India-Uzbek Relations: Past, Present and Future

Suranjan Das

India has been so historically linked with Central Asia that the region is known in Indian diplomatic parlance as its ‘extended neighbour’ or an ‘immediate and strategic neighbourhood’. In this paradigm Uzbekistan, sharing a common boundary with other Central Asian Republics of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Turkmenistan, occupies a crucial place. British colonialism interrupted this historic link between India and Central Asia. During the Soviet regime, too, the interaction between the sub-continent and, what we now call the CIS states, was tempered through Moscow. But even within these constraints India and Uzbekistan retained a special relationship. The post-Cold War period, however, opened up new possibilities of direct contacts between India and Uzbekistan, especially when the latter reoriented itself to Asia and not Russia. It is in this context that the current Indo-Uzbek relations need to be seen. This paper tries to address that very need.

Suranjan Das Professor Suranjan Das is currently the Vice-Chancellor of the University of Calcutta, and Director, Institute of Foreign Policy Studies, University of Calcutta. He holds a Chair in History in the same University from where he is now on lien. He is also the Honorary Professor in the Department of Politics and International Relations at the University of Hull, UK. Professor Das is a recipient of D.Phil. degree from the University of Oxford and has authored two major monographs, co-authored two books, and co-edited five volumes on facets of colonial and contemporary India. A recipient of national and international academic honours, Dr. Das has held visiting assignments in institutions of higher learning in Europe and the USA. He has been a member of official and semi-official academic delegations to countries in Asia, Latin America and Europe. Dr. Das is associated with policy formulating bodies for higher education in India.