‘The long-sustained image of India as a leader of the oppressed and marginalised nations has disappeared on account of its new found role in the emerging global order.’ Elaborate.

From Bandung (1955) and the founding of the Non-Aligned Movement (1961) to leadership of the G-77 and the anti-apartheid campaign, India built its identity as the voice of the colonised and the poor. Its rise within the existing global order has changed that image — but 'disappeared' overstates the case.

Why the old image has faded

• Strategic intimacy with the United States — the Quad, foundational defence agreements — and deepening ties with Israel sit awkwardly beside old Third-World solidarity.
• Prime ministerial absences from NAM summits in 2016 and 2019 signalled the movement's declining salience in Indian strategy.
• India's positions now openly privilege national interest: multi-alignment, energy purchases amid sanctions, and the exit from RCEP.
• Status aspirations — permanent UNSC membership, NSG entry — align India with the powerful rather than the protesting.

Leadership recast, not abandoned

• The Voice of the Global South Summits and the admission of the African Union to the G20 during India's 2023 presidency renewed the old claim in a new idiom.
• Vaccine Maitri supplied doses to about 100 countries; Operation Dost and nearly USD 4 billion in support to crisis-hit Sri Lanka displayed first-responder credentials.
• Development partnership — ITEC training, concessional lines of credit exceeding USD 30 billion, sharing of digital public infrastructure — replaces moral rhetoric with delivered capability.
• India still fights the South's corner at the WTO on food security and public stockholding, and co-sponsored the TRIPS waiver proposal with South Africa.

India has moved from moral spokesmanship to capability-backed partnership — a bridging power that speaks for the Global South while bargaining inside great-power councils. The image of leadership has not disappeared; it has been re-negotiated on India's own terms.