Navigating Challenges: India's Strategic Imperatives in Central Asia

India may not accept anything that affects its strategic needs and aspirations, but can certainly accept whatever suits to its greater interests, and must try reap the out this initiative. the bigget challenge would be emergence of world as a fobia of islamic states. BUT THE challenges are manifold. we know peace and security in indias immidiate neibourhood and for that matter , in the entere region should be our top priority. even our close historical links with asia provide and asset for boulding important relationship with the countries.

today we exploring new avenues of coperation, new routes- land, air and see routes. statistic suggest that indian foreing policy always has been moving by the ideological approach like non-alligment, situationa stategy like look-east and also geographically like neibourhod first and demographically foe development. and historically like traditional culture.

Geographical Texture

Geographically this strategic location of central Asia region make a bridge between different to continents like Europe and Asia. Central Asia nations is landlocked.

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Historical brief background

Co-existence and co-operations is one of the basic principles of India's foreign policy. The idea of different systems and outlooks existing side by side without clash is not a new one. India pursued this ideal under Ashoka who at the height of power advocated mutual world where the alternative to 'Co-existence' is 'Co-destruction'. The idea of co-existence is expressed in the term 'Panchsheel' r Five Principles of peaceful co-existence. These were formulated in the preamble to the agreement between India and Chaina on April 29, 1954. These principles are :

1. Mutual respect for each other's territorial integrity and sovereignty;
2. Non-aggression ;
3. Non-interference in each other's internal affairs;
4. Equality and mutual benefit;
5. Peaceful co-existence.

"Interstase behavour exhibits" as says Joseph Fankel, "every type of conflict, from constant references to power politics and threat of violence to actual war" . International conflict arises from the aims and activities of independent states. It is produced by a clash of cultures, a particular combiations of states, a disharmony of interests, hostile attitudes and certain types of diplomatic and miitary action. The immediate context of any conflict is created by the properties and interactions of the parties. The weaker the parties the less consequential their fates will be for others. Outsides interference then may well be neglible. Countries of greater capability will have wider and more varied interests, and conflict between them will have regional or even global significance. The international environment is formed ultimately by the properties and capabilities of the two interacting states , the United States and the Soviet Union. One or both of the super power will potentially interfere in the conflict of the lesser powers and this is a reality.9

the power competition between Russia and Great Britain the 19th century had seen over the future of Central Asia. It describes a period of Russian expansion and the situation created by Britain to counter what they thought was Russian aggression in the region. Indeed, the Great Game had a stake that was much greater than Central Asia. The stake was India. There was a perception that Russia's ambition would not limited to incorporating Central Asia. Central Asia is the gateway into Afghanistan, and Afghanistan is the gateway into India via Khyber Pass ).10

some information has spread about the region of Central Asia in clues. There are two causes for this problem. There was actually no state that one can mark in the area until early 1990s. Most specialists in Asian studies tend to focus on a specific country. But for Central Asia, this is not the case. In addition, this area was closed off to the foreigners until recently because the western part of Central Asia was under Soviet rule and the eastern part was part of China.

There are five Central Asian countries, used to part of the Soviet Union. Four of them are Turkic called Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Kazakhstan, and one is Persian speaking -Tajikistan. On the eastern side of Central Asia is the autonomous region of Xinjiang. Some people will also include Afghanistan as part of Central Asia. Very often, this area is also referred to as Inner Asia. This term, however, incorporates a broader sweep that includes Mongolia, Manchuria, and parts of Iran. It is an area that has witnessed tremendous amount of historical incidences. It is about the most multi-cultural region that you can imagine. Every major religion has passed through this area, such as Buddhism, Islam, Zoroastrianism, etc. Every artistic media, like sculptures, ceramics, cave paintings, has also flourished in this region.

Although there are tremendous interests in this area, Central Asia has not attracted much attention. This is partially due to the fact that the people in this area are transmitters rather than creators. Their roles have been to transmit ideas and innovations across Asia. The second drawback is that there was not a written language early on in history. The first written language was Sogdian that dated to 6th-7th centuries C.E., almost 2,000 years later than the Chinese language. The first Turkic script was derived from the 8th-9th centuries C.E. For the most part, our knowledge of the area prior to this period was derived from the material remains rather the literary sources. In addition, the population of this area did not develop a historical consciousness, like China or Persia. Very often, we have to depend on the Chinese or Persian accounts to tell us about this region that distort the whole history. In many instances, a negative image of Central Asia was conveyed.11

In BC times reference was made by the Greeks to Bactria kingdom). this region corresponded mostly with present day Afghanistan and is inhabited by Greeks, and also it was the parts of Western India like the Punjab around the second century BC). Additionally there appear to have been even earlier interactions between the Indus valley and parts of south Turkmenistan around the second millennia BC Other, religious, connections seem to have been Buddhism, which spread through the Silk Road to China and other parts of Asia). A cultural hybrid form of art developed in Gandhara around the first century BC, which was a mix between Hellenistic/Greek forms and Buddhist themes (.In the same century the Kushanas were driven from Bactria into India, where they developed an empire of their own ). Later on their empire also faded away and made place for others. Around the turn of BC to AD and into the first century AD one of the first waves of nomadic invasions from Central Asia took place, which was part of a cycle of military invasions into India repeating itself every 500 years or so (. In the first century it was Iranian speaking nomads who entered India. Then in the 5th century it was Huns with a Turkic language who came to India, after which Muslim Turks in the first millennium entered Afghanistan and also started moving towards India (.Yet already in the 7th century Arabs moved into Azerbaijan and further into Central Asia, where over a few 100 years Islam was spread (.In the 13th and 14th century the Mongols entered Central Asia, who also entered the North of India and eventually started an empire in India as the Mughals ).12

Brother when Neigbour:

With its biggest trading partner Kazakhstan India has worked together on the fields of IT & Pharmaceutics through several joint ventures and a science and technology conference in 2001 (Adnan & Fatima 2015, 191; Singh Roy 2002, 54). With Turkmenistan there have been some high level meetings, although one of the few investments of an Indian company in Turkmenistan was stopped due to low potential for profit (Kalkarni & Nathan 2016, 188). There also has been monetary support from India to Tajikistan in 1995 to set up a joint venture7. India has also expressed interest to set up software training centers in Kyrgyzstan (Adnan & Fatima 2015, 191) and there have been talks in August 2006 between both governments on a range of issues8. Similar talks are going on with Uzbekistan and rail construction have been carried out towards Uzbekistan as part of the INSTC (Adnan & Fatima 2015, 192; also see section on multilateral cooperations). There seems to be a lot of talking, while the benefits seem to stay uncertain or minimal.13

influences the cooperations between India and CARs at both the bilateral and multilateral scale. A rare example of multilateral cooperation on security itself was a joint exercise in counter - insurgency between India, Uzbekistan and Mongolia (Moore 2007, 285). There are other supranational fora like the SCO that have a regional security purpose, but China's role in that organization means that this will be discussed in the next chapter. For now the above sections have shown that India's strategic cooperations with CARs do not come into fruition at the bilateral scale, as there are several barriers that limit India's potential. The initiative taken by India in both TAPI and INSTC is thus a strategic reaction to its limitations at the bilateral scale. It is also interesting to note that the binary security concern of India towards Pakistan was set aside in the TAPI project, probably because of the preferred concern of internal wealth f From the previous section it has become clear that security is a factor of limitation that or India on the topic of energy.14

This explanation shows that for India bilateral cooperations trade are a concern of internal wealth, which at the same time is also a binary concern of security seen from the perspective of alignment theory. Security in the sense that other regional players, like China, are more important partners for CAR's then India and thus threaten India's interests. Therefore in terms of trade the following quote of Dietl from 1997 concerning the position of India (and Pakistan) in Central Asian geopolitics could still hold sway today: "Both are only minor players with weak hands. And the game is picking up as the major players are moving closer (Dietl 1997, 143)". Yet the story does not end here, as India has over the years also been engaged in multilateral strategic co-operations.15

Whether India will then maintain its strategic role in these projects remains to be seen. China's role is significant in several international/regional and bilateral cooperations, which impact India's interests in the region of Central Asia. At first China has simply more to offer to CARs in the size of investments. Secondly India's involvement in several regional/multilateral fora can lead to an improvement of its interests through the competition between the larger players in the region, although these might be willing to connect or align their efforts instead of providing support for the interests of a minor player like India. Projects that India is engaged in, are also dependent on the cooperation of countries that might have more interests in working with projects of China. Then there is the political perspective in which countries might try to circumvent the influence of China, in which the global standing of a country can play a role in determining whether to cooperate or not with the country. Yet this seems mostly to impact the options for India in not working with Pakistan.16

For India China's engagement with Pakistan through CPEC can be seen as move toward regional economic domination. However this project cannot be seen in isolation from other projects in which India is involved. INSTC has the same goals as CPEC and both are about establishing trade routes to connect with Central Asia: For India this can be established by connecting to and investing in the Iranian port of Chabahar, while China is attempting this by connecting to and investing in the Pakistan port of Gawadar. Both projects show potential, although in different ways. First of all in INSTC more CARs are involved then in CPEC, which can be a benefit or limitation for INSTC. On one side it is a limitation as, discussed in the previous chapter, more partners means more discussion and delay of the project. Secondly construction of several aspects of CPEC has in the meantime already commenced42, while INSTC is still being planned. At the same time investments in CPEC are much larger then INSTC, which runs in the millions instead of billions for CPEC by China (Lee & Gill 2015, 115).