The outcomes of the 16th Indo-Japan Summit reveal an ‘all of government plus all of business’ partnership in conception and engagement of stakeholders.
When Hardeep Singh Puri and I started our Indian Foreign Service career and went on our first posting to Japan in the late 1970s, we could only have dreamt of where the relationship has reached today in these dozen years of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s foreign policy.
The dynamic Japanese PM, Sanae Takaichi, who blazed a trail as the first woman PM and one who won the strongest electoral mandate in Japan’s post war history, visited India last week for an annual bilateral summit. She put the coping stone on a relationship that now goes beyond the conventional architecture and vocabulary of international relations. It moved from strategic partnership—one that India has with over 30 countries, to “Special Strategic and Global Partnership” based on an unprecedented “strategic convergence”—an achievement in itself.
Equally is the affirmation that came through in the PM Modi-PM Takaichi evocation of the brother sister relationship—a veritable kinship and symbiosis between the world’s two leading democracies and economies, bound together by a civilizational compact, now acquiring the instruments of the 21st Century as an Asian Century.
Back then, Indo-Japan relationship had grace, warmth and an unmistakable cultural undertone. Japan admired India’s spiritual depth, Buddhist inheritance and democratic resilience and remembered the Radha Binod Pal and Netaji connection. India admired Japan’s discipline, technology and extraordinary postwar economic miracle and rise. But on the economic front the trade, FDI and aid package together was worth only a billion USD. I remember EAM Vajpayee during his visit to Tokyo eloquently using the imagery of the sole major item traded between the two countries to insist that our two countries should be bound together as strongly and as inseparably as iron and steel.
That moment had arrived at last. PM Takaichi recalled Abe’s abiding belief that a strong India is good for Japan and a strong Japan is good for India. We have travelled from memory to machinery, sentiment to strategic velocity, from a vision of potential to confidence in its realization and from affinity to confluence of core interests. Propelled by the ballast of intentional pivoting by PM Abe and PM Modi in particular, one which was also stressed by PM Takaichi, Indo-Japan relations are acquiring an unequalled primacy and urgency.
The stakes in a strong India and Japan mutually reinforcing each other’s economic growth, resilience and security, defence capabilities, and postures, technological vibrancy, environmental sustainability and democratic model of governance in Asia and the world, have never been higher—for them and for world peace, prosperity and sustainability. Each is indispensable for the attainment of the other’s national goals—in India’s case of a Viksit Bharat by 2047 and in Japan’s case a reinvigorated economy and demographics. Both seek to maintain their territorial integrity, democratic ethos and ensure comprehensive security—military, maritime, information and cyber, energy and resource related.
Their strategic partnership is also propelled by external forces. The recent polycrisis induced by COVID and the major wars, the geopolitical and geoeconomic shifts and turbulence, the upending of a stable, predictable, rule based economic and political order and an increasingly volatile neighbourhood for both countries, have exposed vulnerabilities and produced a never before strategic convergence, if not congruity.
A former Japanese ambassador just made an admission of Indo-Japanese civilizational intimacy. He opined that 80% of Japanese Gods are originally Indian, that Indian culture is imprinted underneath Japanese culture though developed according to Japanese genius—from Siddham letters to Sanskritic echoes.
For us, as Japan admiring diplomats, the country always felt like a time capsule preserving strands of Indian culture. But now it feels like it is being owned, reclaimed with pride. These ancient bonds, this cultural familiarity is now finding expression and traction in the personal chemistry between the two leaders, both of whom proudly carry their civilizational inspiration into policies and diplomacy.
Earlier decades saw evolution. The Modi era has produced the critical transformation—turning inherited goodwill into projects, capital, defence cooperation, technology corridors and institutional trust. The continuous uptick in Indo-Japan relations began earlier but PM Modi transformed that vision into action and gave it strategic purpose, economic thrust and stronger political momentum.
The other geo strategic leap of faith was the concept and architecture of cooperation in the Indo-Pacific and how India and Japan co created it along with the U.S. and Australia and have vowed to maintain its integrity and centrality including through the Quad mechanism.
The Indo-Pacific remains the theatre, but the Asian Century is the horizon.
Asia’s future requires trusted supply chains, secure seas, responsible technology, energy resilience, quality infrastructure and institutions capable of converting intent into implementation. Free from economic coercion and weaponization, expansionism and resource capture.
In this the Indo-Japan complementarity is unmistakeable. India brings scale, talent, digital capability and market depth. Japan brings precision, capital, advanced manufacturing, quality systems and long-term investment discipline. When they collaborate intensively and purposefully they become an unbeatable force for good.
The outcomes of the 16th Indo-Japan Summit reveal an “all of government plus all of business” partnership in conception and engagement of stakeholders. India’s line ministries, defence establishments, energy institutions, financial agencies, universities, start-ups, SMEs and corporations are now moving in concert. More than 150 Japanese companies participated and around 120 cooperation documents were announced. It was not ceremonial diplomacy but a delivery machine being assembled in real time.
On security and defence the breakthrough was in the launch of the Indo-Japanese UNICORN Naval Radio Antenna project—a harder domain of defence co-development, not merely exercises and exchanges. Alongside came the agreement to deepen defence cooperation through ministerial meetings, stronger maritime exercises, maritime domain awareness using satellite capabilities, naval MRO and defence equipment collaboration under Make in India. The Quad gains practical weight from this axis, especially in maritime security, critical technologies, economic resilience and humanitarian assistance and harnessing the blue economy and link to India’s SAGAR vision.
Economically, the emphasis was on the relationship’s leapfrogging. Japanese investment is poised to match political trust in scale the way it did in enabling a Chinese economic miracle. The target of 10 trillion yen Japanese investment over the next decade is set and 2 trillion yen commitments already made. The ambition to double the number of Japanese companies in India gives the partnership a measurable test. The next task is execution—converting confidence into factories, jobs, innovation and exports.
Technology may become the most transformative pillar. The dedicated India-Japan Joint Statement on Artificial Intelligence elevates cooperation from dialogue to strategic joint research and development. It covers safe and trusted AI, governance, cybersecurity, compute, semiconductors, multilingual models and AI for public good. The institutional linkages make it concrete: India AI with METI, IIT Bombay-Bharat Gen with Japan’s National Institute of Informatics for large language models, and Sarvam AI with Preferred Networks across the AI stack.
The Joint Declaration on Economic Security focuses on semiconductors, critical minerals, ICT including AI, clean energy and pharmaceuticals highlight cooperation on the sinews of future sovereignty. Cooperation in geology and mineral exploration supports upstream critical minerals work, while battery cooperation aims to create trusted supply chains. Pharma and medical devices cooperation, including APIs and Key Starting Materials, will strengthen health security by combining India’s scale with Japan’s quality and capital.
Energy resilience also moved into preparedness. India’s Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas and Japan’s METI agreed to cooperate on strategic stockpiling of crude oil and petroleum products, emergency response, market stabilisation, third-country energy supplies, upstream investments and maritime energy transport.
On Mobility, the Mumbai-Ahmedabad High Speed Rail project is already a flagship, but cooperation on Japan’s state-of-the-art E10 series Shinkansen gives it a next-generation edge. The wider Next Generation Mobility Partnership expands the canvas to rail, automobiles, roads, aviation, shipbuilding, ports, logistics and urban development, positioning India as a “Make in India for the World” hub.
People-to-people ties must now catch up with strategy. The 75th anniversary of diplomatic relations in 2027 should not be celebrated only through official ceremonies. Tourism, Japanese language learning, student exchanges, anime, gaming, research, start-ups and talent mobility can create the social constituency this relationship deserves. Kinship cannot live only in ministries and boardrooms; it must breathe in the imagination of the young.
The 16th Indo-Japan Annual Summit between the two PMs with the unfailing mandate of their peoples, will be remembered for the completeness and comprehensiveness of what was agreed, reaffirmed, strengthened but also in which areas operational and enduring breakthroughs were achieved and new initiatives taken, in the scale of ambitions and in the sincerity about execution.
The India Japan Special and Global Strategic Partnership truly invokes the Rig Vedic spirit of holistic cooperation, moving together in unity, speaking together in harmony, having the same purpose, being of one mind, intentions and aspirations being alike and a common objective unifying all for universal good. They mirror the concepts of Chowa, Ishin-Denshin and Otagai Sama, which are the quintessence of Japanese ethos and culture.
May we walk together in harmony, may we speak together in one voice, and may our minds be in agreement. May our prayers and deliberations be common, may our assemblies be united, and may our minds and consciousness move as one. May our intentions and resolutions be alike, may our hearts beat in unison, and may our minds be bound together so that we all may live in peace and happiness.”
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Lakshmi Puri is former Assistant Secretary-General of the United Nations and former Deputy Executive Director of UN Women.
