From Gandhi to Guns: India’s Changing Character
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Gandhi’s philosophy remains one of humanity’s most successful and admired political strategies.
India’s Shift to Arms Exports: Once known as a peace-loving, non-violent nation inspired by Gandhi, India is now actively exporting weapons like BrahMos missiles and Pinaka rocket systems, aiming to be a top arms exporter by 2047.
Global Arms Race Lessons: The 20th century showed how nations tied to arms industries (U.S., USSR, Europe) became trapped in militarism, leading to endless wars, economic distortions, and moral compromises. India risks repeating this cycle.
Risky Geopolitical Entanglements: Arms sales to Armenia, the Philippines, and other regions insert India into volatile conflicts, damage diplomatic credibility, and fuel regional arms races instead of easing tensions.
Domestic & Ethical Costs: Like the U.S. gun epidemic, a growing arms industry could spill into Indian society, creating violence, black markets, and militarism at home, while corroding India’s moral authority as leader of the Non-Aligned Movement.
A Peaceful Alternative Path: India should focus on peace industries—IT, vaccines, clean energy, education—while adopting a responsible defence policy that avoids exports to conflict zones, ensures strict end-use monitoring, and positions India as a global mediator of peace rather than a war merchant.
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OCTOBER 2025
In the third decade of the 21st century, India stands at an inflection point. Its economic rise, technological prowess, and geopolitical weight have made it an undeniable global player.
Yet, alongside IT services, pharmaceuticals, and space exploration, another industry is quietly being nurtured by the Indian state the defence export sector.
From BrahMos cruise missiles to Pinaka rocket launchers, from coastal patrol vessels to advanced surveillance systems, India has begun to sell arms abroad.
The government hails these deals as symbols of self-reliance, industrial modernisation, and global stature.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi himself declared that India should aim to become one of the world’s top arms exporters by 2047.
At first glance, this ambition may appear natural.
If the United States, Russia, France, and Israel can profit from weapons exports, why shouldn’t India?
Yet the question runs deeper.
Should a country whose founding father was the apostle of non-violence, and whose modern legitimacy often rested on moral authority, enter the morally murky, geopolitically risky, and socially corrosive global arms trade?
We argue that India should not take this path of growth.
The risks of arms exports far outweigh their perceived benefits.
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The risks of arms exports far outweigh their perceived benefits.
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India risks embroiling itself in foreign conflicts, undermining its own diplomatic credibility, corroding its domestic ethos, and joining the same militaristic treadmill that has trapped the West.
To understand why, one must place India’s recent choices in the wider context of the global arms race.
The Global Arms Race: Lessons of the 20th Century
The 20th century was dominated by the twin shadows of war and militarisation.
The two World Wars, the Cold War, and countless regional conflicts were sustained by an industrial machine of weapons manufacturing.
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America’s prosperity is intertwined with its weapons production…
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The U.S. military-industrial complex, famously warned about by President Dwight Eisenhower in 1961, became the world’s most powerful lobby.
America’s prosperity intertwined with its weapons production, creating a self-perpetuating cycle where new weapons justified new wars.
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The Soviet Union mirrored this militarisation, devoting staggering proportions of its GDP to defence.
Its arms exports to allies from Cuba to Vietnam to Angola deepened Cold War divides, making conflicts deadlier and longer. Subsequently, the Soviet economy became unsustainable and became one of the reasons for its collapse.
Europe, too, despite its self-image as a bastion of peace, has long been one of the largest suppliers of weapons. France, the UK, Germany, and Italy have armed clients across Africa, the Middle East, and Asia.
Today, the European economies, including British are undergoing ‘cost of living crisis’ because they are funding war in Ukraine.
Alongside, their economic reliance on arms exports makes them complicit in wars they claim to oppose.
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… the European economies, including British are undergoing ‘cost of living crisis’…
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The lesson of the 20th century is clear: once a nation ties its economy to arms exports, militarism becomes self-sustaining.
Economic interests overwhelm moral caution.
Lobbyists, corporations, and bureaucracies ensure that peace is never as profitable as war.
21st Century Militarisation: India is Redundant
If the 20th century was the age of tanks, aircraft carriers, and nuclear weapons, the 21st century has become the age of proxy wars and technological warfare.
The U.S. continues to export arms at unprecedented levels, often to regimes with questionable human rights records.
Its weapons are omnipresent in conflicts from Yemen to Ukraine.
Russia, despite sanctions and economic decline, relies heavily on arms sales to sustain its influence.
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Drone warfare in particular, once monopolised by the U.S., is now democratised ….
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China has emerged as a major exporter, using its arms trade to build client relationships in Africa, Latin America, and Asia.
New players such as Turkey, Israel, and South Korea have carved niches in drones, missile systems, and cyber technologies.
Drone warfare in particular, once monopolised by the U.S., is now democratised, with Turkish Bayraktar drones and Iranian Shahed drones changing battlefields from Ukraine to the Middle East.
In this crowded arms bazaar, India’s entry is not revolutionary but redundant.
Far from reshaping the global order, India risks becoming yet another merchant in a saturated and morally bankrupt market.
Why spoil the legacy?
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The Indian Crossroads: Risks and Realities
Armenia–Azerbaijan
India’s arms export to Armenia Pinaka rocket systems, Swathi radars, and artillery may have won headlines but has inserted India into the Caucasus conflict.
Azerbaijan, backed by Turkey and Pakistan, has already condemned India’s involvement.
This short-term profit creates long-term diplomatic liabilities, with ripple effects in India’s already tense relations with Turkey and Pakistan. It was evident during the ‘Operation Sindoor’.
The Philippines and the South China Sea
India’s sale of BrahMos missiles to the Philippines, celebrated as a diplomatic win, directly militarises one of the world’s most volatile flashpoints.
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Instead of de-escalating tensions in South China Sea, India risks fuelling them.
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Should these weapons be used against China, India will be seen not as a neutral power but as a provocateur. It will be contrary to the India-China relationship, which is already under strain due to disputes related to northern borders.
Instead of de-escalating tensions in South China Sea, India risks fuelling them.
African and Southeast Asian States
From helicopters to patrol vessels, India’s exports to African and Southeast Asian countries may bolster maritime security in some cases but risk enabling authoritarian regimes or being diverted to internal repression.
Weapons, once sold, have a habit of reappearing in unexpected and dangerous hands.
Hermes-900 UAV Drones in Gaza
It is very likely that India has exported Hermes-900 UAVs (or some UAVs of that line or derivative) to Israel via the Adani-Elbit JV, along with subsystems/components.
But these exports are claimed (by Indian / JV sources) to be for non-combat / surveillance / reconnaissance use, not necessarily armed variants or weapons-equipped drones.
Also, licensing and oversight appear to be involved, though how strict or how it is enforced is less clear publicly.
The Ethical Economics of Peace
The heart of the matter is not just security but economics. What kind of economic future does India want to build?
An arms-driven economy inevitably lobbies for perpetual conflict.
Defence companies will demand subsidies, push for looser export rules, and constantly advocate expansion.
Leaders, eager for quick export figures, will measure success not in lives saved but in missiles sold.
By contrast, India has unparalleled strengths in peace-oriented industries: IT, pharmaceuticals, space, renewable energy, agriculture, and education.
These sectors not only provide sustainable growth but also elevate India’s global reputation. Vaccines save lives; BrahMos missiles take them.
Which industry better aligns with India’s civilisational ethos?
Domestic Spillover: America’s Gun Epidemic as a Warning
The U.S. today is drowning in its own weapons.
More guns than people, hundreds of mass shootings annually, and a society scarred by violence. This is the internal consequence of treating arms as a legitimate industry.
India must be wary.
A flourishing arms export industry, if privatised and deregulated, could one day seep into domestic black markets, insurgencies, and criminal networks.
The very weapons designed for external profit may fuel internal instability. Once normalised, a culture of militarism is hard to roll back.
India’s Heritage: Gandhi and the Non-Aligned Legacy
India is not any ordinary state.
Its independence was won not through guerrilla war or insurgency but through non-violence.
Gandhi’s philosophy remains one of humanity’s most successful and admired political strategies.
Independent India carried that moral capital into the global stage, leading the Non-Aligned Movement, mediating conflicts, and often speaking for the Global South.
This moral authority was a currency far more valuable than arms exports.
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Its independence was won not through guerrilla war or insurgency but through non-violence.
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To abandon that legacy now, and to join the club of arms merchants, is not only a betrayal of India’s past but a diminishment of its global uniqueness.
The world has enough weapons dealers; it needs more peace-builders.
The entire world wants to go to Switzerland for holding peace talk and then sign an agreement in Geneva. Why can’t India be the world’s negotiator of peace and New Delhi the address of peace accords?
Why aren’t Indian leaders thinking on this approach, which the Swiss have envisaged ages ago?
A Policy Roadmap for Peaceful Strength
India’s security needs are real. It faces two nuclear-armed rivals, Pakistan and China.
Modernisation of its armed forces is non-negotiable. But security need not mean arms exports.
A responsible roadmap would include:
1. No exports to countries in active conflicts or civil wars.
2. Strict end-use monitoring to prevent misuse.
3. Focus on defensive and dual-use technologies surveillance, disaster relief, cyber-defence.
4. Promote peace industries vaccines, clean energy, education technology.
5. Use diplomacy over arms positioning India as a mediator rather than a supplier of violence.
Choosing Between Power and Peace
India’s rise is real, but its form is yet to be defined.
Will it be the rise of another militarised power, exporting destruction for profit?
Or will it be the rise of a civilisational state that redefines power as the ability to preserve peace, build prosperity, and inspire humanity?
The lure of arms exports is tempting. They bring revenue, prestige, and bargaining chips. But history shows they also bring blood, entanglements, and corruption of values.
For India whose strength has always come from moral authority as much as from military might, the choice should be clear.
India must resist the siren call of the war industry and remain faithful to its timeless ethos: that peace, not arms, is the highest form of strength.
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