India and Its Hostile Neighborhood: An Analysis of Threats and Impacts of Hostility Coming From China and Pakistan

The Indian subcontinent is full of turmoil for decades. Since after the independence of India, as a major player in the region, has faced several challenges both externally and internally. In the discourse of external threats, the country faced severe challenging factors due to the hostile attitude of the theocratic state of Pakistan. Not only Pakistan, the Chinese hostility correspondingly makes an addition to more complicate the situation. These threats to India’s national security became a major concern (Gupta, 2023). The conceptualizations of security or national security are very ambiguous as the other terms in various disciplines of social sciences. None of the definition can provide the whole picture in defining these terms (Baldwin, 1997). But for a general understanding, it can very loosely be said that the conception of security denotes assurance of the absence of fear from any kind of threat and the conception of national security means the assurance by the government that the country and its citizens are secure from all kinds of internal and external harmful threats (Taylor, 2024; Holmes, 2015). After independence, India has faced numerous internal issues in terms of political instability, economic development, lesser military strength, and other related traditional and non-traditional security issues (Gupta, 2023). The external security threats include the fear of being attacked by foreign countries like China or Pakistan (PIB, 2025). Today these security challenges are not as same as in the past. The fear of external aggression is not the only challenge that exists in this globalizing era, it also includes various transnational security challenges (the threats that are not confined in the border of one country) (Transnational Security Initiative, n.d.). The security concern in the recent era has become more complex. In this paper, hostilities faced by India from its immediate northern and western neighbours, more specifically China and Pakistan, has been tried to be highlighted.