Trapped by Hubris: India’s Slide into International Isolation

In September 2025, two developments put India back in the dock. On September 22, Canadian police arrested Inderjit Singh Gosal, a close aide of slain Sikh activist Hardeep Singh Nijjar, reviving questions over New Delhi’s conduct abroad. Just ten days earlier, on September 12, Sikh leaders condemned India’s decision to bar pilgrims from travelling to Pakistan’s Kartarpur shrine for Guru Nanak’s birth anniversary, denouncing it as an assault on religious freedom. Together, these episodes capture a troubling pattern: India’s hubris has begun to alienate not only its partners overseas but also its own citizens at home.

India’s claim to be a champion of non-alignment was always more rhetoric than reality. Even in its early decades, New Delhi wielded the language of secularism and moderation while pursuing self-interest. What was once hypocrisy being now open belligerence, leaving whatever remained of that legacy in ruins.

That posture collapsed with the rise of Hindutva and the Bharatiya Janata Party’s majoritarian project. Under Prime Minister Narendra Modi, nationalism turned hyper, and India’s dealings abroad became more combative than cooperative. Where it once projected secularism, it now exports authoritarian reflexes. Hubris, not humility, defines India’s diplomacy and the cost is mounting isolation.

The rupture was plain in 2020, when Indian and Chinese troops clashed in the Galwan Valley. The bloody confrontation exposed the hollowness of India’s military swagger and deepened Beijing’s resolve to counter it. Rather than learn restraint, New Delhi doubled down on belligerence. Pakistan remains locked in perpetual hostility. Nepal resents boundary incursions and political interference. Sri Lanka, once a dependent partner, has turned towards Beijing for relief, leaving India watching from the sidelines. Far from being the region’s stabilizer, New Delhi increasingly resembles an overbearing bully to be resisted.

India’s conduct abroad has been equally reckless. Iranian authorities have caught Indian operatives involved in espionage and subversion. In the Gulf, leaders engage New Delhi out of necessity, but mistrust its opportunism. Even in spaces once open to Indian influence, suspicion has replaced confidence.

The West, once desperate to court India as a counterweight to China, is now waking up to its darker impulses and has voiced concerns over human rights violations and even imposed export restrictions on certain Indian firms. What the Nijjar affair laid bare is India’s descent into lawlessness, a government willing to carry its authoritarian reflexes across borders. Canada’s move to restore ties is damage control, not trust.

For the world, the episode cements the view of India as a bully blinded by hubris. Sikh activists in the UK report harassment and intimidation linked to Indian networks. Washington has issued blunt warnings about Indian plots targeting dissidents, and US agencies have begun sanctioning those involved. These are not democratic hallmarks at all, but the behaviour of a state intent on exporting its repression abroad.

Even the carefully staged G20 summit revealed the same contradictions. Modi papered New Delhi with banners hailing India as the “Mother of Democracy,” but the summit delivered little substance.

Yet the world is not convinced. Beyond optics, India has delivered little consensus-building or institutional reform. Liberal institutionalism suggests that power flows from integration; India, by withdrawing from trade frameworks such as RCEP and doubling down on protectionism, has only isolated itself further.

Economics offers no rescue. Withdrawing from the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership left India adrift in Asia’s supply chains. Investors drawn to “Make in India” soon confront red tape, sudden regulatory U-turns, and protectionist zeal. Growth exists, but arrogance squanders its potential. Even Bollywood, once India’s most powerful tool of cultural diplomacy, has been reduced to a megaphone for hyper-nationalist propaganda. Instead of projecting pluralism, it now pushes a narrow majoritarian narrative that repels rather than attracts. India’s claim to be an inclusive civilizational leader no longer holds. Constructivism reminds us that image shapes influence and India’s image has shrunk to one of intolerance and aggression.

This is not an accident of policy; it is the outcome of ideology. Hindutva’s intolerance at home bleeds into India’s diplomacy abroad. A government that persecutes minorities and crushes dissent internally cannot be trusted externally. What India is doing to its Sikhs, Kashmiris, and Muslims mirrors what it now attempts to do to its neighbors and critics overseas.

The transformation is complete. The secular, non-aligned India of the past has become a hyper-nationalist state that mistakes intimidation for strategy. Realism warns that arrogance isolates. Liberalism shows that rejection of cooperation diminishes influence. Constructivism reminds us that image is power. By ignoring all three, India has made itself a pariah in the very system it once claimed to lead.

India has chosen swagger over strategy, spectacle over substance. Its neighbours hedge against it, Western partners grow uneasy, and minorities at home face suppression. The September episodes, Canada’s arrest linked to the Nijjar affair and the Kartarpur restrictions are not anomalies but symptoms of a deeper malaise. Hubris has left India teetering on the edge of pariah status. Unless it abandons its reckless path, isolation will not be a risk but its reality.