ISAS Insights

India’s political landscape is likely to be dominated by a new leader, Narendra Modi of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), in ways that the international community is yet to decipher. For now, as Mr Modi assumes the mantle of Prime Minister after a landslide electoral triumph, India’s neighbours might look out for signs whether he would pursue a Hindutva agenda (centred on the ‘supremacy’ of the country’s Hindu-majority) contrary to the policypriorities he articulated during the recent poll campaign. India’s neighbours are also likely to watch whether he will implement the BJP’s pledge to “revise and update” India’s nuclear security doctrine and make it more ‘credible’ and ‘practical’. However, Mr Modi’s leadership credentials in the macro-economic domain of an Indian province, and the gradual and the emergence of provinces as stakeholders in the country's foreign policy, can also become factors in his diplomacy in India's neighbourhood and beyond.