Editor’s Note: Riyadh’s new partnership with Islamabad may unsettle Delhi, but it could also mark the start of a more pragmatic era in South Asian and Gulf politics. Saudi Arabia’s transformation from exporter of ideology to promoter of moderation gives India room to engage — not retreat. When Saudi Arabia and Pakistan signed their Strategic
In 1892, India’s first Nobel laureate, Gurudev Rabindranath Tagore, wrote the timeless short story Kabuliwala — The Person from Kabul. Through its tender portrayal of an Afghan trader’s bond with a young Bengali girl, Tagore embedded a romantic image of Afghans in India’s cultural consciousness. Over the past century, Kabuliwala has come to symbolise the
The Anglosphere has always been a family of nations bound by law, language, and shared history. But in the twenty-first century, its deepest ties are no longer trade or treaties. They are cultural and political — transmitted not by diplomats or parliaments, but by mass media. Newspapers, television networks, and now digital platforms have fused
More than four centuries ago, Gujarati merchants set sail from India to Oman, carrying textiles, rice, and spices across the Arabian Sea. What began as commerce grew into trust—and that trust, quietly nurtured over generations, now underpins India’s maritime strategy in a region where ports are as powerful as armies. A Constant in a Shifting
10 Questions for Pranav Doshi 1.) What was the core insight or moment that inspired you to write your article on Gulf realpolitik and Pakistan? After 8 years in the UAE, and trying to understand the social and geopolitical structures of the Arabian Peninsula, what struck me was the growing divergence in strategic maturity between
Since their violent partition in 1947, driven by the British policy of divide and rule, India has carried the deeper scars of division, not just in terms of human tragedy, but in the lasting cost to its strategic environment. The creation of Pakistan wasn’t just a cartographic exercise. It was a rupture built on a