When India and Italy signed a joint statement upgrading their bilateral relationship to a "strategic partnership" in Puglia on June 14, 2024, it was reported primarily as a diplomatic milestone. Less examined was the specific political texture of the relationship it formalised — and what that texture says about the direction of Indian foreign policy.
Giorgia Meloni leads Italy's Fratelli d'Italia, a party with post-fascist roots that has, under her leadership, moved toward the mainstream of European conservatism while retaining strong nationalist and cultural traditionalist positions. Modi leads the BJP, a party with roots in the Hindu nationalist movement, which has governed India since 2014 with a majoritarian political programme.
The Ideological Alignment
Both leaders have built their political identities around similar themes: cultural nationalism, skepticism of cosmopolitan elite consensus, strong executive governance, and appeals to civilisational heritage as a basis for political identity. Neither is easily accommodated within the liberal democratic frameworks that have dominated postwar Western politics.
That alignment has not been explicitly theorised in either government's diplomatic communications. The joint statement language is conventionally diplomatic — trade, investment, defence, culture, people-to-people ties. But the political scientists who study both governments have noted that the personal rapport between Modi and Meloni appears genuine, rooted in a shared political grammar that transcends the usual language of bilateral relations.
The Defence Dimension
Italy's defence industry is substantial: Leonardo, Fincantieri, and Oto Melara produce systems that India has historically acquired or is considering. The "Made in India" defence production programme, under which India seeks to manufacture rather than simply purchase defence equipment, is a natural fit for Italian companies seeking to expand their manufacturing footprint in a large, strategically significant market.
The strategic partnership framework creates the political conditions for detailed defence industrial discussions that have previously lacked the necessary bilateral architecture. Whether those discussions produce signed agreements and actual co-production facilities — rather than more joint statements — is the key test of this partnership's substance.
What Europe Is Watching
European capitals are attentive to which governments within the EU develop the closest ties with Modi's India. The Meloni-Modi relationship is watched with some unease in Brussels and in Western European capitals that have been more critical of Indian democratic backsliding. A close India-Italy axis potentially gives the Modi government a sympathetic voice within European councils on issues where India's record has attracted criticism.
The partnership is real, the deliverables are potentially significant, and the ideological dimensions are not incidental. All three need to be part of the story.