By: James Diddams
In the last decade or so, the strategic impetus for strengthened U.S.-India relations has been increasingly apparent in both New Delhi and DC. Less often appreciated than the shared geostrategic interests of both countries is that they are both — in contrast to China — informed by their being profoundly religious societies, where moral reasoning and national identity continue to be shaped by theological traditions. The ethical and religious bases on which India and the United States approach matters of war, peace, and international order reflect important parallels and differences, and underscore the need to understand each other better.
In the United States, questions of the use and justification of force have long been informed by debates around Just War Theory, a framework for understanding when and how the use of force can be morally justified. Reinhold Niebuhr, perhaps the most famous Christian ethicist of the 20th century, is known for his articulation of humanity’s innate propensity towards evil, the doctrine of original sin, and how it precludes absolute aversion to war and instead necessitates a moral framework to determine when and how wars should be fought.
But Just War Theory has a centuries-old history, having been developed by Christian thinkers like St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas. Augustine argued that war should always be undertaken with a disposition of sorrow rather than vengeance and that the proper justification in going to war (jus ad bellum) had to be the restoration of order and peace, not the humiliation of the defeated. Aquinas later systematized these jus and bellum principles into three core requirements: legitimate authority, just cause, and right intention. Modern Christian ethicists have continued these debates. For example, Jean Bethke Elshtain argued that in a broken world, political responsibility sometimes requires force to defend the innocent. Stanley Hauerwas, in contrast, insisted that Christian discipleship demands a witness of nonviolence, no matter the cost. American Christians today still live within this tension.
Fascinatingly, Hinduism in India has long had its own version of this same debate. In The Bhagavad Gita, an excerpt of the Hindu epic The Mahabharata, the warrior Arjuna hesitates to fight in a civil war that will pit him against his friends, family, and teachers. In response, Krishna teaches him about dharma, the duties that arise from one’s role in the moral order: “It is better to perish in the discharge of one’s own duty than to perform another’s.” The text neither glorifies violence nor dismisses it. Rather, it frames ethical action as profoundly context specific. The challenge is not avoiding action, but discerning what faithfulness requires in a world where no action is free from harm. Later Hindu thinkers interpreted this differently.
Śaṅkara, the preeminent Hindu philosopher of Advaita Vedānta, argued around the 8th century that actions must be undertaken without attachment to their results, a perspective that diverges sharply from Western ethical frameworks such as consequentialism or utilitarianism, which judge actions primarily by their outcomes. Rāmānuja, by contrast, rejected Śaṅkara’s denial of real distinctions. As the leading theologian of Viśiṣṭādvaita Vedānta, he argued that devotion, moral intention, and relationship with a personal deity shape the true meaning of action — a perspective with parallels to the Christian Just War tradition, where intention (vengeance versus the restoration of peace) bears significant ethical weight. In the political sphere, figures like Mahatma Gandhi later drew from the Gita to advocate nonviolence, while others read the same text as sanctioning righteous force under conditions of grave injustice.
In other words, India and the United States have long had parallel debates, rooted in different metaphysical traditions but animated by a shared question: What does moral fidelity require in a world where moral purity remains ever elusive? This parallel matters because foreign policy is not only a competition of interests, but also of moral visions. When Indians speak of dharma and Americans speak of responsibility to protect, they are not speaking from the same tradition, yet they are addressing the same basic problems: How should a political community understand itself as accountable for the use of power? Recognizing these similarities does not mean claiming the traditions are identical. The point is not to collapse these differences but to understand how people across different traditions can engage in good faith dialogue.
It is here that comparative study becomes practically important. Policymakers often assume that strategic alignment is simply a matter of shared interests or mutual threat perception. But enduring partnerships are sustained by shared moral vocabularies. A partnership that ignores the ethical traditions of the societies involved will always remain thin, technocratic, and vulnerable to political mood swings. This is particularly relevant today, as social media and ideological polarization encourage both Americans and Indians to caricature one another. American commentary sometimes reduces Indian political life to religious nationalism, while Indian commentary sometimes portrays American foreign policy beholden to naive idealism or thinly veiled imperialism. For both countries, it will be vital to study how each other’s traditions can draw on their own best insights in shaping responsible civic and international engagement.
James Diddams is the Managing Editor of Providence: A Journal of Christianity & American Foreign Policy.