Opinion | India At 80: The Nation That Stopped Waiting

Updated: Aug 15, 2026 11:03 am IST Published On Aug 15, 2026 11:03 am IST Last Updated On Aug 15, 2026 11:03 am IST

Published On Aug 15, 2026 11:03 am IST

Last Updated On Aug 15, 2026 11:03 am IST

India marks its 80th Independence Day today, and with it, eight decades of a nation's argument with its own destiny. Every anniversary is an occasion to celebrate; this one is an occasion to reckon, with the battles fought within our borders and beyond them, with the price paid for the freedom we now take for granted, and with the distance travelled from a fragile young republic to a civilisation that once again speaks in its own voice.

There was a time, not so long ago, when India was reduced in the Western imagination to a curiosity: the land of snake charmers, a country whose poverty was assumed and whose potential was doubted. Visitors from the West arrived expecting to be unimpressed and often were. We had no seat at the high table of diplomacy; at best, we were permitted to stand at its edge, non-aligned by policy and, in truth, unaligned with power itself. The world's trajectory was decided elsewhere. India watched and waited.

That India no longer exists.

Today's India is not non-aligned; it is multi-aligned, courted rather than courting. We are among the world's five largest economies, and when we choose to deepen economic ties with a nation, the relationship reshapes not just our future but theirs.........

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