Pakistan and China launched talks in Kunming on June 19 on a new South Asian regional grouping that would exclude India, underscoring the strategic costs of New Delhi’s estrangement.
South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC), formed in 1985 by India, Pakistan and five other nations, has lain largely dormant since 2016 after India withdrew, accusing Pakistan of supporting militants who attacked an army base in Kashmir. Summits have been canceled and meetings restricted to technical discussions ever since.
Swaran Singh, a professor of international relations at Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi, told the South China Morning Post that SAARC’s paralysis is driven largely by India–Pakistan geopolitics and that any entity excluding India would struggle for legitimacy across South Asia.
India’s regional centrality is indisputable: its population is roughly seven times Pakistan’s, its economy more than a dozen times larger, its foreign exchange reserves about 45 times greater and its defense budget five times the size.
Shantesh Kumar Singh, an associate professor at JNU’s School of International Studies, said India’s crisis-response leadership during natural disasters and its vaccine diplomacy amid the Covid-19 pandemic proved its indispensability. He warned that only an inclusive regional bloc could deliver on South Asia’s priorities and forestall external powers from dictating the agenda.
Pavan Chaurasia, a research fellow at the India Foundation think tank, characterized the China-Pakistan initiative as “a geopolitical move by China to exert pressure on India” and predicted neighbours would be unlikely to join a body that excludes the subcontinent’s largest democracy.
“India must re-engage with its SAARC neighbours and address longstanding sensitivities,” Shantesh Kumar Singh said. “Strengthening SAARC is the surest way to forestall external efforts to reshape South Asia’s future without India at the table.”