SANJAY PANDITA
For India, the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation is not merely another regional grouping but a caravan—slow, deliberate, and purposeful—moving across the shifting sands of a world unsettled by sanctions, tariff wars, and fractured alliances. It is a caravan that carries no promise of instant arrival but offers the assurance of presence, of participation, and of the possibility of shaping routes in a world where the old ones have been disrupted. In this caravan, Russia trudges under the weight of sanctions, China adjusts the sails of its economy against the winds of tariff wars, Iran walks with the resilience born of long isolation, and Central Asia holds the map of forgotten passages. India, with its measured steps, enters not to proclaim allegiance to any bloc but to preserve the most essential of its inheritances—strategic autonomy.
The twenty-first century has not been kind to the idea of unbroken globalization. Where once the free flow of goods and capital was celebrated as destiny, today tariffs are artillery and sanctions are weapons of war. They are fired not with the thunder of cannons but with the silent precision of bureaucratic diktats and financial embargoes, reshaping the destinies of nations without a single shot fired. In this new order, countries that believed in the inevitability of integration suddenly find themselves quarantined. Russia, once tied to Western markets through pipelines and trade, is now compelled to turn eastward. China, the manufacturing giant of the world, finds its pathways to the West obstructed by tariffs and suspicion. Iran, long burdened by sanctions, seeks respite in regional companionship. Even smaller Central Asian economies, fragile and resource-rich, confront the reality that their prosperity cannot depend solely on Western approval.
It is in this unsettled atmosphere that the SCO finds relevance, and for India, the summit becomes less a performance and more a strategy of survival. The takeaway is clear: the world is fragmenting, but in the fragments lie spaces where India must remain present. If the West and East are building walls of suspicion, India must find doors. The SCO offers such doors—not perfectly aligned, not free of thorns, but necessary to walk through.
The inheritance of strategic autonomy, deeply embedded in India’s foreign policy since independence, is reaffirmed in this forum. Unlike NATO, which binds its members by ideological uniformity, or the European Union, which ties them through institutional rigidity, the SCO survives on pragmatism. It does not ask its members to resemble each other but to recognize their shared vulnerabilities. For India, this is a welcome theatre. It allows New Delhi to speak with Moscow without the prism of Western anxieties, to hear Beijing’s words even amidst the mistrust of Doklam and Galwan, and to engage Central Asia and Iran in ways that bypass the turbulence of distant capitals. In a world that increasingly demands alignment, the SCO quietly acknowledges India’s right to stand apart.
At the heart of India’s engagement lies the question of connectivity and energy. Geography, once seen as India’s constraint, now appears as an opportunity. The International North–South Transport Corridor linking India to Russia through Iran and Central Asia, the dream of energy pipelines traversing the steppes, and the possibility of digital linkages across Eurasia all converge within the SCO’s conversations. Russia, deprived of its Western markets, now seeks Asia as its energy outlet. Central Asian republics, landlocked yet resource-rich, yearn for dependable corridors. Iran, with its ports and position, emerges as a vital bridge. For India, these threads weave a larger fabric—the chance to inscribe itself into the arteries of Eurasian trade in ways that sanctions and tariffs cannot easily sever.
Yet, every opportunity comes wrapped in contradiction. India sits across the same table as China, whose Belt and Road Initiative it resists for both strategic and sovereignty reasons. The very corridors that Beijing champions pass through territories disputed with India, turning economic promises into geopolitical thorns. Pakistan too occupies its chair, often using the platform to echo its grievances, making every conversation heavy with subtext. The Central Asian economies, though eager, remain fragile and heavily dependent on both Russia and China. Even Russia, India’s old partner, increasingly drifts into China’s embrace as sanctions leave it with few alternatives. The SCO, therefore, is less a family and more a campfire where travellers gather out of necessity.
But therein lies its quiet strength. Unlike Western alliances, which demand ideological loyalty, the SCO allows for divergence. Its unity is not forged in sameness but in shared need. India, in this context, does not have to echo slogans or sign binding commitments; it only has to be present, deliberate, and clear about its red lines. The art is in participation without absorption, in engagement without surrender.
The metaphor of the caravan is not accidental. In the medieval centuries, when empires rose and fell, caravans carried not only silk, spices, and horses but also ideas, manuscripts, and languages. They defied deserts, scaled mountains, and stitched together worlds that political boundaries sought to divide. Today, it is not camels but trains, not caravansaries but pipelines, not hand-copied manuscripts but digital corridors that attempt to connect. Yet the spirit remains the same: the refusal to let geography be a prison. The SCO inherits this geography and, in times when sanctions attempt to fragment the world, it inherits too the memory of resilience.
For India, this symbolism carries weight. It recalls the centuries when Kashmir’s shawls travelled to Central Asia, when Gujarati merchants sailed to Iranian ports, when Mughal courts exchanged envoys with Samarkand and Bukhara. The SCO, in a sense, is a reawakening of these forgotten geographies, a recognition that India cannot confine its destiny to the Indian Ocean alone but must also look to the steppes, the mountains, and the deserts of Eurasia.
The tariff wars between the United States and China add another layer of meaning. As markets in the West shrink under suspicion, Eurasian economies look sideways, to one another. Chinese goods move through Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, Russian hydrocarbons find buyers in India, Indian pharmaceuticals reach Central Asian hospitals, and digital platforms begin to knit together scattered markets. None of this is dramatic or immediate, yet in the slow stitching lies resilience. India’s presence ensures that it is not merely a spectator of this weaving but a participant shaping the pattern.
What the summit offers India, then, is not the illusion of instant power but the patience of positioning. It is a reminder that multipolarity is not announced in grand speeches but built in cautious steps, through corridors, pipelines, railways, and quiet negotiations. India’s measured voice in the SCO affirms that it will not be cornered into a bloc, that it will not surrender its autonomy, and that it will claim its seat in the evolving architecture of Eurasia.
The true takeaway is this: in times of sanctions and tariff wars, endurance belongs not to those who shut their doors but to those who keep every window open. India’s presence in the SCO is its hedge against exclusion, its insurance against isolation, and its quiet declaration that it will not be dictated to by distant powers. The world may fragment, but India will not allow itself to be fractured from the opportunities that remain.
In the caravan of the SCO, India walks neither at the front with flamboyance nor at the margins in timidity. It walks with measured steps, aware of the contradictions, alert to the opportunities, and faithful to the art of survival. The SCO may yet stumble on its own rivalries, it may falter in institutional depth, but as long as it keeps the caravan moving, India has reason to walk along. For in this journey, however imperfect, lies the possibility of a new Eurasian century—and India knows well that absence is a luxury it cannot afford.
The writer can be reached at: sanjaypanditasp@gmail.com
