(Part 1)
Sanskara, World Order, and India’s Centrality
11th edition of Raisina Dialogue inaugurated in New Delhi, 2026. Its Key speakers at the opening were: Samir Saran (ORF President/host), Sanjay Joshi (ORF Chairman), President Alexander Stubb (Finland, chief guest), EAM S. Jaishankar (vote of thanks); PM Narendra Modi in attendance.
Theme was Sanskara was defined as assertion, accommodation, advancement. Sanskara is a Sanskrit word with a diverse meaning. It has contours of civilisation, culture and traditions.
Sanskara in its full sense is about refinement through accumulated experience. It is what a civilization deposits into a person, and what a person is obligated to carry forward with integrity. It carries the weight of debt, to ancestors, to tradition, to the unborn. It is not a strategy. It is closer to a conscience.
Collapsing it into assertion, accommodation, advancement is a neat rhetorical move but it guts the word. Those three terms are essentially a negotiation framework. Any diplomat or trade lawyer would recognize the structure immediately. Assert your position, find accommodation, advance your interests.
The irony is that the original meaning would have been a far more honest and uncomfortable theme for this particular event. Sanskara in its full sense would ask: what have we inherited, are we worthy of it, and what are we passing forward. Asked seriously, that question indicts almost everything that happened on that stage. The arms trade, the debt crisis, the failing SDGs, the conflicts nobody is stopping. These are inheritance questions.
But an event funded by think tanks, attended by governments and corporations, and designed to produce relationships and visibility cannot afford that question. So Sanskara got a haircut and became a three word assertion accommodation advancement framework that Stubb could slot neatly into his values-based realism pitch without anyone feeling implicated.
A room full of powerful people flew to Delhi, some rerouting flights, to tell each other that the world is broken and that dialogue will fix it. Nobody in that room has a meaningful incentive to fix anything structural, because the current disorder is working reasonably well for most of them personally.
The Chief Guest Stubb
Finland is a small country that just joined NATO, shares a long border with Russia, and now needs to position itself in a world where American security guarantees are no longer automatic. The EU-India trade deal he celebrated so warmly is not sentimentality. It is Finland, and Europe, publicly signaling that they are diversifying their bets. India is the table they are moving chips to.
Stubb tells an Indian audience that the West’s dominance is over, that India should lead the new world order, that India deserves a Security Council seat, and that the EU-India trade deal is historic. Every single one of those statements costs him nothing and buys him considerable goodwill in the room. He is not wrong about any of it, but the timing and venue make it performance, not conviction. A Finnish president has no power to give India a Security Council seat. He knows that. The audience knows that. Everyone applauds anyway.
The “New Delhi moment” proposal is the most nakedly flattering move in the speech. San Francisco 1945 built an order that served American interests above all. Stubb is essentially saying: you host the next one, implying India gets to shape what follows. India will not forget he said it. That is the actual transaction happening beneath the idealism.
Implications
India gets validation as the indispensable civilization. Europe gets a high-visibility platform to court the relationship. Both sides walk away with something they can use domestically.
Underneath all the performance, the underlying calculation is actually sound. Europe does need India. India does have leverage it has never had before. The trade deal is real. The Security Council push serves both of them. The gestures point toward genuine interests even if the gestures themselves are theater.
That is what makes these events functional rather than merely fraudulent. The sincerity is fake but the transactions are real. Everyone in that room knows the difference between what is being said on stage and what is being negotiated in the corridors. The stage performance is the social lubrication that makes the corridor conversations possible.
Stubb is a smart politician. He knows exactly which room he was in and priced his speech accordingly.
Vote of Thanks
Jaishankar quoting himself through Stubb quoting him is the most human moment in the whole transcript. He sat there, heard a European president read his own words back to a standing ovation, and then stood up and gave a vote of thanks. That is a man who understands exactly what these events are for.
These events are not for solving problems. They are for maintaining the network through which powerful people remain powerful people. The conversations that actually matter happen in the bilateral, the side meetings, the dinners. The stage is the alibi.
Problems are solved in bilateral treaties.
References:
- President Stubb’s inaugural speech: https://www.presidentti.fi/en/inaugural-address-by-president-of-the-republic-of-finland-alexander-stubb-at-the-raisina-dialogue-2026-in-new-delhi-india-on-5-march-2026/
P.S.: The most interesting speech was that of Deputy Secretary of State of USA, Christopher Landau. More about him in next part of this article.