The Almost-Special Relationship

The relationship between India and Britain has never quite found its footing in the post-colonial era. Too much history, too much of it bad, and not quite enough shared interest in the present to paper over the complications. The phrase "special relationship" belongs to Britain and America — a construction built on two world wars and a common language. What India and Britain have is something more ambivalent: the aftermath of empire, mediated by a million stories of migration, shared institutions, and the particular dynamic of a country that was once ruled by another country trying to decide what to do with that fact.

The British Indian diaspora has transformed the relationship in ways that neither government fully controls. There are more Indians in Britain than there were in 1947, and their influence on British culture, British business, and British politics has been substantial. British curries have become a point of national identity. British Indian professionals have reached the senior levels of medicine, law, academia, and finance. The 2022 elevation of Rishi Sunak to the British prime ministership would have been literally unimaginable in 1947.

From the Indian side, the relationship with Britain carries the weight of the independence movement in ways that subsequent generations feel differently than the generation that won independence. For Indians born after 1947, Britain is less the former oppressor than the country where your uncle lives, where your cousin did her MBA, where the Premier League plays. The Raj is history rather than memory.

What the two countries have not built is a relationship commensurate with this human connection — a strategic partnership, a trade framework, a sustained engagement on the issues that matter to both countries. The institutional architecture remains thinner than the people-to-people ties would suggest it should be. Getting the relationship right has been, for decades, something that both countries have agreed was important without quite doing.