In the ancient and forgotten past – 2023, to be precise – India aggressively tried to claim the mantle of “The Voice of the Global South.” It held a Voice of the Global South Summit in January of the year, another in November 2023, and a third one in August 2024. I can find no mention of a fifth one, but by that time things in the Global South were looking increasingly difficult. The ongoing Israeli onslaught dominated news around the world, with the International Criminal Court issuing arrest warrants in November 2024, and by 2025 even Israeli human rights organisations were referring to it as genocide. In nearby Sudan, the Rapid Support Forces – allegedly bankrolled by our good friends the Emiratis for whom we ‘rescued’ an escaped princess in international waters – were rapidly committing war crimes of major dimensions.You would think that the “Voice of the Global South” would have something to say about all this, no? Unfortunately, India had already set a trend of saying nothing about difficult issues. There was no clear statement by the Indian government about the massive “Zan, Zindegi, Azadi” (Woman, Life, Freedom) movement in Iran in 2022-23 after the murder of the 22-year-ol Mahsa Amini by the morality police. At the G20 Summit held in India, the statement on Russia’s ongoing invasion of Ukraine was so convoluted that both Russian and Ukrainian sympathisers suggested that it backed their position. We called this a “success.” India has had nothing much to say about the civil war in Myanmar either, but then, the government did not have much to say about the civil war in Manipur, and that is within its own borders.Many commentators, foremost among them our Minister for External Affairs, have tried to argue that India’s striking silence in the face of global disorder is part of the Indian tradition of strategic autonomy. Maybe Jaishankar is too attached to the adage that “a diplomat is an honourable man sent abroad to lie for his country” – without the honourable or abroad part, but the Indian tradition of strategic autonomy is the exact opposite of what we currently follow. Instead, it was based on being loudly and forthrightly part of the conversation on global issues, not on being silent over difficult subjects or war in foreign lands.Part of this learning came from the independence movement, which had important components overseas. For example, the Ghadar Movement came up after World War I on the west coast of Canada and the United States. More importantly, though, India’s leaders – both before winning independence and very much after it – understood that sovereignty and engagement went hand in hand. The key crime of colonialism, to paraphrase the American slogan, was “taxation without representation,” or rule without consent. Speaking to the UN General Assembly in November 1948, Nehru not only made it clear that India and other Asian countries would resist any such form of governance, condemning the practice of colonialism and racial inequality anywhere, but he also prefaced this by saying:There are vast tracts of the world which may not in the past, for a few generations, have taken much part in world affairs. But they are awake; their people are moving and they have no intention whatever of being ignored or of being passed by.That is a simple fact I think we have to remember, because unless you have the full picture of the world before you, you will not even understand the problem, and if you isolate any single problem in the world from the rest, you do not understand the problem. Today I do venture to submit that Asia counts in world affairs.Tomorrow it will count much more than today.Nehru, like the other Indian leaders who had played such a great part in the freedom struggle, understood that they had won freedom from domination, but also that this freedom meant the freedom to act in the world. Sovereignty was not just about preserving borders, or doing what we wanted within them, but to act as a free party in global affairs. This was not just the meaning of strategic autonomy, but also how it would be preserved.This was an active foreign policy, a loud foreign policy, and one engaged in the world. It was based on the understanding that in an interconnected world India had only two choices: either become party to a security bloc and surrender its hard-won sovereignty, or reach out to newly independent countries to push for global governance that would avoid the mistakes that led to the devastating wars of the past. It chose the second option, and chose it because this would help India achieve strategic autonomy: by being part of a coalition that also wanted similar strategic autonomy.This was truly a “Voice of the Global South” long before any such term was coined, and it is markedly different than what India has pursued since 2023. China, the most powerful country in the Global South, has been entirely omitted from the map in our Voice of the Global South summits. One country that is on the map – Iran – has already been bombed by the US, which Israel was already bombing along with three more (Syria, Lebanon, and Yemen). Another, Venezuela, has all but been colonised, while the 2025 US National Security Strategy talks openly about the colonisation of the whole Western Hemisphere.Furthermore, the four achievements of India’s G20 presidency – a consensus statement by G20 members, the admittance of the African Union as a member of the G20, the launch of a Global Bio-Fuels Alliance, and a proposed India-Middle East-Europe Economic Corridor – are rendered meaningless or inoperable due to the actions of the Trump administration. Likewise, the six policy areas that India championed: (i) Green Development, Climate Finance & LiFE, (ii) Accelerated, Inclusive & Resilient Growth (iii) Accelerating Progress on Sustainable Development Goals, (iv) Technological Transformation & Digital Public Infrastructure, (v) Multilateral Institutions for the 21st century, and (vi) Women-led Development, are all but dead.Maybe only one thing survives in a mutated form: the slogan “One Earth, One Family, One Future” with Donald Trump as “Daddy.”This is a grim list of failures for India and demonstrates how deeply it has sold away its strategic autonomy to US control. India’s failure, though, is not just its own, but a global tragedy. With no bloc of countries committed to the preservation of sovereignty against colonialism, with no commitment of countries choosing global governance through multilateral institutions rather than a balance of power foreign policy, the only responses are bad ones. How does one criticise the Iranian government for murdering thousands of its own citizens without being co-opted into US-Israeli imperialism?How does one take a principled stand against Russian aggression against Ukraine and Europe while bearing in mind the complicity of both Ukrainian and European support of Israeli crimes against Palestinians? How does one condemn Venezuela’s brutal state apparatus without furthering Trump’s imperialism? How does one condemn US imperialism towards Greenland and Denmark without bearing in mind the absolutely racist immigration measures that Denmark – along with a whole set of European countries – has taken in recent years?It is, of course, necessary to condemn each evil on its own terms, but global movements for change are not built by picking and choosing. As Nehru said in 1948, “if you isolate any single problem in the world from the rest, you do not understand the problem.” These problems are isolated because they are not being addressed holistically through any greater lens – except for honourable exceptions – than narrow, national self-interest. By failing to actually be a voice for the Global South, and only being a stalking horse against China, India has increasingly isolated itself, and it now faces the prospect of dealing with US tariffs and tantrums on its own, but the impacts are not just felt within Indian shores. India’s cowardly and short-sighted foreign policy has also robbed the world of a vital voice to fight against discrimination, racist bigotry, and imperialism, failing not only itself, but also the world.Omair Ahmad has worked as a political analyst and journalist in India, the US and the UK.This piece was first published on The India Cable – a premium newsletter from The Wire – and has been updated and republished here. To subscribe to The India Cable, click here.