British Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s visit to Mumbai this week, the new trade and investment pact with the EFTA countries, and the ongoing trade talks with the EU in Brussels together signal the steady rise of Europe in India’s diplomacy. After decades of Indian neglect, the continent is gaining weight in Delhi’s strategic calculus — just as Europe itself begins to develop its own geopolitical act rather than remain a mere extension of the US within the so-called “collective West.”

Since the end of World War 2, “the West” meant political and strategic unity under American power, reinforced by European and Japanese deference to Washington. For centuries before that, the rivalry among Western powers had shaped the modern world; after 1945, those rivalries yielded to solidarity against comm

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