ISAS Briefs

Summary

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s absence from the Association of Southeast Asian Nations Summit in late October 2025 is an outcome of India’s attempt to salvage its partnership with the United States. However, New Delhi likely did not anticipate its costs on India’s global image.

The 47th Summit of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) concluded in Kuala Lumpur on 28 October 2025. Malaysia’s Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim, Chairman of the summit, was keen to elevate ASEAN’s global profile by making it an unmissable multilateral event of the season. Alongside the prime ministers/presidents of the other ASEAN member states and ASEAN’s traditional dialogue partners (Japan, Australia, New Zealand and South Korea), the summit was also attended by Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, South African President Cyril Ramaphosa and Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney. Of course, most attention was focused on the presence of United States (US) President Donald Trump, whom Anwar managed to bring aboard in a successful diplomatic gambit.

The high-powered attendance made Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s absence all the more conspicuous. Modi declined to attend the event in person, speaking virtually instead. Chinese President Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin were also absent – they rarely attend these summits. In contrast, this is the only the second instance of an Indian prime minister skipping an ASEAN summit since India became a summit partner in 2002. Modi also missed the summit in 2022.

The Indian Ministry of External Affairs did not offer an explanation. However, it has been widely reported that the decision was made to avoid a face-to-face meeting with Trump. New Delhi and Washington have been locked in a contentious showdown over tariffs in the last few months. The US president has made things more difficult for Modi by repeatedly claiming that he brokered the India-Pakistan ceasefire in May 2025. He has recently also declared that India has agreed to cut its Russian oil purchase. These claims, which the Indian government has denied, put Modi in a politically awkward position.

It is important to note that Modi’s predicament is not the result of his political weakness but his relatively secure domestic position. The opposition remains weak and fractured, and there are no major elections on the horizon apart from the upcoming Bihar polls.

The government’s firm political footing has allowed it to take a softer approach in its crisis with Washington. India has not imposed retaliatory tariffs or taken any other punitive action. Indian officials have largely maintained conciliatory tone in their statements. Nationalistic outrage has been largely kept in check in the public discourse.

This is in contrast to many previous India-US crises when domestic opposition forced the government to take a tougher stance. For instance, when Indian diplomat Devyani Khobragade was arrested in New York in 2013, a minor diplomatic row snowballed into a major standoff. A weak United Progressive Alliance government at the time had to act tough against Washington under domestic pressure.

India’s soft approach in the current crisis is only possible as long as domestic opposition does not harden. Trump’s claims contradicting Modi are a major concern because they strengthen the opposition’s hand and put pressure on the government, thereby jeopardising ongoing attempts to salvage the India-US partnership. Therefore, the Indian government has avoided situations that may produce such embarrassing outcomes. It was previously reported that Modi had refused to take calls from Trump in the weeks before the trade negotiations broke down in August 2025.

While this is a sound strategy from a domestic political point of view, New Delhi likely conceived it without taking India’s global image into consideration. It has to be admitted that the decision to skip the summit to avoid Trump is a bad look. It undercuts India’s claim to regional power status. Modi’s absence was not only noted by the ASEAN member countries but was also played up in Pakistani and Chinese media.

India-ASEAN relations were effectively held hostage to the India-US crisis, an outcome that the Indian officials would not have wanted. The situation grates against New Delhi’s pursuit of vaunted strategic autonomy.

Both the US and China used the Kuala Lumpur summit to make substantive progress in their relationships with ASEAN. Trump signed trade deals with Thailand, Malaysia, Cambodia and Vietnam, and signalled renewed American commitment to the region. Chinese Premier Li Qiang signed version 3.0 of the ASEAN-China Free Trade Area. The first in-person meeting of leaders from the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership countries promised to revitalise the trade pact.

Meanwhile, progress on the review of ASEAN-Indian Trade in Goods Agreement remains stalled. While Indian officials hoped that the new agreement would be ready to sign by the time of the summit, now it is unlikely to be completed until the end of the year. Modi’s statement at the summit, delivered virtually, was light on new proposals.

It is important to remember why Indian prime ministers – Atal Behari Vajpayee, Manmohan Singh and Modi – have attended ASEAN summits so diligently since 2002. At the end of the Cold War, India was considered peripheral to regional multilateralism in this part of the world. It was not included in the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation formed in 1989 and only belatedly involved in the ASEAN Regional Forum established in 1997. ASEAN Plus Three (including China, Japan and South Korea) emerged in 1997, once again leaving India out. Even India’s inclusion in the East Asia Summit in 2005 was contested by China, which claimed that it did not belong in the region.

It has taken consistent efforts for several years for India to signal its intent to remain a consistent, reliable and engaged partner to ASEAN. Although skipping a single summit is unlikely to change that, allowing India’s relations with great powers to unduly influence its relationship with the ASEAN might.

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Dr Sandeep Bhardwaj is a Visiting Research Fellow at the Institute of South Asian Studies (ISAS), an autonomous research institute at the National University of Singapore (NUS). He can be contacted at sbhardwaj@nus.edu.sg. The author bears full responsibility for the facts cited and opinions expressed in this paper.

Pic Credit: Wikimedia Commons