Extended Abstract
Introduction: India's expanding economic interests and its aspiration to project a greater regional role have prompted New Delhi to prioritize the Central Asian region, particularly within the context of its strategic competition with China and Pakistan. Due to a lack of direct geographical contiguity, India's capacity to secure a stable foothold in Afghanistan is critical to gaining reliable transit access to Central Asia. Consequently, during the two-decade international presence in Afghanistan, India sought to foster stability and security while opposing the Taliban. However, the Taliban's return to power has compounded New Delhi's strategic dilemmas, especially since Pakistan—bordering India to the west—maintains a patron-client relationship with the Taliban and effectively blocks India’s overland access to Afghanistan. To navigate this hostile geopolitical landscape, India must pursue a dual strategy: first, establish a pragmatic diplomatic relationship with the Taliban; and second, bypass Pakistan by utilizing alternative transit routes, most notably Iran's Chabahar Port. This study examines India’s geopolitical challenges and assesses the strategic role of Afghanistan in New Delhi's Eurasian connectivity calculus. The central research question asks: How can India overcome the structural and diplomatic challenges of engaging with the Taliban to secure sustainable access to Central Asia?
Methods: This study employs a qualitative, descriptive-analytical framework to evaluate the core hypothesis. First, the regional geopolitics, spatial constraints, and infrastructural bottlenecks are mapped empirically to establish the baseline conditions of the conflict theater. Second, utilizing data synthesized from official strategic doctrines, multilateral transit agreements, and foreign policy briefs, the study analyzes India’s motivations, objectives, and systemic efforts to mitigate connectivity challenges. At this stage, the analytical focus is placed on the causal nexus between the independent variable (the geopolitical orientation of Afghanistan) and the dependent variable (India’s strategic access to Central Asia). Data collection was conducted via a systematic, library-based documentary method.
Results and discussion: The findings indicate that India's connectivity constraints regarding Central Asia are not merely a function of geographical isolation or Pakistan’s revisionist posture; rather, they are the product of a geopolitical rearrangement of the Afghan pivot and the shifting strategic logic of the actors operating within it. Within the framework of classical geopolitical theory, Afghanistan has transcended its traditional role as a passive buffer state to become a competitive geopolitical and geoeconomic node, where alignment directly transforms the regional distribution of power. The primary finding demonstrates that the Taliban’s resurgence has forced India to pivot from a normative, ideologically driven foreign policy to a posture of pragmatic geopolitical activism. In this new paradigm, diplomatic engagement with the Taliban is not an option, but a structural prerequisite for countervailing Chinese and Pakistani regional hegemony. Furthermore, New Delhi's engagement with the Taliban is not merely a reactive containment strategy against Islamabad, but a proactive attempt to redefine India’s position within the broader Eurasian corridor network, thereby preventing its geoeconomic marginalization. Based on these empirical findings, the Chabahar Port and the International North-South Transport Corridor (INSTC) function not merely as technical transport initiatives, but as geopolitical balancing mechanisms that allow India to neutralize Pakistani transit leverage and contain China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). Consequently, the viability of India’s strategy depends on transforming Afghanistan from a theater of zero-sum security competition into a space of transit compatibility, a shift that requires institutionalized engagement with the Taliban and its integration into the regional connectivity architecture.
Conclusions: India faces deep-seated geopolitical and security impediments in realizing its strategic ambitions in Central Asia. Structural competition with regional rivals China and Pakistan, alongside the complex task of dealing with the Taliban as a highly volatile governing authority, constitute the primary barriers to Indian projection. Nevertheless, by leveraging core geopolitical principles, India can mitigate these vulnerabilities. A critical solution lies in institutionalizing transactional and strategic relations with the Taliban through targeted economic assistance, thereby transforming Afghanistan into a secure, aligned transit corridor. Ultimately, developing robust trade and transport infrastructure through the Afghan-Iranian axis will allow India to erode Pakistan’s veto power over its northern connectivity, diversify its commercial routes, and consolidate its geopolitical standing in Eurasia.
Keywords: India's geopolitical territory, Central Asia, India-Pakistan confrontation, Taliban government in Afghanistan, Iran's Chabahar port.