By positioning itself as a co-developer by offering skills, platforms, and shared innovation to the Caribbean countries, India is steadily transforming emotional capital into strategic depth
In July 2025, Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit to Trinidad and Tobago marked a striking return of India’s high-level diplomacy to the Caribbean after a 26-year hiatus. Beyond the ceremonial grandeur with Trinidad bestowing its highest civilian honour upon Modi, the visit captured something more subtle yet profound: a recalibrated Indian approach to the Global South, where history and strategy are no longer parallel narratives, but converging ones.
In the shared space of memory, defined by indenture, migration, and resilience, India found not just an emotional anchor but a geopolitical bridge. A traditional dinner served on Sohari leaves symbolised more than cultural hospitality; it was a gesture of recognition from a nation whose citizens of Indian origin now play central roles in governance, identity, and diplomacy.
This soft power terrain, steeped in cultural familiarity, is fast becoming a strategic frontier, especially as rival actors deepen their stakes across the Caribbean. The second India-CARICOM Summit, hosted in November 2024 in Guyana—the first of its kind held in a CARICOM country—was emblematic of India’s evolving Global South playbook. With participation from regional leaders, including Grenada’s Prime Minister Dickon Mitchell and Guyana’s President Irfaan Ali, the summit reflected mutual interest in transforming historical affinities into developmental partnerships.
Climate initiatives included partnerships on solar energy via the ISA and converting sargassum seaweed into fertiliser, a pressing environmental concern in the region.
Prime Minister Modi’s seven-pillar CARICOM agenda, unveiled at the 2nd India–CARICOM Summit, aligned closely with regional priorities, spanning digital infrastructure, climate resilience, healthcare, ocean economy, and youth engagement. Unlike traditional donors, India positioned itself as a co-developer, offering platforms like UPI and DigiLocker, 1,000+ new ITEC scholarships, and collaborative tech solutions. A standout example was India’s support for a digital training hub in Belize, aimed at strengthening CARICOM-wide digital governance and fintech capacity. Climate initiatives included partnerships on solar energy via the ISA and converting sargassum seaweed into fertiliser, a pressing environmental concern in the region. India’s tone—collaborative, skills-based, and responsive—signalled a strategic evolution: from cultural nostalgia to capacity-centred, South-South cooperation.
The inclusion of the Caribbean in India’s strategic imagination reflects the rising global visibility of Indo-Caribbean leaders, the strategic importance of the region as a site of great-power competition, and the growing relevance of small states in shaping multilateral norms on climate, development, and digital governance.
Prime Minister Modi’s visit to Trinidad and Tobago was followed by subsequent diplomacy, deepening India’s regional footprint. In May 2025, the visit of a multi-party Indian parliamentary delegation to Guyana, led by MP Shashi Tharoor and timed with the country’s 59th Independence Day, was cast in the broader context of Operation Sindoor. While reinforcing India’s zero-tolerance stance on terrorism, the delegation also explored economic convergence, particularly in Guyana’s emerging oil and gas sector. By combining political signalling, diaspora solidarity, and commercial diplomacy, India is weaving the Caribbean into both its security narrative and development partnerships.
Crucially, India’s engagement has grown more regionally aware. In contrast to older paradigms that viewed the Caribbean through the lens of a few diaspora-rich nations, the current strategy recognises the collective importance of CARICOM and the individual agency of states like Barbados, Grenada, and St. Lucia, many of which are on the front lines of climate vulnerability and governance innovation. India’s support for solar energy, digital public infrastructure, and disaster-resilient development resonates strongly in these contexts.
In contrast to older paradigms that viewed the Caribbean through the lens of a few diaspora-rich nations, the current strategy recognises the collective importance of CARICOM and the individual agency of states like Barbados, Grenada, and St. Lucia, many of which are on the front lines of climate vulnerability and governance innovation.
Caribbean leaders of Indian descent, such as Suriname’s President Chandrikapersad Santokhi, Guyana’s President Irfaan Ali and Vice President Bharrat Jagdeo, and Trinidadian Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar, have emerged as critical partners in shaping this recalibrated relationship. Their dual positioning, as regional power brokers and cultural bridge-builders, has enabled a more fluid and trust-based dialogue between India and the Caribbean bloc.
India’s new diplomatic posture in the region is more about negotiated alignment. By positioning itself as a co-developer by offering skills, platforms, and shared innovation, India is steadily transforming emotional capital into strategic depth.
The China factor looms large in this recalibrated diplomacy. Beijing’s footprint in the Caribbean is growing, spanning ports, hospitals, public health infrastructure, and media partnerships in countries such as Jamaica, Suriname, and Grenada. Often backed by concessional loans and grand infrastructure plans, China’s model has proven appealing but also increasingly uncertain due to debt burdens and political asymmetries.
India’s strategy, lighter, more consultative, and rooted in local empowerment, offers a credible counter-narrative. It plays the long game: less spectacle, more staying power. By framing itself not as a donor but as a developmental partner, India appeals to the Caribbean’s desire for autonomy and diversified engagement.
Beijing’s footprint in the Caribbean is growing, spanning ports, hospitals, public health infrastructure, and media partnerships in countries such as Jamaica, Suriname, and Grenada.
Few assets serve this strategy better than the diaspora itself. In Guyana, where nearly 40 percent of the population traces its roots to India, the diaspora is an active, institutional force. From political offices to economic sectors, Indo-Guyanese are integral to the nation’s trajectory. In Trinidad, too, Indian identity is embedded into the national fabric, shaping language, festivals, food, and public life.
Modi’s references to his Indian heritage—and their reciprocal recognition by diaspora communities—were not incidental. They were diplomatic signals. At a time when many Global South countries are reassessing their external partnerships, India’s mix of shared identity and strategic interest makes it uniquely positioned to gain trust where others merely transact.
That trust extends into multilateral alignment. India and CARICOM states are increasingly converging on global issues: from institutional reform and equitable climate finance to development justice. This is especially important as they are existential positions for small island states and rising middle powers alike.
India’s Caribbean re-engagement, then, is about turning memory into momentum. In a multipolar world, the Caribbean is no longer a periphery; it is a test case for how India can lead with both conviction and connection.
Ashraf Nehal is placed with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Grenada, working out of their High Commission in London.
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Ashraf Nehal works at the High Commission for Grenada in London and serves as Regional Lead for the Commonwealth Youth Climate Change Network (CYCN) as ...
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