Authors – Abhishek Kulkarni, Swati Kumari, Samriddhi Jain
Keywords – India-France relations, strategic partnership, defence cooperation, trade relations, Indo-Pacific strategy, nuclear partnership, space collaboration, Rafale deal.
Introduction
India and France have cooperated diplomatically for more than seven decades. Both countries have extended support to each other in international forums and have shared similar positions on various regional and global concerns. For instance, India voted in favour of the UN Resolution calling for French intervention in Mali (Operation Serval) in 2013. Similarly, France has been supporting India’s permanent membership in the UNSC. France stood by India in 1998, despite opposition from other countries, when India conducted nuclear tests in Pokhran and also supported India’s inclusion in the four multilateral export control regimes – the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG); the Australia Group (AG); the Missile Technology Control Regime (MTCR); and the Wassenaar Arrangement (WA) (Dutta, 2023).
France has steadily supported and recognised India’s increasing role and stature in international affairs. The bonhomie between the two countries is everlasting and harmonious in nature. Inviting the Prime Minister of India to one of the most significant occasions in France is a testimony to the deep bond that the two nations share. In the context of the present discussion, it is pertinent to establish the relevance of the National Day of France. The day marks a significant historical event: the political revolution in France, which changed the nature and course of modern politics in Europe and across the world. This article discusses the India-France relationship in three broad aspects: alliance in the Indo-Pacific region, defence and security, and bilateral trade and economic collaboration. The aim of this article is to look at how these three aspects shape the partnership that exists between the two countries.
Background
The India-France relationship represents one of France’s and India’s most active bilateral partnerships. Given that both countries are powers in their own region of the world, their relationship is characterised by mutual strategic involvement. Diplomatic relations between the two were established right after India’s independence in 1947 (Seth, 2022). However, as Rault (2013) points out, the two companies share the same historical genesis going back to 1719, when the French established the first trading centre in the Indian subcontinent through the French East India Company.
Scholars like Rajagopal (2024) have claimed that the relationship has evolved through four distinct phases. The current phase began with France and India signing a formal Strategic Partnership treaty in 1998. It was India’s first such agreement with any country (Seth, 2022; Sharma, 2022). Moreover, France also supported India’s nuclear tests despite other Western nations’ sanctions.
The partnership is built upon shared common values of democracy, the rule of law, and strategic autonomy (Saint-Mézard, 2015). Both nations envisage a multipolar world that is independent of any hegemonic powers and supports each other’s interests on international forums. This holds up, as France has constantly backed India’s permanent membership in the UN Security Council (Nandy, 2020).
The relationship encompasses many different spheres but mainly focuses on defence and security, nuclear cooperation, and space cooperation. While nuclear and space technology cooperation dates back a long time, defence collaboration has constantly been evolving. Rajagopal (2024) notes that it has evolved from the trade of technology to transfer assignments and joint exercises across the Army, Air Force, and Navy.
Despite the mutual admiration both countries share and the accomplishments they have both made, the India-France relationship has remained unobtrusive for the most part and has received little academic interest. This article intends to call attention to the high-level diplomatic interactions and mutual strategic interests’ relationship between India and France to the general public.
Strengthening Strategic Alliances for Stability and Prosperity in the Indo-Pacific
The Indo-Pacific Region has emerged as an important region over the last decade. The new construct of the geopolitical paradigm gained a valuable juncture in the trade, security, green energy, and maritime domains. Indian policy has been supporting French initiatives in the IPR since 2000. It accounts for sixty per cent of the global GDP and the world’s three major economies involved in the Indo-Pacific region, i.e., the USA, Japan and China. The Indo-Pacific maritime domain also represents the globe’s 60 per cent trade and economic activities through water.
The Sea Line of Communication (SLOC) in the Indo-Pacific Region is critical to the exercise of economic and trade activities for prosperity and the establishment of rule-based order. In an era of geoeconomics and geopolitics contestation, this region has huge importance to the engagement in the blue economy and military exercises for security concerns (Bharti & Singh, 2023).
France and India were able to conduct joint military exercises in the Indian Ocean Region successfully. France is India’s leading trade partner for 2021–22, with two-way trade for one year, each amounting to USD 12.42 billion. France is also the 11th largest Indian investor, with a cumulative investment from January 2000 to June 2022, approximating USD 10.31 billion. It is 1.70 per cent of India’s total FDI inflow (Bharti & Singh, 2023). India and France are strategically located resident powers and key partners with vital stakes in the Indo-Pacific region. The Indo-French partnership in the Indian Ocean has become an important focus of our bilateral relations. In 2018, India and France agreed on a ‘Joint Strategic Vision of India-France Cooperation in the Indian Ocean Region’.
In the last decade, the Indo-Pacific has become an extra-regional power centre in the context of trade routes, geo-economic cooperation, and preservation of ocean diversity, thereby gaining immense attention regarding geostrategic importance in global politics. It has become a geographic, political and economic reality that has been boosting and hosting critical trade routes and maritime connectivity networks between states and has enormous biological resources (Bharti & Singh, 2023). India and France believe in free, open, inclusive, secure and peaceful Indo-Pacific regions.
Defence and Security Cooperation
The India-France defence and security alliance has developed considerably since its inception. The alliance is characterized by cooperation in military hardware, technology transfer and trade, bilateral military exercises, and convergence of strategic interests. As discussed earlier, the alliance has gone through four phases. This began right after independence when France supplied the Kashmiri armed forces with mountain gear in 1949 (Rajagopal, 2024).
The strategic underpinning of this partnership was formally cemented in 1998 with the setting up of the High-Level Committee for Defence Cooperation (HCDC) on the visit of then-French President Jacques Chirac to India (Rajagopal, 2024). This institutional body has since been guiding and regulating dialogue at the defence level to identify specific areas wherein both the nations’ defence forces can collaborate.
France’s support towards India has also been invaluable to the latter at times of need. Initially, this was seen during the 1971 India-Pakistan war, where India was backed by France and Pakistan by the United States (Barma & Sinha, 2023). However, most notably, France extended support and showed solidarity after many Western nations imposed sanctions on India due to the testing of nuclear weapons in 1998 (Barma & Sinha, 2023; Bharti & Singh, 2023). This has since cemented trust between the nations and has established France as a reliable partner of India in times of need.
In more recent times, the partnership has been chiefly visible in defence acquisitions and technology transfers. The purchase of 36 Rafale fighter jets in 2016, when the government of India initiated business with the government of France, represented a milestone in defence cooperation (Bharti & Singh, 2023; Rajagopal, 2024), and the delivery concluded in December of 2022. In a similar vein, six submarines have been constructed in India with French technology transfer as a result of the $3.75 billion P-75 Scorpene submarine project, which was signed in 2005 (Bharti & Singh, 2023; Rajagopal, 2024; Saint-Mézard, 2015).
Cooperation between the military has also been witnessed, with all three branches of the military experiencing regular bilateral exercises: Shakti for the Army (since 2011), Garuda for the Air Force (since 2003), and Varuna for the Navy (since 1998) (Saint-Mézard, 2015). When 400 Indian troops marched in France’s Bastille Day Military Parade in 2009, marking the first time Indian troops took part in a national holiday in another country, it brought attention to the symbolic importance of this partnership (Rault, 2013).
Future-onward, this collaboration is taking a step ahead into a fifth stage. This stage leans more toward collective development programs as per Rajagopal (2024), a stage which starts conceptualizing anew jet engine earmarked for use in India’s advanced 6.5-generations-ready Advanced Medium Combat Aircraft (AMCA). This represents a fundamental transformation as the relationship moves beyond the buyer-seller dynamic toward strategic co-development.
Advancing Bilateral Trade, Investment, and Economic Collaboration
Both nations in 2024 realized the immense untapped potential for more trade and investment, and thus India-France trade reached an unprecedented high. In 2023, French exports to India were worth $6.84 billion, and Indian exports to France were valued at $7.82 billion, thus creating a balanced trade relationship (India (IND) and France (FRA) Trade | the Observatory of Economic Complexity, 2024). The stock of French FDI in India increased was at €9.8 billion in 2020 and it reached €11 billion in 2021, reflecting a 12% growth (Bilateral Economic Relations Between France and India at the End of 2021, 2022). With notable deals including Dassault’s sale of 36 Rafale jets and Tata’s order of 250 Airbus planes, French companies have significantly invested in India’s aerospace and defence sectors. India has a population of 1.4 billion and a high-value consumer market for French firms set to reach 100 million by 2027 and therefore a successful market for them (Dieterich, 2024). One of the significant milestones in defence cooperation is France advancing discussions to acquire India’s Pinaka multi-barrel rocket launcher system (Patel, 2025).
This partnership, which was revealed during the French visit of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, reflects a shared commitment to nuclear energy capacity improvement and the exchange of nuclear technology between the two countries. On behalf of strengthening sustainable energy activities, India and France are committed to formal cooperation on the development of next-generation and small modular nuclear reactors (Reuters, 2025). In a complementary move, France’s state-run electricity and nuclear utility company, EDF, has signalled its willingness to join Indian industrial collaborators on the platform of small modular reactor initiatives. This follows the vision of India’s desire to grow nuclear power production capacity, as demonstrated in NTPC’s plans to spend $62 billion building 30 GW of nuclear power (Singh & Das, 2025). France is keen to enhance cooperation with India in the realms of computing accessibility and the improvement of data quality. Both countries are dedicated to ensuring that the full potential of artificial intelligence is utilized for the global good of the world (‘India-France Will Harness AI’s Potential for Global Good’, 2025). The expansion of economic and business collaboration was emphasized during the 14th India-France CEOs Forum, which aims to strengthen the strategic partnership between the two countries (Ministry of External Affairs, GoI, 2025). India and the European Union have agreed to conclude a pending free trade agreement by the end of this year with the aim of furthering cooperation in the fields of trade, technology, connectivity, and defence (Saaliq, 2025).
On Space Cooperation
India-France have mutually benefitted each other a lot in the Space sector. Joint satellite missions like Megha-Tropiques have resulted from ISRO and CNES longstanding partnership working towards climate research and upcoming projects focusing on Earth observation and space exploration (India-France Joint Vision for Space Cooperation, 2018). Both countries are collaborating on future space missions, including a planned Venus mission and the development of thermal infrared imaging satellites for climate monitoring (France-India Space Cooperation – Focus on Climate Science & Space Exploration, 2020).
Conclusion
The India-France relationship represents both the countries’ will to cooperate and mutually benefit in the spheres of defence, security, trade, and technological cooperation. From their common vision of the Indo-Pacific to their defence cooperation shifting away from buyer-seller relationships to strategic co-development, the two countries have shown respect and solidarity for each other throughout the world. The cooperation in space, through collective satellite missions and future joint endeavours, is a sign of their shared will to cooperate on international issues. With the two countries cementing their economic relationships and technology exchange, the alliance portrays a trend of bilateral relations founded on shared values, strategic independence, and shared global aspirations.
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