When Shehbaz Sharif, Pakistan's prime minister, clasped Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman in Riyadh last week, the symbolism was unmistakable.
The embrace followed the signing of a "strategic mutual defence agreement", bringing the Islamic world's only nuclear-armed state closer to the Gulf's most ambitious monarchy.
A senior Saudi official told Reuters that the pact was merely an "institutionalisation of long-standing and deep cooperation". But many in India see it differently.
Despite Delhi's cultivated warmth with Riyadh, the pact lands amid heightened hostility with Pakistan, including a four-day conflict earlier this year. Nuclear-armed neighbours India and Pakistan have fought multiple wars and clashes over Kashmir, making any move by Saudi to underwrite Pakistan's military a direct concern.
What unsettles Indian analysts the most is the pact's commitment that "any aggression against either country shall be considered an aggression against both".
