India has adopted multi-alignment to fulfill its core values and interests in International relations. Discuss.

The concept. Non-alignment was a posture of staying out; multi-alignment is a strategy of joining many, and simultaneously. C. Raja Mohan and others describe it as issue-based partnership: India aligns with different partners on different issues, refusing the exclusivity that alliance requires. Strategic autonomy is the objective; multi-alignment is the method.

The evidence of simultaneous membership.

• With the United States and its partners in the Quad, the 2+2 ministerial dialogue, and the foundational defence agreements.
• With Russia and China in BRICS, the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation and RIC, while continuing large-scale Russian defence procurement and discounted crude purchases after 2022.
• With the global South through the Voice of Global South Summit and the admission of the African Union to the G-20 during India's presidency in 2023.
• With West Asia through I2U2 and the India-Middle East-Europe Economic Corridor, while maintaining ties with Iran through Chabahar.
• In climate and energy through the International Solar Alliance, an institution India itself created.

What it delivers. Access to Western technology and capital without surrendering the Russian defence inventory; leverage with each partner because none is exclusive; and the ability to abstain, as India did on the Ukraine resolutions, without being isolated.

What sustains it. India's size and market make it worth courting; the China challenge gives the West a reason to accommodate India's other relationships; and no partner currently demands exclusivity.

What could break it. A crisis forcing a binary choice — a Taiwan contingency, or secondary sanctions on Russian defence and energy transactions — would test whether multi-alignment is a strategy or a deferral. Its critics call it fence-sitting; its defenders note that India has never lacked partners in a crisis, which is the practical test that matters.