Opinion SCO is a reminder: India needs to rethink its regional policy

India’s refusal last week to sign the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) joint statement has brought to the fore the big gap between the forum’s declared commitment to combatting terrorism and its traditional blind eye to Pakistan-sponsored violent extremism in India. While the outrage in Delhi is understandable, it is a timely reminder that India can’t rely on multilateral forums to fight its battles against terrorism. The 2025 SCO Defence Ministers’ meeting in Qingdao, China omitted any reference to the April 22 terror attack in Pahalgam from the proposed joint statement. The Indian Defence Minister, Rajnath Singh, insisted that the joint statement explicitly mention the Pahalgam attack as an illustration of the ongoing threat of terrorism in the region. However, Pakistan apparently blocked the proposal. Compounding India’s frustration was the inclusion in the joint statement of references to militant activities in Balochistan. By including Balochistan in the statement while omitting the Pahalgam attack, the SCO ministerial meeting skewed the outcome in favour of Pakistan’s narrative.

An episode of this kind is quite common in multilateral gatherings, where each country has a veto over the wording of the final declarations. But the SCO outcome is a timely reminder to Delhi not to romanticise the forum as an instrument to promote a multipolar world. The forum is dominated by China and Beijing is unlikely to do anything other than protect the interests of its all-weather ally, Pakistan. Nor can India expect Russia to restore the balance in favour of India. As it gets drawn into a deeper strategic dependence on China, Moscow has no incentive to stand up for Delhi against Beijing. As China rises to be a great power, its protective cover over Pakistan has only become stronger. The recent trilateral meeting that Beijing convened with Pakistani and Bangladeshi officials in Kunming is a sign of things to come. Beijing has the resources and political will to expand its South Asian protectorate to include Bangladesh.

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To cope with the new dynamic, Delhi should discard two illusions that have gripped its regional policy. One, that it can diplomatically isolate Islamabad in regional and global forums. Second is the notion that it can unilaterally set the terms of engagement with Bangladesh. To be sure, Pakistan has become far weaker than India on several counts, especially in the economic domain. Yet Islamabad retains significant capacity to trip up India as its recent outreach to the US and its deepening partnership with China have shown. Since the change of government in Dhaka last August, Bangladesh has shown that it can cause acute discomfort to Delhi by aligning with forces hostile to India. If Delhi is locked in conflicts with its two large South Asian neighbours, Beijing will take advantage. Delhi can’t simply demand that all its friends and partners automatically back India in its disputes with Islamabad and Dhaka. The answer to this regional challenge is twofold. For one, Delhi must stop deluding itself that it has the luxury of ignoring the current regimes in Islamabad and Dhaka. To the west, it needs to revive channels of communication with Islamabad and Rawalpindi; to the east, it needs to stop talking down to Dhaka. India’s tricky situation with Pakistan and Bangladesh is also being turned into a dangerous strategic trap by the politics of religious polarisation within. If Delhi does not reverse course, it may be setting itself up for failures in the neighbourhood.