Senior Congress MP Manish Tewari on Monday (January 12, 2026) said if India had to preserve its strategic autonomy, it must remain internally cohesive. He noted that pluralism was no longer a luxury that could be taken for granted, and India’s cohesion was its biggest antidote to the external challenges that would continue to buffet it.
Following the release of his book A World Adrift by former Union Minister Yashwant Sinha, Mr. Tewari said India had an extremely robust democratic tradition and, despite all its problems, contradictions, and the kind of politics witnessed over the past decade, continued to be a beacon even as the old world was dying and the new one struggled to be born.
“What worries me is pushing the entire spectre of religious polarisation to such an extent that it weakens our social fabric so immeasurably that we are unable to retrieve it. We think that because it gives us electoral dividends, we can continue pushing the envelope, but there is a limit to that. Therefore, if India believes it has a certain exceptionalism in the world today, and if it wants to preserve and protect its strategic autonomy and engage with the world on its own terms, that strength must come from internal cohesion,” he said during a discussion.
