ABSTRACT
The chapter reviews the proposition that geopolitical thinking was marginal to the early Indian thinking on foreign and security policy, despite the devastating strategic consequences of the subcontinent’s partition and China’s control of Tibet that took place as India become independent. The preference for the ideal and normative saw the young republic downplay the importance of geography and its implications for India's international conduct. But as India began to see itself as a rising power in the twenty-first century, Delhi’s attitudes to geography have begun to grow, as seen in the Indian thinking on the Indo-Pacific and Eurasia.
