Introduction

India and the Gulf relations have evolved over a period of time, from India being a benign power with transactional interaction with the region to being a pragmatic actor and strategic partner to major Gulf economies. The inclusion of strategic components in the relations started over a decade after the end of the Cold War when India signed a strategic partnership agreement with Iran in 2003. Before that, since 1991, both India and the region had already started to embrace each other by shedding off their ideological differences and protectionist economy and by being lenient on non-alignment Third World concern. This was also the time when India ceased viewing the region through the Pakistani prism. Hence, the elevation of Indo-Gulf relations to strategic partnership level is the outcome of changing geopolitical and geostrategic dynamics, internationally, regionally, and nationally. Strategic relations with the region are crucial for India's economic development, social progress, and political ascendance. With growing defence cooperation and the Atmanirbhar Bharat initiative, the Gulf's role in building India's defence industry is worth examining. The Gulf's importance in India's strategic calculus far outweighs even the immediate neighbourhood, given the volume and percentage of trade, its contribution to India's energy requirements, and gross domestic product (GDP) through remittances sent by 8.5–10 million Indian expatriates in the region.

Thus, it is undeniable that the Gulf is key to India's growth story. The economic and energy component in the Indo-Gulf relations is dominant since the discovery of oil in Persia (now Iran) in 1908 and subsequently in the Arab states. Therefore, what tempted the countries to enter into strategic partnerships and what are the objectives of such partnership warrant a detailed examination. Furthermore, it becomes necessary to inspect what corresponds to a strategic partnership in the Indo-Gulf context. Thus, both a conceptual and contextual understanding of Indo-Gulf relationstransformed to strategic partnerships is unique and is a relevant contribution to the existing literature on the subject.

Strategic partnerships as a concept emerged in the 1990s as an important feature in the evolving international relations systems and discourse. Generally, it is multifaceted and multidimensional in character; however, it does not necessarily mean a unique relationship.