Nirupama Rao: Liminal India plays a unique role in a divided world

Coined by Arnold van Gennep in 1909, ‘liminality’ describes a transitional phase, or a passage between identities. India, in 2025, embodies this concept geopolitically, economically and strategically. It is both rising and restrained, global and grounded. Far from a weakness, it may be India’s most powerful asset in a fractured world.

Also Read: Diplomacy plus: India needs a strategic reset of its relations with China

Geopolitically, India walks a tightrope between power blocs. It is part of the Quad with the US, Japan and Australia, but buys oil from Russia. It has deep ties with the West, yet engages with China, hosting dialogues and managing crises in Ladakh. This is not confusion; it is deliberate calibration.

India’s regional role is equally nuanced. It towers over South Asia economically, with a $3.9 trillion GDP, yet remains bogged down by border tensions and neighbourhood instability. In the Indo-Pacific, it plays sentinel—shadowing Chinese survey ships near the Andamans while deepening ties with Southeast Asian partners.

This liminality also lets India shape the Global South’s voice. Its push to include the African Union in the G20 in 2023 wasn’t symbolic, but strategic. It signals that India sees itself not merely as an emerging power but as a bridge between the world’s divides: North and South, East and West.

Economically, India’s dualities are stark. It is home to world-class innovation as well as rural stagnation. Despite the size of its economy, its per capita GDP remains under $3,000. It exports $77.5 billion worth of goods to the US but also runs an $85 billion trade deficit with China. 

Economic liminality extends to trade strategy. India exited the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership in 2019 to protect local industries, its average tariffs are among the world’s highest and it courts foreign capital but restricts market access. India is neither fully open nor isolationist—deliberately so. The challenge is to lead the ‘China plus one’ shift.

Also Read: Arming up: ‘Be Indian, buy Indian’ is a useful mantra for strategic autonomy

Strategically, India operates with power and restraint. Its defence budget exceeds $78 billion. It’s modernizing its navy, co-developing jet engines with the US, and maintaining military ties with Russia. Yet, it projects no doctrine of dominance and avoids entangling alliances. Its doctrine is pragmatic autonomy. In 2018, it bought Russia’s S-400 missile system despite US objections. It is ready to build a stable relationship with China, based on mutual respect and sensitivity. It builds capacity without overreach.

In the Indian Ocean region, India has increased strategic aid; $4 billion to Sri Lanka in 2022, expanded trade with Bangladesh and infrastructure diplomacy in the Maldives were efforts to balance China’s Belt and Road push. India’s Indo-Pacific role encapsulates this liminal posture. It’s both a core security actor and a regional power. It commands sea lanes near Malacca but remains constrained by continental frictions. Its power lies in being flexible, not rigid.

This balance between independence and engagement is often mistaken for hesitation. But it is, in fact, a strategy. Strategic autonomy is India’s chosen path—a policy rooted in its Cold War non-alignment and reinvented for a multipolar 21st century.

Liminality and strategic autonomy are not the same. Liminality is a condition—an in-between status shaped by history, geography and economic scale. Strategic autonomy is a choice—a decision to remain unbound by rigid alliances. Together, they enable India to act with agility. Liminality provides space; autonomy enables intent. One is structural; the other is behavioural.

In a Trump 2.0 era, as US-China rivalry hardens and multilateral forums weaken, India’s middle position gains value. It speaks to all, submits to none. It hosts Quad summits without joining Nato-style coalitions. It buys oil from Moscow and semiconductors from Washington.

The Brics expansion in 2024 further showcased this. India stayed in a bloc now joined by Iran and the UAE, while leading G20 diplomacy with African and Latin American partners. It doesn’t see a contradiction between the two.

What does this mean for India’s future? By 2040, it may well be a $10 trillion economy, with at least three aircraft carriers and a UN Security Council seat, speaking for the Global South. Its twilight will yield to daylight, but its threshold identity will remain. The next phase will demand even sharper choices. Will India accept foreign military bases? Will it join trade blocs or rewrite them? Can it sustain strategic autonomy while scaling its economy and military muscle? These are not questions of capacity, but of will.

Also Read: Mint Quick Edit | Marine Rafales will boost India’s maritime security

India may not remain liminal forever. But even as it matures into a leading power, its dual nature—its ability to operate across binaries—will endure. That is its unique contribution to the world order: a model of fluid power, rooted in principle but open in posture. The West had its moment of ascent in the 19th century; China has had its surge in the 21st. India’s rise will look different—not as an exporter of ideology, but a country that shapes the world by straddling divides. Its liminality is not a phase. It’s a force.

Adapted from a lecture delivered recently at National University of Singapore.

The author is a former Indian Foreign Secretary and former Indian Ambassador to Washington and Beijing.