India has well and truly arrived. Today, its GDP ranks fith in the world! The country leads the Global South in multilateral forums. It develops indigenous missile systems, hosts digital identity infrastructure for over a billion people, and increasingly sets the tone in Indo-Pacific debates. But alongside this rise, India is also showing signs of democratic backsliding, typified by the suppression of dissent, growing religious intolerance, expanded executive power and the deployment of technology for domestic surveillance.
The United States risks misunderstanding India not by underestimating its capabilities, but by misreading its strategic trajectory. India is not drifting toward Beijing. It is evolving into something more complex, a power that could embody many of the same structural features that made China formidable: centralized control, strategic ambiguity, and technological sovereignty.
Unlike authoritarian regimes, such a "Sinoform" state would maintain electoral democracy and pluralistic façades but adopt governance patterns that are optimized for control, stability, and leverage. India's current direction suggests it could well become such a China-like actor, without becoming a Chinese ally. That possibility demands new thinking in Wash-ington-not to pressure India into alignment, but to manage the risk of strategic replication.
As Washington redefines its Indo-Pacific posture, the prevailing assumption has been clear: India will naturally lean democratic, liberal, and Western. But assumptions are not strategy, and misreading India's trajectory risks strategic drift.