, Russia’s relative power is declining thanks to democratic sanctions and Ukraine’s effective deep-war campaign against Russian hydrocarbon industries. This combination has made India one of the few buyers of Russia’s key export, of which there is less and less to sell. When it comes to Russian oil, it’s a buyer’s market, although that discount has shrink since the war in Iran squeezed global oil supply. This may go some way to explaining why Modi, in a recent meeting with Putin, was explicit in his language calling for an end to the war in Ukraine.

However, as Russia becomes more dependent on Beijing and India engages in balancing against China, Russia’s position may shift in the long term. If this does occur, then it may make it all the more difficult to balance against China without the US.

The Overall Goal: A Great Power in a Multipolarity

India’s goal is not to join either the democratic or autocratic blocs. At the core, the strategy appears to be attaining and maintaining great-power status in a more multipolar world.

In achieving this, India joins blocs balancing against China, such as the Quad, and those constraining the democratic bloc, such as BRICS. This may seem like a contradiction, but when the goal of balancing all against all is borne in mind, it is logical.

The challenge that India may face as these blocs become more defined is finding a way to walk that tightrope. It cannot balance against China’s military superiority without the US. It wants the war in Ukraine to end but enjoys preferential oil markets from a sanctioned Russia, and it is suspicious of American power and does not wish to see a return to late-1990s unipolarity, but it has failed to achieve a similar kind of economic boom which has allowed China to become a serious challenger to the US’ position. To maintain its line, it needs to have good military relations with the US, address its trade deficit with China and position itself between the blocs.

In answer to the question posed as we started out: India is on no side but India’s. However, given the increasing challenges it faces, whether it can maintain that may be a difficult task.