Between the Black Sea and the Bay of Bengal: The Quiet Rise of an India–Georgia Axis
- Joydeep Chakraborty
- 23 minutes ago
- 4 min read
Long before embassies and official visits, India and Georgia were already connected—by stories, queens, and wandering ideas. Today, India’s journey into Europe is quietly advancing north through Tbilisi.
This quiet recalibration was on full display on December 13, 2025, when India and Georgia convened the 8th round of Foreign Office Consultations (FOC) in Tbilisi. Co-chaired by India’s Secretary (West) Sibi George and Georgia’s Deputy Foreign Minister Alexander Khvtisiashvili, the meeting did not produce dramatic headlines. Instead, it produced something far more durable: alignment, intent, and momentum.
A Meeting That Spoke Softly—and Strategically
Diplomacy rarely announces itself with spectacle. In Tbilisi, both sides reviewed the entire spectrum of bilateral relations—political engagement, trade and economic cooperation, cultural exchanges, and people-to-people ties—while also exchanging views on regional and global issues of mutual interest.
They agreed, once again, to maintain regular official exchanges. On paper, it sounds routine. In reality, it signals continuity in a relationship that has quietly matured over three decades.
India recognised Georgia’s independence in December 1991. Georgia opened its embassy in New Delhi in 2009. India, for its part, opened a resident mission in Tbilisi in July 2024, after years of concurrent accreditation from Yerevan.
India opened its resident embassy in Georgia three decades late—but at exactly the right moment.
Before Embassies, There Were Stories
A Georgian queen once ruled from the heart of Mughal India long before Tbilisi and New Delhi shared embassies.
Long before modern diplomacy, India and Georgia were already exchanging ideas, myths, and people. One of the most fascinating cultural bridges between the two predates nation-states altogether. Several Georgian folk tales closely resemble stories from India’s Panchatantra, the ancient Sanskrit collection of moral fables. These stories traveled vast distances through Persian and Arabic translations, settling into Georgian oral and written traditions centuries ago.
In the 16th and 17th centuries, Georgians were prominent figures in Mughal India—serving as soldiers, administrators, and even queens. Udaipuri Mahal, a Georgian-origin wife of Emperor Aurangzeb and mother of Emperor Bahadur Shah I, stands as a striking symbol of this forgotten interweaving of histories.
Art followed trade and power. The 19th-century Georgian painter Niko Pirosmani depicted India in his artwork “Hunting in India,” shaping how generations of Georgians imagined a distant subcontinent.
And history resurfaced poignantly in 2021, when relics of Queen St Ketevan, discovered in Goa’s St Augustine Church, were partly returned to Georgia—a gesture facilitated by External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar. Few diplomatic acts have carried such emotional and civilizational weight.
From Folk Tales to Film Sets
On the streets of Tbilisi, Hindi accents are now as common as Georgian wine and for thousands of young Indians, Georgia is not geopolitics—it is home, classrooms, and futures.
Georgia has emerged as one of the top destinations for Indian medical students, with tens of thousands enrolled across universities. Walk into a café near a medical campus and you’ll hear anatomy debates unfolding over plates of khachapuri.
Culture now moves both ways. Georgia’s snow-covered mountains, medieval towns, and vineyards have quietly made their way onto Indian cinema screens. Indian filmmakers are increasingly choosing Georgia as a shooting destination, drawn by landscapes that feel both European and cinematic—and refreshingly accessible.
This is diplomacy without diplomats in the foreground. It is lived, not negotiated.
Trade Routes, Not Battle Lines
While bilateral trade remains modest, it is steadily growing. India exports machinery, pharmaceuticals, rice, and manufactured goods. Georgia supplies fertilizers and metals. The numbers may not yet rival India’s larger partners, but the trajectory matters more than the volume.
Georgia’s true value lies in geography. Sitting at the crossroads of Eastern Europe and Western Asia, it offers India something rare: strategic connectivity. Georgia is part of broader Eurasian logistics networks, including routes linked to the International North-South Transport Corridor (INSTC)—a project India strongly supports as a pathway to Europe and Russia.
Georgia though not a frontline power can be an effective door to carry Indian ambitions into the European continent.
Access Europe without Pakistan or China: Georgia provides India an indirect route toward Europe through by bridging INSTC and Black Sea, that bypasses Pakistan and reduces reliance on China-dominated corridors.
Crucially, India has emerged here as a non-threatening partner—unlike NATO’s hard security posture or China’s infrastructure-heavy leverage.
India Beyond the Indo-Pacific
This is where the relationship becomes bigger than bilateral ties.
By investing diplomatic capital in Georgia, India is quietly signaling something larger:
India as a Eurasian Power, Not Just Indo-Pacific
By investing diplomatic capital in Georgia, India signals:
It is not geographically boxed into the Indo-Pacific
It has interests from the Caucasus to the Pacific
It can engage Europe via non-traditional routes
Despite their size difference, India and Georgia have consistently supported each other’s candidatures in international organizations like UNESCO and ICAO. Georgian diplomats often describe India as a “reliable voice from the Global South.” India, in turn, sees Georgia as a constructive Eurasian partner—small, agile, and strategically placed.
This is not alliance-building. It is network-building.
The Quiet Power of Continuity
The Ministry of External Affairs’ post on X summarized the consultations in careful language—reviewing the entire range of bilateral issues, exploring ways to strengthen ties, exchanging views on regional and global developments. But behind the restraint lies a clear pattern: India is expanding its strategic imagination.
As global fault lines deepen, India and Georgia remind us that quiet partnerships can still shape big outcomes. In linking South Asia to the Black Sea, India and Georgia are quietly expanding each other’s strategic horizons. It will be students, tourists, and storytellers who carry the relationship forward.
Between the Black Sea and the Indian Ocean, the bridge is no longer just taking shape. People are already walking across it.