In 2025, a 120-year-old idea is resurfacing in India, this time to counter geopolitical uncertainties.
A century after its inception, Swadeshi is back. An idea that nourished a nation and became one of the key pillars of India’s Independence, a renascent Swadeshi movement is back in the land of its origin. New are its expressions, novel its complexities, and contemporary its driving force. The only bridge to the past: its use as an economic tool to counter an unfair, unjustified, and unreasonable tariff attack by the United States (US), targeting India’s oil imports. It has been ignited by the Donald J. Trump administration of the US, and predictably parroted by the European Union (EU), both of which seek to build a relationship with India based on the past to negotiate the future, possibly on imperial terms of history.
The short-term outcomes are to glide over a rising anti-India crude label-mongering by the Trump administration, the latest but possibly not the last, from his trade advisor, Peter Navarro.
For Swadeshi 2.0, the driving force is not the politics of freedom but the geopolitics of uncertainty. In the vocabulary of grand strategy, the end, or national outcome, is economic predictability, stability, and a trust-based dependable economic platform for 1.4 billion Indians. The methods to get there aim to counter an increasingly hostile geopolitics and aggressive actions from the two hegemons of the West and the East. The short-term outcomes are to glide over a rising anti-India crude label-mongering by the Trump administration, the latest but possibly not the last, from his trade advisor, Peter Navarro. These include labels such as “Modi’s war,” “laundromat for Kremlin”, or casteist narrative diplomacy. These statements follow earlier aggressive diplomatic double-speak by US Vice President J.D. Vance to justify the 25 percent secondary tariffs on India for buying Russian oil. The long-term goal is economic security that protects Indian consumers, businesses and investors, and the exchequer.
The US perhaps even realises that, in its petty point-scoring game, using the administration of the world’s largest and most powerful country to pursue the Nobel Peace Prize for its President, it has lowered the stature of the office and pushed India away. Again. Unlike the EU, the closest ally of the US that has had to bend before Trump and still face all-inclusive 15 percent tariffs, India can manage its defence on its own. India may need friends — it does need defence equipment. But it does not need a NATO-like security blanket. Further, India is a nation with a wide, deep and towering civilisational legacy that is not going to bend before rants. Finally, the domestic politics of India cannot see the country kneel before a bully, the histrionics of whose administration are reaching signs of desperation, becoming increasingly economically illiterate, and attempting to cleave the country by fake narratives, antics disturbingly reminiscent of those employed by Beijing.
The US perhaps even realises that, in its petty point-scoring game, using the administration of the world’s largest and most powerful country to pursue the Nobel Peace Prize for its President, it has lowered the stature of the office and pushed India away.
Much of the irresponsible and narrative damage is now behind us. However, this episode has taken the foreign policy establishment back to the classroom to learn this new US grammar. The seemingly conciliatory tweet from the US Secretary of State Marco Rubio around an “enduring friendship” with India has left scholars wondering what the MAGA (Make America Great Again) meaning of ‘enduring’ and ‘friendship’ is. It is still unclear whether this is a time-space snapshot following Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s photographs with China’s President Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin, or if there is some meaning in it. In a curious twist, Washington D.C. is following the Beijing model of weaponising trade, technology, markets, and relationships into a wolf warrior diplomacy with MAGA characteristics (the with-us-against-us model), a crude shadow of China’s assertive-aggressive diplomacy. This comes at a time when Xi is reworking relationships, using the American meltdown as a strategic opportunity to mend ties with India.
In his 15 August 2025 speech, Prime Minister Narendra Modi addressed the ongoing deglobalisation surge through Swadeshi and was vocal for local. “I want traders and shopkeepers across the country to put up boards saying: ‘Swadeshi goods sold here’,” he said. “Let us take pride in Swadeshi. We should use it not out of compulsion, but with strength, for our own strength and if needed, even to compel others to use it. That should be our power.” Twelve days later, in his 27 August 2025 speech to commemorate 100 years of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), its Sarsanghchalak Mohan Bhagwat reiterated the idea of “true Swadeshi,” as one that champions self-reliance as the bedrock of national strength.
A valid reaction to a world raising tariff barriers, security barricades and great power fences, the green shoots of Swadeshi 2.0 could become teak forests of tomorrow that create and hold up the economic pillar of India’s grand strategy. But if India’s consumer market is to be leveraged, policymakers need to work with the private sector by ending institutionalised harassment. There are many ideas around rationalising deregulation and decriminalisation, simplifying processes through digitisation, and engaging with regulators through faceless and paperless methods with regulators. The best economic policy today will be for governments to get out of the way of entrepreneurs without removing the necessary protections for consumers, workers, investors and the environment. This transformation of India’s economic laws and the accompanying bureaucracy is Modi’s biggest challenge.
The days when the state made poor cars, managed unkempt hotels, monopolised sloppy airlines, and nationalised mines and banks are behind us. Today, the consumer of a rising India needs world-class products, no less efficient or globalised than the UPI, no less effective than the highways, no less seamless than the telecom infrastructure, no less world-class than cars that stand shoulder-to-shoulder inside and outside the country. The market for low-quality, low-priced products exists. But using that as a garb for Swadeshi will not work anymore.
Irrespective of how geopolitics plays out, consumers, investors, producers and workers of India must attempt to make in India, buy from India, invest in India, and rise with India.
Businesses will need to up their game. Rising incomes will enable Indians to pay more for the same quality from Indian businesses, but if the quality is not up to the mark, they will revert to Chinese products. As a result, Indian businesses need to build brands that people want to possess, products that can stand strong on shelves alongside global competitors. Tinkering and incrementalism were the strategies for the past three decades; research and development is the path to Viksit Bharat. To get there, we need several private sector champions.
This will not be easy. What makes Swadeshi 2.0 more difficult than Swadeshi 1.0 is the structural shift in manufacturing. The Swadeshi Movement of the 20 century followed a simple and linear line, largely around textiles — burn foreign, buy Indian. In 21-century India, Swadeshi 2.0 does not have that luxury. An iPhone or a submarine rides on the back of the supply chains of more than 40 countries. As do manufacturing jet engines, 5G equipment, or robotics. The 2025 version of Swadeshi needs to factor in the evolution of technological platforms and operating systems, artificial intelligence and cybersecurity. Behind the products, the underlying systems of doing business need deep reflection. Companies need to address the needs of tomorrow, build businesses that remain ahead.
The end is not political freedom but economic security. And if the government and the companies work together, there will be no pause in the rise of India. On the contrary, the rebuilding of the India-US relationship to its pre-tantrum point could be a danger to Swadeshi 2.0, reverting to an environment of business as usual. Irrespective of how geopolitics plays out, consumers, investors, producers and workers of India must attempt to make in India, buy from India, invest in India, and rise with India. Globalisation is a long-term relationship. A win-win does not mean the US or China wins twice over.
Gautam Chikermane is Vice President at the Observer Research Foundation.
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