The simultaneous wars in Ukraine and Gaza, and India’s seemingly contradictory policy responses towards them, shine a light on the drivers of Indian power: traditional great power ambitions within the U.S.-led international order, coupled with more recent economic and civilizational self-confidence. These drivers have been more or less hidden in plain sight since 1947, and perhaps even before Independence, under a convenient veneer of anti-colonialism, non-alignment, principled friendship with the Soviet Union (and later Russia) as well as alleged Nehruvian attachment to Soviet economic planni…