The US reportedly turned down a direct Saudi request to strike Houthi positions last week, a sharp reversal from the “major military punishment” Trump had threatened in July, and consistent with the ceasefire arrangement his administration had already reached with the group months earlier. Trump has left everyone guessing whether he will come to Mohammed bin Salman’s rescue or not.

It fits a pattern, not a one-off. Trump has spent this term treating close allies as adversaries, tariff fights with Canada, public friction with the UK and Japan, pressure on South Korea, a running feud with Macron, a public rupture with Meloni serious enough that Italy’s foreign minister cancelled a Washington visit, and repeated jabs at NATO. Henry Kissinger’s old line that it can be dangerous to be America’s enemy but fatal to be its friend reads less like a quip and more like a warning label for Riyadh right now. Washington’s underlying power looks diminished, not just its willingness to use it.

Saudi Arabia’s own alternative alliance offers even less. The Makkah Joint Defence Agreement, linking Riyadh with Pakistan and Turkey, was a non-starter to begin with. Pakistan is a de facto failed state, contending with domestic insurgencies and an economy on its 24th IMF bailout. It was also handed a crushing military defeat by India last year: India struck nine terror sites inside Pakistan and Pakistan-occupied Jammu and Kashmir on May 7, then on May 10 hit roughly a dozen Pakistani military airbases; satellite imagery and geolocated video showed runway craters and destroyed hangars at several bases including Nur Khan and Bholari — forcing Islamabad to beg for a ceasefire within four days. A state that couldn’t secure its own skies was never going to extend a credible security umbrella over the Arabian Peninsula. Turkey brings its own problems, inflation is still above 30 per cent, on top of a long-standing rivalry with Saudi Arabia for leadership within the Muslim world that makes deep military solidarity unlikely no matter what the treaty says.

China is not a workable substitute either — despite being Saudi Arabia’s biggest trading partner, it remains closely aligned with Iran. It’s also worth noting that, much as happened in Pakistan last year, the Chinese-made air defense systems Iran fielded failed when the US and Israel struck. A patron whose own hardware can’t protect its client has nothing to offer Riyadh on restraining the Houthis.

That leaves India as the only superpower with real standing to get Saudi Arabia out of this quagmire. India is Saudi Arabia’s second-largest trading partner, has good relations with both Riyadh and Tehran, maintains a substantial defense relationship with Israel — now allegedly assisting the Saudis — and, unlike Washington or Beijing, doesn’t take sides in the Gulf’s traditional rivalries. It was able to bring Iran and the UAE to the table on the sidelines of this month’s BRICS summit in New Delhi. Since then, there have been no strikes by Iran or its proxies on the UAE.

No other power commands respect across Tehran, Abu Dhabi, Jerusalem and Riyadh at once — which is why Modi might be Salman’s best shot at getting this situation under control before it spirals into something much bigger.

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In an interview with The Australia Today Editor Pallavi Jain, Ganatra, author of Mahabharata Unravelled, Ramayana Unravelled and other books, said her own journey into the epics began with curiosity about what it means to be Hindu and, more fundamentally, what “dharma” means. Her professional experience as a consultant, she said, also helped her approach the epics through the lens of storytelling and different audiences.

For Ganatra, understanding these traditions is particularly important for younger generations and the Indian diaspora, where questions of identity can become more pronounced. She argued that knowing the cultural ideas that shape one’s worldview can help people understand their own responses to the world without becoming either defensive about their identity or feeling compelled to abandon it.

She also stressed that studying the tradition does not mean accepting everything associated with it unquestioningly. Ganatra said societies inevitably carry contradictions, struggles and practices that may no longer serve their purpose. The concept of dharma, she explained, provides a way to assess what enables society to thrive as circumstances, technology and values change. “A lot of what we think as tradition today was innovation once upon a time,” she said.

Ganatra believes this approach can also help distinguish the core ideas of Sanatana Dharma from practices or baggage accumulated over time. She pointed to yoga, Ayurveda, pranayama and mindfulness as examples of Indic ideas that have been studied and adapted in contemporary contexts, arguing that there is value in approaching the shastras (scriptures) with an open and questioning mind.

Her message to young people who may see the epics as belonging to the past is simple: know before you accept or reject. The Mahabharata and Ramayana, she said, continue to speak to human beings because the underlying dilemmas have not fundamentally changed — people still grapple with desire, insecurity, anger, competing priorities and difficult choices. “It’s your life, it’s your karma,” Ganatra said, urging people to use their buddhi (intelligence) before deciding what to accept or reject.

Ganatra also sees an opportunity for India to contribute its civilisational ideas to contemporary global conversations. Discussing technology and geopolitics, she pointed to approaches that emphasise wider human welfare, ethical frameworks and dialogue, saying India’s growing confidence has helped create greater space for discussions around the Indic worldview on the global stage.

Ganatra is touring Australia for a series of talks and sessions titled “AI: Ancient India — The Timeless Frontier” across five cities — Adelaide, Melbourne, Canberra, Sydney and Brisbane — from 25 September to 11 October 2026. Her tour is being hosted by OpticsAustralia.

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BRICS members now account for nearly half of the world’s population and around 40 per cent of global GDP measured at purchasing power parity (PPP). The expanded grouping brings together Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa, Egypt, Ethiopia, Indonesia, Iran, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, alongside its partner countries — Belarus, Bolivia, Cuba, Kazakhstan, Malaysia, Nigeria, Thailand, Uganda, Uzbekistan and Vietnam.

The New Delhi summit has brought a wide range of leaders and senior representatives to India, including Chinese President Xi Jinping, Russian President Vladimir Putin, Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian, Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, Indonesian President Prabowo Subianto, Vietnamese Prime Minister Lê Minh Hưng, UAE Crown Prince Sheikh Khaled bin Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan and Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim, while Saudi Arabia and Brazil are represented by Foreign Ministers Prince Faisal bin Farhan Al Saud and Mauro Vieirais.

The summit was also a demonstration of India’s geopolitical heft. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi held bilateral meetings around the summit with Chinese President Xi Jinping, Russian President Vladimir Putin and Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian, while India continues to maintain a strategic relationship with the United States, strong ties with the Gulf and an expanding partnership with countries across Europe and the Indo-Pacific. Xi’s visit was particularly notable as it was his first trip to India since 2019.

The New Delhi Declaration called for peaceful and diplomatic approaches to international conflicts and addressed issues including terrorism, unilateral sanctions, trade restrictions, global governance and greater representation for developing countries. Modi has also positioned BRICS as a platform for the Global South rather than an anti-Western grouping, arguing for a greater role for developing countries in shaping international rules and institutions.

One of the more consequential diplomatic moments came around Iran and the United Arab Emirates. Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian met Abu Dhabi Crown Prince Sheikh Khaled bin Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan on the sidelines of the summit. The two sides discussed de-escalation, regional stability and prospects for peace. Iran and the UAE subsequently endorsed the BRICS statement calling for restraint, protection of civilians, respect for sovereignty and the safeguarding of trade and maritime security. The engagement was significant given the tensions between Iran and Gulf states, particularly the UAE, during the current conflict.

India could also play a significant role in efforts to address the Russia-Ukraine war and the conflict involving the United States and Iran. Its relationships with Moscow, Washington, Tehran, the Gulf and Israel, as well as its wider diplomatic reach, give New Delhi unique geopolitical power and channels of engagement with countries on different sides of major conflicts.

India’s influence also extends beyond traditional diplomacy. Its cultural soft power was on display at the BRICS gala, where Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim sang Khwaab Ho Tum Ya Koi Haqeeqat, a song sung by the late legendary Indian singer, Kishore Kumar. Ibrahim has previously spoken about his admiration for Kishore Kumar and had performed the same song during an interview in India in 2024.

The New Delhi summit ultimately highlighted India’s unusual position in today’s international system: it is simultaneously a member of the G20 and BRICS, a regular G7 invitee, a major Indo-Pacific partner of the West and a country maintaining working relationships with Russia, Iran, China, Israel, the Gulf, Palestine, North and South Korea, and countries from Ethiopia to Brazil. These developments, along with India’s status as one of the world’s most powerful militaries and largest economies, further cement its rise as a new pole of power in a multipolar world.

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In an exclusive interview with The Australia Today during his official visit to Australia, India’s Chief of the Naval Staff Admiral Krishna Swaminathan speaks to Pallavi Jain about the future of India-Australia maritime cooperation, the newly adopted Maritime Security Collaboration Roadmap, the importance of exercises such as MALABAR, the Indian Navy’s expanding responsibilities across the maritime domain, and opportunities for collaboration in emerging technologies, defence production and innovation.

Admiral Swaminathan describes Australia as “a natural and important maritime partner for India” and outlines how the two navies can deepen interoperability, information sharing and practical cooperation at sea. He also discusses India’s evolving maritime capabilities and its commitment to contributing to peace, security and stability across the Indo-Pacific and beyond.

Here is the exclusive interview:

Pallavi Jain: India and Australia are deepening their maritime and defence partnership in the Indo-Pacific. How important is the Indo-Pacific maritime space to India’s strategic future, and what role do you see Australia playing in it?

Admiral Krishna Swaminathan: As a maritime nation, our security and prosperity are intrinsically linked to the seas. The oceans carry trade, energy and connectivity, but also transmit the consequences of instability and disruption far beyond their points of origin. A peaceful and secure maritime environment is therefore both a strategic imperative and a shared responsibility.

Australia is a natural and important maritime partner for India. The ongoing CNS visit to Australia is an expression of the importance India accords to its maritime security partnership with Australia. Our strategic trust is increasingly translating into operational confidence at sea through the growing complexity of AUSINDEX, engagements in MALABAR and MILAN, and cooperation through IONS. The adoption of the India–Australia Maritime Security Collaboration Roadmap provides further impetus and a framework for translating this convergence into practical maritime cooperation.

We see Australia as an important and enduring maritime partner, with potential to deepen interoperability, information sharing and practical cooperation at sea, contributing together to peace, security and stability across the Indo-Pacific.

Pallavi Jain: Australia and India have recently agreed to a Joint Maritime Security Collaboration Roadmap aimed at strengthening operational coordination, information sharing and capability development. From the Indian Navy’s perspective, what are the most important practical outcomes you would like to see from this roadmap?

Admiral Krishna Swaminathan: The India–Australia Maritime Security Collaboration Roadmap gives both countries a clear framework to take maritime cooperation forward. From the Indian Navy’s perspective, the main areas would be better information sharing, closer coordination at sea and greater ability of the two navies to operate together.

Existing engagements such as AUSINDEX, MALABAR, port visits and professional exchanges already provide a strong base. The Roadmap can help make this cooperation more regular and practical, including in areas such as maritime security, humanitarian assistance, disaster relief and search and rescue.

The aim is to build a stronger and more dependable maritime partnership that contributes to peace and stability in the Indo-Pacific.

Pallavi Jain: The Indian Navy has taken on an increasingly important role in maritime security in the Arabian Sea and Indian Ocean, including counter-piracy operations, humanitarian assistance and rescue missions. Do you see this role expanding globally, beyond its current areas of operation, in the coming decades?

Admiral Krishna Swaminathan: The Indian Navy has consistently contributed to the safety and security of the seas through anti-piracy operations, assistance to merchant ships, humanitarian assistance, disaster relief and rescue missions.

As India’s trade, economy and maritime interests grow, the Navy’s reach and responsibilities will also increase. The focus will be on having the capability, endurance and support needed to protect India’s interests over larger areas.

At the same time, cooperation with other navies will remain important. The Indian Navy will continue to contribute to the safety of the maritime commons wherever required and in accordance with international law.

Pallavi Jain: With India pursuing greater self-reliance in defence manufacturing and developing increasingly advanced naval technologies, what opportunities do you see for Australia and India to cooperate in areas such as joint technological innovation, research and development, technology transfer and defence production?

Admiral Krishna Swaminathan: India’s focus on Aatmanirbharta is aimed at building stronger indigenous defence capability while also working with trusted international partners.

India and Australia have strengths in several areas where cooperation can be explored, including autonomous systems, underwater technologies, artificial intelligence, sensors, advanced materials and other emerging maritime technologies.

There is also scope for closer interaction between industry, start-ups, research institutions and academia in both countries. In suitable areas, both sides can explore joint development, production and innovation based on mutual interest and respective national policies.

Pallavi Jain: Beyond bilateral cooperation, how important are multilateral exercises such as MALABAR in building interoperability and maritime security across the Indo-Pacific? Do you see scope for more multilateral exercises and joint operations involving India, Australia and Japan, alongside other regional partners such as South Korea, the Philippines, Vietnam and Indonesia?

Admiral Krishna Swaminathan: Exercises such as MALABAR are important because they help navies understand each other better and improve their ability to work together at sea.

India already engages with many countries across the Indo-Pacific through bilateral and multilateral exercises, training, port visits and other maritime activities. Such engagements help build familiarity, trust and better coordination.

India remains open to expanding such cooperation wherever there is mutual interest. Areas such as maritime security, humanitarian assistance, disaster relief and search and rescue offer useful opportunities for wider cooperation.

Pallavi Jain: As India’s maritime interests and responsibilities continue to grow, what capabilities or strategic initiatives do you believe will be most important to ensure India can protect its interests and contribute to global security?

Admiral Krishna Swaminathan: As India’s maritime interests grow, Indian Navy will need to maintain strong capabilities across surface, subsurface and air operations, along with better awareness of activities across areas of maritime interest.

Operational reach, logistics, secure networks and new technologies will remain important. Greater use of artificial intelligence, autonomous systems and indigenous platforms will also shape future capability development.

Partnerships with other navies will be equally important. Better information sharing, training and cooperation will help India protect its maritime interests and contribute to peace and security in the Indo-Pacific and beyond.

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The full list now counts a record 144 immigrant billionaires, worth a combined $2.2 trillion, compared with 125 billionaires worth $1.3 trillion in 2025.

These foreign-born billionaires come from 45 countries and territories this year, up from 42 in 2025. India, Israel and Taiwan together account for more than a quarter of the 144 billionaires on the list. New entrants this year include Haiti, the Philippines, Poland and Spain, while Guatemala dropped off after its only billionaire, Duolingo cofounder Luis von Ahn, saw his fortune fall below ten figures amid a stock decline.

Immigrant billionaires now make up close to 15% of all American billionaires and hold about a quarter of the country’s total billionaire wealth. Three of the world’s ten richest people are immigrants to the U.S.: Elon Musk (born in South Africa), who briefly became the world’s first trillionaire in June; Sergey Brin, cofounder of Google; and Jensen Huang, cofounder of Nvidia. Combined, these three hold more than 60% of the total wealth of all immigrant billionaires on the list.

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It is an Australian-made animated children’s series built around cricket, friendship and cultural exchange, with its central characters — Snick, an Indian boy, and Willow, an Australian girl — using the sport as a bridge between their two worlds. Through humour, adventure and friendship, the series aims to introduce children to another country and culture while highlighting the enduring people-to-people ties between Australia and India. The project was inspired by creator Ken Cantrill’s experience in India, where he saw cricket bringing people together across communities.

“Snick & Willow has been an extraordinary journey. What began as an idea to create a children’s animated series built around cricket has grown into something far more meaningful — a story about friendship, adventure and the powerful connection between Australia and India,” Cantrill told The Australia Today. He said the involvement of cricket figures including Lord Ian Botham, Pat Cummins, Bharat Sundaresan and Summer Warne had been particularly meaningful, bringing different connections to the sport and adding authenticity to the project.

A major milestone for the series has been its partnership with Cricket Australia. Cantrill said cricket is “one of the great bonds between Australia and India” and that Snick & Willow provides an opportunity to introduce that relationship to a new generation through storytelling, humour, culture and adventure. The series is also expanding its cultural focus, with two animated shorts celebrating Diwali and Christmas being produced with support from the 2026 Maitri Grants Program, administered by the Centre for Australia-India Relations.

The two Maitri-supported productions are scheduled for release in November 2026 and will use children’s storytelling to explore Australian and Indian cultures. The project is being developed with Indian animation studio RedGod Studios, with Yukfoo supporting pre-production, design and production supervision.

Cantrill said the project’s ultimate ambition is to create something children in Australia, India and around the world can connect with while showing how sport can bring people and cultures closer together. “We want Australian children to become curious about India, Indian children to see Australia as a friend,” he said, describing friendship, adventure, teamwork, culture and cricket as the values at the heart of the series.

That vision was also reflected in a recent round-table discussion in Melbourne during IFFM 2026, which brought together Cantrill and an Indian delegation to discuss filmmaking, co-production, cultural exchange and creative collaboration. The delegation was an initiative of Jay Shah, CEO of Indiqa, and led by Shri Prabhat, Additional Secretary, Ministry of Information & Broadcasting, Government of India, with Sreerag Mukundan, Gouri Nair of NFDC and Satyaprakash Upadhyay of WAVES Bazaar also participating. Discussions included opportunities around IFFI and WAVES — extending the India-Australia conversation from cricket and children’s storytelling into the broader screen and creative industries.

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The post Beyond the Boundary: ‘Snick & Willow’ cricket series takes the Australia-India relationship to a new generation first appeared on The Australia Today.

A key focus of the visit was critical minerals, with Mr Crisafulli promoting Queensland as a reliable supplier of resources vital to advanced manufacturing, technology and defence industries. He held high-level discussions in Washington about opportunities to deepen cooperation in the sector.

Mr Crisafulli also secured a meeting with US Vice President JD Vance, where critical minerals and Queensland’s broader strategic role were discussed. The Premier also promoted Queensland as a potential host for a future Quad leaders’ summit, which could bring US President Donald Trump to the state.

In California, the Premier met representatives from major artificial intelligence companies including OpenAI and Anthropic as Queensland seeks to attract investment in data centres and the growing AI economy. Discussions also explored the state’s energy capacity and infrastructure requirements for large-scale technology projects.

The visit also strengthened Queensland’s relationship with California, with the two governments signing a five-year cooperation agreement covering areas including agriculture, disaster resilience, innovation and the Olympic and Paralympic Games. Mr Crisafulli said the mission was about opening doors for Queensland businesses, attracting investment and building long-term partnerships with the United States.

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Premier Chris Minns and Treasurer Daniel Mookhey spent four days in New Delhi and Mumbai meeting senior government and business leaders across critical minerals, technology, tourism, education, infrastructure, advanced manufacturing and creative industries.

India was chosen for the Premier’s first overseas visit in recognition of the growing importance of the relationship between NSW and India. Two-way merchandise trade between NSW and India is already worth almost $7 billion a year, but the clear message from the mission was that both sides believe the relationship can go much further.

“The clear message we’ve heard this week is that we’re just at the beginning of what this relationship can become,” Premier Chris Minns said. He said NSW already does almost $7 billion in two-way trade with India, but there is “much more we can do in critical minerals, technology, education and tourism.”

According to the NSW Government, the mission delivered and progressed a number of opportunities for NSW, including the refreshing of the NSW sister-state agreement with Maharashtra. Both governments have committed to developing a joint action plan within 90 days to grow trade and investment.

A new partnership between NSW-owned traffic technology SCATS and HCLTech will explore how artificial intelligence can help expand the use of NSW traffic technology in India. Meanwhile, Mid North Coast boat builder Steber International has partnered with Mumbai-based West Coast Marine to bring electric boat technology to India.

The Premier and Treasurer also met major Indian companies including Tata, Mahindra and JSW to discuss opportunities to invest and expand in NSW. NSW critical minerals were put directly in front of Indian government and industry representatives as India looks to secure the minerals needed to grow its manufacturing sector.

The mission also focused on strengthening tourism and aviation links, with the NSW Government pushing for more direct flights between India and Sydney and holding discussions with Air India. Tourism operators also shared their views on opportunities to make it easier for more people to visit Australia.

Education and research were another focus, including Western Sydney University’s new Greater Noida campus and growing collaboration between NSW universities and Indian institutions. The mission also opened the door to more Indian film production in NSW, including the announcement that Heyy Babyy 2 will be filmed in the state.

The Premier and Treasurer met senior Indian government leaders including Union Commerce and Industry Minister Piyush Goyal, Gujarat Chief Minister Bhupendra Patel and Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis, as well as business leaders across New Delhi and Mumbai.

Alongside the business program, they visited religious and community institutions, met Mumbai’s famous dabbawalas and spent time with people from India’s food, film and cultural industries.

Premier Minns highlighted the strength of those community links, pointing to the more than 200,000 Indian-born people who call NSW home and “understand both countries”.

“Our job now is to turn the conversations we’ve had this week into more investment, jobs and opportunities back home,” he said. “We leave India with a much better understanding of the opportunities in front of us, some strong new relationships and plenty of work to do.”

Treasurer Daniel Mookhey said the mission showed that “India is ambitious, NSW is ambitious, and there is a genuine appetite to do more together.”

“We’ve met businesses with the scale, technology and capital to invest in NSW, and we’ve seen first-hand the opportunities for NSW businesses in India,” Mr Mookhey said.

He said the relationship was “bigger than business”, with links between people, universities and communities giving NSW a head start that many other places do not have.

“For a state of eight and a half million people, the opportunity to sell our goods, services and expertise into a market of 1.4 billion people is enormous,” he said.

The mission concluded with a NSW-India investment forum in Mumbai, bringing together major Indian and Australian businesses to discuss where they could do more together.

“This trip has opened doors,” Mr Mookhey said. “The work now is to keep those doors open and turn that interest into real economic opportunities for NSW.”

The mission also opened new opportunities across critical minerals and the creative industries, with the Premier and Treasurer meeting senior executives from Coal India, NMDC, NTPC Mining and Hindustan Copper Limited to discuss potential Indian investment in NSW’s critical minerals sector and opportunities for NSW to supply the minerals needed by India’s growing manufacturing economy.

On the cultural front, the internationally known Jaipur Literature Festival will come to Parramatta, with the festival set to be hosted at Powerhouse Parramatta in August 2027, bringing writers and cultural figures from India, Australia and around the world to Western Sydney.

The delegation also paid tribute to the victims 26/11 Mumbai terror attacks in 2008.

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The post NSW turns to India as $7 billion trade relationship set to grow first appeared on The Australia Today.

Meloni’s government reached 1,413 consecutive days in office on September 4, 2026, exceeding the previous record of 1,412 days held by Silvio Berlusconi’s second government, which served from June 2001 to April 2005.

Meloni became Italy’s first woman prime minister after her coalition won the 2022 general election. She has remained in office since October 2022, leading a coalition that includes Brothers of Italy, Forza Italia and the League.

The milestone is notable in Italy, which has experienced frequent changes of government since becoming a republic in 1946. The country has had 68 governments and 31 prime ministers during that period, with the average government lasting about 14 months.

Meloni acknowledged the record on Friday, saying that stability should not be viewed simply as a record but as a condition that allows a country to plan, make decisions and fulfil its commitments.

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi were among the first prominent global leaders to congratulate Meloni on the milestone.

Modi called her his “friend” and said the achievement reflected the trust and confidence of the Italian people in her leadership. He also highlighted her contribution to strengthening the India-Italy Special Strategic Partnership.

Takaichi who is also the first female PM of Japan, congratulated Meloni, sharing her message on social media

Belgian Prime Minister Bart De Wever and NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte also sent their congratulations. UK Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch likewise praised Meloni, highlighting her influence and leadership.

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The post Giorgia Meloni becomes the longest continuously serving Prime Minister of the Italian Republic first appeared on The Australia Today.

The sentiment, surprising for a senior diplomat, is rooted in a flawed reading of history and deserves correction. Taxila was a prominent city of ancient India, home to one of the world’s oldest known centres of higher learning. Before the concept of the nation-state was codified in the Westphalian settlement, places were understood as parts of civilisations, not states. The city of Troy, immortalised in Homer’s epics, now lies within modern Turkey — but that does not make the Iliad and the Odyssey Turkish literature.

Pakistan is a state carved out of India less than 80 years ago, founded on the ideology that Hindus and Muslims could not live together as one nation. India, by contrast, is the world’s oldest continuous living civilisation and its largest secular democracy. To ascribe any part of ancient Indian civilisation to the modern state of Pakistan does a disservice to history itself.

Taxila predates Pakistan by at least two and a half thousand years, and predates Islam’s arrival in the region by at least a millennium. It is traditionally associated with Kautilya, also known as Chanakya, one of the ancient world’s great teachers of politics and economics, credited with helping Chandragupta Maurya found the Mauryan Empire, one of antiquity’s largest. Taxila’s university was a centre of learning encompassing several strands of Indian academic and philosophical pursuits. Much of this heritage was destroyed in successive waves of attacks by Islamic invaders.

To call this “Pakistan’s history,” then, is effectively to credit an ideology that sought to erase the very civilisation that built Taxila. Curiously, some quarters within Pakistan — a nation whose founding claim was that Islam alone constitutes nationhood — now appear to be reaching further back: past the Mughals, the Delhi Sultanate, and the Arab conquest of Sindh in 711 CE, to Mohenjo-daro and Harappa, cities that were planned and thriving when much of the ancient world was still emerging. For those who have long held that the Indian subcontinent is, at its deepest level, a single civilisational entity bound together by the profound wisdom and metaphysics of Hindu philosophy, expressed across extraordinary diversity, for, at the very least, over five thousand years — this shift, if genuine, would carry real meaning. But only if it is genuine.

The Sindhu-Saraswati civilisation (also known as the Indus Valley Civilisation) is among the oldest known civilisations of humankind, alongside Egypt and Mesopotamia, and by some estimates the most extensive of the Bronze Age world by geographical reach — spanning roughly 1 to 1.5 million square kilometres. According to current understanding, it stretched from what is now the Iranian border and northern Afghanistan across to Jammu, western Uttar Pradesh, Gujarat and northern Maharashtra in India. Some of its cities are estimated to have held populations of 40,000 or more, remarkable against a typical ancient city of roughly 10,000.

One of the defining features of Indian civilisation is its cultural continuity across millennia. The Pashupati seal from Mohenjo-daro, depicting a figure in a yogic posture, and the swastika motifs recurring throughout Indus Valley artefacts, are threads that run unbroken into symbols still used across the Indian subcontinent today.

There are indications that some in Pakistan feel the Indus narrative offers an identity anchor the Islamic-state framework has failed to provide — *Maryam Nawaz’s revival of *Basant, the kite-flying festival being one example. But without acknowledging that this civilisation is part of India’s story, rooted in Hindu philosophy, and without shedding the exclusionary baggage of Islamist denial, any attempt at Pakistani self-recovery through this route is unlikely to succeed.

There is a harder argument here too, about the cost of political Islam as an organising principle for a state. Pakistan faces what analysts call a polycrisis: an economy dependent on repeated IMF bailouts, institutions hollowed out by a military establishment that consumes the largest share of the budget, and chronic instability. In 2024 it held elections widely regarded as manipulated and jailed its most popular political leader, Imran Khan. It continues to face a freedom movement in occupied Balochistan and civil unrest in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. More recently it also saw protests in Pakistan occupied Jammu and Kashmir which were met with a brutal crackdown, with many killed by security forces. A nation defined entirely by what it opposes — Hindus, India, the “infidel” — has no positive civilisational content left once that opposition is exhausted. Pakistan’s founders believed Islam alone could supply the national glue; instead the country produced the Taliban, sheltered Al-Qaeda’s leadership, and in 2025 found itself exchanging cross-border strikes with the very Taliban it had nurtured for decades.

If Pakistan is genuinely turning toward the Indus, metaphorically speaking, it would be good news for the Pakistani public that deserves an identity built on truth rather than religious bigotry, and good news for the world too that has for long borne the costs of terrorism exported from Pakistan.

*Maryam Nawaz – Current Chief Minister of Pakistan’s Punjab province, daughter of former Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, niece of current PM Shehbaz Sharif.

*Basant – Basant is a spring festival associated with the Hindu month of Magha, marking the onset of spring and celebrated in parts of the Indian subcontinent with kite-flying festivities; its date varies by regional tradition.

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The post Taxila Isn’t Pakistani — Any More Than Troy Is Turkish! first appeared on The Australia Today.

The four-day mission has already delivered new opportunities for NSW-developed technology and exporters, while opening discussions with some of India’s biggest companies about investment in NSW.

On the first day of the mission, the Premier and Treasurer marked progress towards Western Sydney University welcoming its first students to its new Greater Noida campus in 2027, alongside new scholarships and a Centre of Excellence focused on water security, digital innovation and community resilience. The campus will deepen NSW’s education presence in India, providing Indian students with access to an Australian university education closer to home while creating new opportunities for Australian students, researchers and businesses. The university also plans to deliver a Master’s program in Sustainable Water Management from 2027, subject to regulatory approval.

“India is growing quickly and we want NSW businesses and workers to benefit from that growth. That’s why we’re here,” Premier Minns said. Treasurer Mookhey said the mission showcased NSW’s “world-class education institutions and vibrant multicultural communities” and would help create new pathways for investment, trade and collaboration.

The economic program has already produced new opportunities, with the Premier and Treasurer meeting senior executives from NMDC, NTPC Mining, Hindustan Copper Limited and Coal India to discuss Indian investment in NSW’s critical minerals sector and opportunities for NSW to supply minerals needed by India’s growing manufacturing economy. The discussions highlighted NSW’s mineral deposits, mining expertise, technology, safety standards and stable investment environment.

The delegation also witnessed an agreement between Transport for NSW’s Sydney Coordinated Adaptive Traffic System (SCATS) and HCLTech to explore using AI to make the NSW-developed traffic technology easier to use across India’s diverse language markets. SCATS is already used globally, and the partnership could open further opportunities to sell NSW-owned technology into India. “If we can sell more NSW-owned technology into cities like Delhi and Mumbai, that’s more revenue we can put back into better transport at home,” Mr Mookhey said.

The economic program followed meetings with senior Indian political leaders on the first day of the mission, including Union Commerce and Industry Minister Piyush Goyal and Gujarat Chief Minister Bhupendra Patel.

At a reception hosted by Australian High Commissioner to India Philip Green, the Premier announced the internationally renowned Jaipur Literature Festival will be hosted at Powerhouse Parramatta in August 2027. The event will bring writers and cultural figures from Australia, India and around the world to Western Sydney, while 14 NSW food, beverage and consumer brands were launched into the Indian market.

A new feature film, The Indian Cowboy, was also announced. Set and filmed in NSW, the film will tell the story of Indian country music singer Bobby Cash and his international career following his performance at the Tamworth Country Music Festival. The delegation also visited Asha in New Delhi, meeting children and families supported by the NGO, and visited Gurudwara Bangla Sahib and Swaminarayan Akshardham Temple.

India is one of NSW’s most important international partners. In 2024-25, NSW and India traded $6.87 billion worth of goods, while more than 28,000 Indian students studied in NSW in 2025 and 174,000 Indian visitors travelled to the state in the year to March 2026. “We’re just at the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the opportunities between NSW and India,” Premier Minns said. “We have to be here making the case for NSW.”

“As someone whose family heritage is Indian, I know first-hand the importance of the connections that unite our communities across education, business, culture and sport”, added Treasurer Mookhey

The official mission now continues in Mumbai, where the Premier and Treasurer will meet further government and business leaders and make the case for greater Indian investment in NSW and stronger commercial links between the two economies.

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The post “We’re just at the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the opportunities between NSW and India”: Premier Chris Minns first appeared on The Australia Today.

Zhao is hardly an insignificant casualty. When the PLA was reorganised into five theatre commands in 2016, Xi Jinping personally handed Zhao the military flag as commander of the newly created Western Theatre Command. The command oversees China’s military operations along its western strategic frontier, including the border with India. His removal therefore carries considerable symbolism as Galwan represented the largest Chinese military loss in a single border conflict since the 1969 Sino-Soviet clashes.

The bloody nose China got in Galwan was the first serious pushback to China against its ‘salami slicing’ tactics against its neighbours. In June 2020, Chinese and Indian troops fought a brutal hand-to-hand battle in the Himalayas. India lost 20 soldiers — a toll New Delhi acknowledged within days. China remained silent about its losses before eventually admitting, eight months later, that four PLA soldiers had died even as Indian and Western intelligence estimates put the Chinese death toll considerably higher at around 40 or more.

His removal comes as Xi’s military purge reaches extraordinary proportions. A Center for Strategic and International Studies assessment identified 101 senior PLA officers who had been officially purged or potentially purged or missing since 2022. CSIS found that 41 of 47 PLA leaders who were generals in 2022 or were promoted to three-star positions afterwards had been purged or potentially purged — an extraordinary 87 per cent.

And the purge is not confined to men who were Xi’s adversaries. Many were elevated by Xi himself. CSIS found that 32 of the 35 three-star generals Xi promoted from 2020 onwards appeared to have been investigated, with 29 subsequently confirmed or potentially purged. The purge has also reached Zhang Youxia, a vice-chairman of the Central Military Commission and one of China’s most senior generals, and CMC member Liu Zhenli. Their removal from the state CMC last week left only two active members of the seven-member body, including Xi himself. Beijing’s official line points to corruption investigations, but the pattern speaks for itself: a purge this deep, this fast, and reaching this close to Xi’s own inner circle is not hard to read.

It fits a much broader pattern under Xi. Former president Hu Jintao’s dramatic removal from the Communist Party Congress in 2022 became an enduring symbol of the end of China’s old model of collective leadership. And the spectacular fall of billionaire Jack Ma after he publicly criticised China’s financial regulators — followed by the suspension of Ant Group’s record-breaking $37 billion IPO — demonstrated the limits of even enormous private wealth when it appears to collide with Xi’s ego.

The economic backdrop makes the spectacle even more striking. China remains a formidable economic and military power, but its property crisis, weak domestic demand and slowing growth have exposed significant vulnerabilities. And when power becomes so concentrated that generals, ministers and businessmen know the consequences of crossing the leader, who is left to tell him when he is wrong?

Zhao Zongqi’s removal is therefore about more than one retired general. It is another window into Xi Jinping’s China — a country attempting to project strength to the outside world while its leader is conducting an extraordinary purge within its own ruling and military establishment, the hallmark of a weak and insecure ruler.

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Raksha Bandhan is a Hindu festival traditionally celebrating the bond between brothers and sisters. The tying of the rakhi — a sacred thread — has come to symbolise affection, protection and the strength of relationships.

The South Australia Police shared the special occasion on social media, highlighting the significance of the community gesture and the relationship between police and the communities they serve.

“Today, members of the Hindu community visited Holden Hill Police Station to tie Rakhis on the wrists of South Australia Police officers to mark Raksha Bandhan, a traditional Indian festival symbolising protection, care and mutual respect,” SA Police said.

The visit also served as an acknowledgement of the work carried out by police officers across South Australia to protect and support the community.

“The gesture recognised the dedication of our officers, who work tirelessly to protect and serve the community each day,” police said.

South Australia Police thanked members of the Hindu community for sharing the tradition with officers and recognising their role in keeping the state safe.

“Thank you to the Hindu community for sharing this meaningful tradition and for acknowledging the important role our officers play in keeping South Australia safe,” SA Police said on Facebook.

The celebration reflects the growing presence of Indian and Hindu communities in Australia and the role cultural traditions can play in strengthening connections between multicultural communities and public institutions.

The gesture at Holden Hill Police Station offered a simple but meaningful expression of appreciation, bringing a Hindu tradition into an Australian community setting while highlighting the shared values of care, respect and service.

The celebrations were not limited to South Australia, with members of the Hindu community in NSW also marking Raksha Bandhan by tying rakhis on police officers and firefighters on Sunday (30 August).

Traditionally, Raksha Bandhan saw sisters tie a rakhi around their brothers’ wrists for the brothers’ protection. Over time, the festival has evolved into a broader celebration of love, protection and the bonds between family and community.

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Venezuela sits firmly at the top with an extraordinary record. The country has produced 13 combined Miss Universe and Miss World winners. Miss Universe winners include Maritza Sayalero, Irene Sáez, Bárbara Palacios, Alicia Machado, Dayana Mendoza, Stefanía Fernández and Gabriela Isler. Miss World winners from Venezuela include Susana Duijm, Pilín León, Astrid Carolina Herrera, Ninibeth Leal, Jacqueline Aguilera and Ivian Sarcos.

The United States ranks second with 12 total crowns across the two pageants. Its Miss Universe winners include Miriam Stevenson, Carol Morris, Linda Bement, Sylvia Hitchcock, Shawn Weatherly, Chelsi Smith, Brook Lee, Olivia Culpo and R’Bonney Gabriel. Its Miss World winners are Marjorie Wallace, Gina Tolleson and Alexandria Mills.

India ranks third with nine combined crowns, with a particularly strong record in Miss World. Miss Universe winners include Sushmita Sen, Lara Dutta and Harnaaz Sandhu. India’s Miss World winners are Reita Faria, Aishwarya Rai, Diana Hayden, Yukta Mookhey, Priyanka Chopra and Manushi Chhillar.

Outside the top three, Puerto Rico ranks fourth with seven titles, while South Africa and Sweden are tied for fifth with six titles each. The Philippines and the United Kingdom are then tied for sixth with five crowns apiece. The Philippines’ strong record reflects its success in Miss Universe, while the United Kingdom built its tally entirely through Miss World, with five titles.

Looking at the competitions individually reveals a similar pattern of dominance. In Miss Universe, the most successful countries historically include the United States (9 wins), Venezuela (7), Puerto Rico (5), and the Philippines and Mexico (4 each)

In Miss World, the leaderboard is topped by India and Venezuela (6 wins each), followed by the United Kingdom (5) and Jamaica (4). Together, these rankings highlight the nations that have repeatedly excelled across decades of international competition.

Only four countries in the history of international beauty pageants have achieved the remarkable feat of winning both the Miss Universe and Miss World titles in the same year — France, Australia, Venezuela and India.

India, however, holds a unique distinction. It is the only country to have achieved the Miss Universe–Miss World double twice, first in 1994, when Sushmita Sen won Miss Universe and Aishwarya Rai was crowned Miss World, and again in 2000, when Lara Dutta won Miss Universe and Priyanka Chopra claimed the Miss World crown.

Australia may not sit among the top five, but it has delivered standout performers and remains a strong competitor on the global stage. Australia’s Miss Universe winners include Kerry Anne Wells and Jennifer Hawkins. Australia also produced Miss World winners Belinda Green and Penelope Plummer and frequent finalists and runners-up across both pageants, cementing the country’s reputation as a consistent contender in international beauty competitions.

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From defence and critical supply chains to the Quad, sports diplomacy and space cooperation, the scope for collaboration between the two countries is expanding rapidly. India’s growing economic and military weight is also reshaping its role in the Indo-Pacific, while Australia is looking to build greater strategic resilience in an increasingly contested region.

In this exclusive interview with The Australia Today, Dhruva Jaishankar, Executive Director of the Observer Research Foundation America and the inaugural recipient of the Lowy Institute’s Dr Ram Sethi Fellowship for 2026 speaks with Pallavi Jain about the opportunities and challenges ahead.

Jaishankar examines what is holding back deeper economic engagement and how Australia can better understand India’s strategic and defence capabilities.

He also discusses the future of the Quad, the largely untapped potential of sports diplomacy, and the possibilities for a much deeper Australia–India partnership in the rapidly expanding space sector.

Exclusive Interview

Pallavi Jain: Australia and India often describe each other as “natural partners,” yet bilateral trade remains at around A$55 billion, compared with Australia’s trade with China of over A$325 billion. What are the biggest structural barriers holding the relationship back, and what practical steps should governments and businesses take over the next decade to accelerate growth?

Dhruva Jaishankar: I would actually look at the rapid growth of bilateral trade – especially since the conclusion of the Economic Cooperation and Trade Agreement (ECTA) – as a positive development. China is not a useful comparison, given the history with Australia and scale of resource exports, but India is already Australia’s fifth largest goods trade partner and is likely to surpass Japan and South Korea in the coming years to be a distant third behind China and the United States. That said, there are lots of opportunities to increase the business-to-business partnership beyond commodities, education, and low-cost services. For example, Australia should look to Indian manufacturers to diversify its supply chains, whether for pharmaceuticals, vehicles, refined petroleum, electronics, or machinery and more ambitiously for defense, drones, and semiconductors. There are also exciting new investment opportunities but little public awareness in Australia: indeed, compared to North America and Europe, India is relatively untapped from the point of view of Australian institutional investors.

Pallavi Jain: There remains a perception gap in Australia when it comes to India. Much of the conversation still revolves around migration, education and trade, while there seems to be less awareness of India’s strategic capabilities—including the fact that it has the world’s fourth most powerful military and a rapidly expanding defence-industrial base. How can Australia develop a more complete understanding of India’s hard power, rather than simply viewing it as a fast-growing economy with a large consumer market or a partner in forums such as the Quad?

Dhruva Jaishankar: My sense is that the opportunity is well understood in the Australian government, but less among investors or the Australian business community writ large, particularly those who had some familiarity with the Indian economy in decades past. On defense, there’s been a rapid expansion of cooperation on maritime domain awareness, military-to-military engagements, and training. Indian aircraft now fly to Darwin, just as Royal Australian Navy vessels more regularly dock at Indian ports. The two countries perform a variety of sensitive tasks together, from submarine rescue and air-to-air refueling to humanitarian assistance and disaster relief. The opportunities do now need to be seized in terms of defense industrial cooperation and I believe agreements to accelerate that are in the works between the Australian Department of Defense and Indian Ministry of Defense. Questions of export controls, including those involving the United States, will need to be navigated in some cases.

Pallavi Jain: For decades, Australia’s security outlook has been anchored in the United States-led alliance system. As questions emerge about the long-term reliability and capacity of American security guarantees, what role could India play over the next two decades in contributing to greater strategic balance and resilience for Australia?

Dhruva Jaishankar: India should not be seen as a substitute for the United States as a regional security guarantor for Australia, but it can play a few important roles. One is in terms of helping secure critical sea lines of communication, on which Australia is dependent as a trading nation. Secondly, providing capacity in the form of equipment and training to smaller countries in the region, including in Southeast Asia and the South Pacific. India is already doing some of that, but can coordinate more with countries like Australia, just as Australia is doing more to support India in the Indian Ocean littoral.

Pallavi Jain: The Quad has become a central pillar of Indo-Pacific cooperation, yet questions persist about the consistency of US foreign policy across administrations. How resilient do you believe the Quad is to political changes in Washington, and what must India, Australia and Japan do to ensure it remains an effective strategic partnership regardless of who occupies the White House?

Dhruva Jaishankar: Some aspects of the Quad – including Summits and ministerial meetings – are more political. But many other aspects involving the militaries and bureaucracies have proved more steady. These include combined efforts on maritime domain awareness, humanitarian assistance, and military logistics, as well as joint projects in the South Pacific. Naturally politics can alter the tenor and pace of cooperation, but so far the Quad has withstood two U.S. presidential transitions and change of government in Australia.

Pallavi Jain: Australia is arguably one of the world’s great sporting nations, while India is investing in sport, with ambitions stretching well beyond cricket. Do you see sports diplomacy as an underutilised pillar of the Australia–India relationship? Could deeper collaboration in elite sport, sports science and major events create a new form of soft power between the two democracies?

Dhruva Jaishankar: Absolutely! We think of Australia as a sporting powerhouse now, but a lot of its strengths grew in the aftermath of the 1976 Summer Olympics, when its underperformance led to investments in the Australian Institute of Sport and other centers of excellence. With India hosting the Commonwealth Games in 2030 and bidding for the Olympics, the possibility of tapping Australia’s world class training and coaching programs in a variety of sports is there. Sports featured prominently both in Prime Minister Modi’s agenda in Australia and in his speech on Independence Day. Foundational sports such as athletics, swimming, and gymnastics will be more important to India than those in which it has already invested significant resources, such as badminton, hockey, shooting, and wrestling. There is also past precedence for this, such as Dennis Lillee’s involvement in the MRF Pace Foundation, and its major contributions to India developing high-quality fast bowlers in cricket.

Pallavi Jain: India has established itself as a global space power, with a proven track record of delivering world-class missions at a fraction of the cost of many Western agencies. While India and Australia already collaborate on international projects such as the Square Kilometre Array, do you see scope for a much deeper bilateral partnership in the space sector?

Dhruva Jaishankar: Space is a really exciting sector in India, with the privatization push leading to hundreds of small start-ups involved in almost every aspect of the space industry, from launch and observation to de-orbiting. Australia benefits from its geography and integration with other advanced markets, so there are natural complementarities. It would be nice to see a greater Indian presence at venues such as the Australian Space Forum in Adelaide.

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The post What India’s rise means for Australia’s strategic future: Exclusive with Dhruva Jaishankar first appeared on The Australia Today.

In a statement, Senator Hanson said the video is being held by the Australian Federal Police (AFP) and questioned why it has not been made public.

She further said that One Nation had applied for the release of the video under Freedom of Information law, but the application was blocked by AFP.

The party has subsequently appealed the decision to the Information Commissioner but said that the process could take years.

Senator Hanson said that detailed description of the video has already been released by the court and reported by the media so there is no reason to keep the video a secret.

She further said that the Albanese Government must release the video now and be upfront about the threat from radical Islamic terrorism.

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The post Labor must come clean on Bondi terror video, demands Pauline Hanson first appeared on The Australia Today.

Consul General Dr S. Janakiraman highlighted India’s ambition to become a developed nation by 2047, describing Viksit Bharat as both a vision and a national aspiration. He said the India–Australia relationship had entered a new phase, with bilateral trade doubling to around A$51 billion and significant opportunities ahead in trade, investment, technology and manufacturing.

Dr Janakiraman also pointed to the growing political and strategic engagement between the two countries, noting frequent meetings between their leaders and expanding cooperation across defence, commerce, education, skills, cybersecurity and other sectors. He said the complementary visions of Viksit Bharat and Australia’s Future Made in Australia could create new avenues for collaboration — from “design in Australia, make in India” to “design in India, make in Australia”.

NSW Governor Margaret Beazley paid tribute to the Indian community’s contribution across the state, from hospitals, schools and businesses to advanced manufacturing and regional communities. She highlighted the milestone of India-born people becoming Australia’s largest overseas-born group and noted that one in five new business registrations in NSW in 2025 were by people born in India. In parts of western and north-western Sydney, she said, Indian-born founders accounted for 56 per cent of new businesses.

Premier Chris Minns described India as one of Australia’s “dearest friends” and said Australia had supported India’s independence from the outset. He praised India’s emergence as one of the world’s fastest-growing economies and a major global leader in peace, security and diplomacy. Minns also announced that he would travel to India in two weeks with a NSW delegation focused on expanding business, education, technology and aviation links between the two countries.

NSW Opposition Leader Kellie Sloane similarly celebrated the Indian Australian community as one of Australia’s great multicultural success stories. She pointed to the community’s achievements in business, education, law, politics and civic life, and said she wanted NSW to be “first in line” to attract investment from India. Sloane had also previously announced plans for a future India trade delegation with NSW Nationals Leader Gurmesh Singh if elected.

Across the speeches, the Indian diaspora emerged as the living bridge between the two nations. From entrepreneurs and engineers to doctors, academics, students and community leaders, speakers repeatedly emphasised the community’s contribution to NSW and its role in deepening bilateral ties. Other distinguished guests included Federal Senator Dave Sharma, NSW MPs Charishma Kaliyanda, Julia Finn and Donna Davies, Co-Chairs of the NSW Parliamentary Friends of India MPs Warren Kirby and Gurmesh Singh, members of the Consular Corps, community and business leaders, and more than 2,000 guests.

The shared love of cricket — reinforced by the presence of the Australian Masters squad Captain Shane Watson— provided a lighter but powerful reminder of the cultural connections between the two countries.

The celebrations featured a “One-Line Exhibition” of iconic Indian and Australian monuments, cultural performances by Raunakaan Bhangra Group, Nartan Institute of Performing Arts, Svasti Kuchipudi Natyalaya, Nityakalashestra Fine Arts Academy, Groovex Dance Academy and SVN Academy, drum performances by Indoz Rhymes Group and Shivagarjana Sydney Group, and a soulful rendition of Vande Mataram by Gayatri Bharat and her ensemble.

They reflected a relationship increasingly driven not only by government-to-government ties but by business, education, culture, sport and a highly successful Indian Australian community. As India looks towards its centenary of independence in 2047, the message from Sydney was clear: Australia intends to be a close partner on that journey.

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The lecture, titled “Belonging in a Divided World – A Vedantic Perspective on Identity, Self, and Home,” will be held at 5pm at Sir Ian Turbott Hall, Western Sydney University’s Parramatta South Campus.

Swami Sarvapriyananda is a monk of the Ramakrishna Order and the Minister and spiritual leader of the Vedanta Society of New York. He is widely known for his accessible teachings on Advaita Vedanta, the non-dual philosophy that explores consciousness, self-knowledge and the nature of reality. He has also spoken at TEDx, Google and leading universities including Harvard.

He joined the order in 1994 and received sannyasa in 2004. He was a Nagral Fellow at Harvard Divinity School in 2019–20, where he was among the first Hindu monastics to participate in the university’s programme bringing Hindu thought into dialogue with other religious and academic traditions.

The Sydney lecture will examine what it means to belong in a world increasingly shaped by conversations around identity, migration, culture and difference. Drawing on Advaita Vedanta, Swami Sarvapriyananda will explore whether there is a deeper sense of identity beyond nationality, religion, race and ideology.

“Who am I? Where do I truly belong? What unites us beneath our differences?” are among the questions at the heart of the lecture, according to the organisers.

The event is being organised by the Vedanta Centre of Sydney, in association with the Hindu Council of Australia and Western Sydney University. Registration is currently available for the university lecture.

Swami Sarvapriyananda’s Sydney visit also includes a spiritual retreat and a separate talk at the Vedanta Centre of Sydney in Ermington on the morning of August 23. The Ermington event, titled “Perfection in Every Experience,” has already sold out.

A philosophy that travelled from India to the West

The Vedanta Society of New York has a remarkable history. Founded by Swami Vivekananda in 1894, it was the first Vedanta Society established in the West and became an important centre for introducing Indian spiritual philosophy to Western audiences. Today, it offers lectures, classes and discussions on Vedanta, reaching a global audience through its extensive online teachings.

Vedanta’s influence has also extended into the intellectual history of modern science. Erwin Schrödinger, one of the founders of quantum mechanics, engaged deeply with the Upanishads and Advaita Vedanta, particularly the idea of an underlying unity behind apparent multiplicity. Recent scholarship has documented how these ideas became part of Schrödinger’s philosophical reflections on consciousness and reality.

Nikola Tesla also engaged directly with Vedantic ideas through his meetings with Swami Vivekananda in New York in the 1890s, discussing concepts including Akasha and Prana and the relationship between matter and energy. Niels Bohr, meanwhile, is famously associated with the Upanishads, with the physicist quoted as saying that he went to the Upanishads “to ask questions” — a reminder of the intellectual dialogue that developed between modern physics and Indian philosophical thought.

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Hooper has not been seen since Wednesday, August 12, when she left her home in Oakdale, south-west of Sydney, to go hiking in the Southern Highlands national park.

Her family said they were “absolutely devastated” that Lily was missing and desperately wanted to bring her home safely.

“Our family is absolutely devastated that our beloved daughter Lily is missing,” the family said in a statement released through NSW Police on Tuesday.

“We desperately want to bring Lily home safe and we ask as the search continues, to keep our family and Lily in your thoughts.”

The family also thanked emergency services and volunteers involved in the search, including those working through the night.

“We would like to thank all the emergency services and volunteers for their support and continued commitment to the search, not only during the day but throughout the night,” the statement said.

The family urged people who have offered to help with the search not to enter the area themselves because of the difficult terrain and conditions.

“We appreciate people who have made offers for the search but, due to the terrain and conditions, we ask just professional search teams continue,” they said.

They also asked for privacy as they deal with the disappearance.

“We also ask for privacy and understanding as our family navigates this unimaginable situation,” the statement said.

Search continues across difficult terrain

The search entered its seventh day on Tuesday, with NSW Police coordinating a multi-agency operation involving specialist police crews, the State Emergency Service and other emergency personnel.

Search teams have been working through dense bushland, ravines, creek lines and steep terrain in Nattai National Park, about 90 kilometres south-west of Sydney.

Police said no trace of Hooper or her belongings had been located as of Tuesday.

Authorities have been concentrating efforts around the Bonnum Pic Walking Trail. Police believe Hooper reached the summit of Bonnum Pic on the morning of August 12 after sending messages to family members during her hike.

Her car was later found near the trailhead on Wanganderry Road at High Range at about 11pm that night.

Hooper was reported missing after she failed to return home and could not be contacted.

Police have previously said she is an experienced bushwalker. She is believed to have been carrying a mobile phone, and investigators have been examining telecommunications information as part of efforts to establish her movements.

The dense tree canopy and difficult terrain have complicated aerial searches, while ground crews continue to work through the area.

Police have urged anyone who may have information relevant to the search to contact authorities rather than entering the search area independently.

The search for Lily Hooper remains ongoing.

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The post ‘We desperately want to bring Lily home safe’: Family of missing hiker Lily Hooper issues statement as search enters seventh day first appeared on The Australia Today.

One Nation has condemned the attack. According to the party, the woman was working at the One Nation stand at the Brisbane Showgrounds on Friday, August 14, when she was approached by four people.

A One Nation spokesperson told news.com.au that three women and a man were involved in the alleged attack, claiming the man grabbed the staffer, swung her around and punched her, while one of the women allegedly spat at her. The party said the woman was subsequently hospitalised with a broken rib.

Queensland Police have confirmed they are aware of an altercation at the Brisbane Showgrounds on August 14. Police said, however, that no formal complaint had been made at the time of reporting.

No arrests or charges have been announced in relation to the alleged assault.

One Nation has condemned the incident as unacceptable, while the circumstances surrounding the altercation remain subject to any further police action.

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The post One Nation staffer hospitalised after alleged attack at Brisbane’s Ekka first appeared on The Australia Today.

Start with Washington. The United States remains the only true hyperpower on paper — no rival matches its combined military reach, financial centrality, and alliance network. But raw capability and the ability to convert it into outcomes are different things, and by that second measure the record of the last two decades is not flattering: Afghanistan ended in shameful withdrawal, Iraq in a strategic vacuum filled by Iran, and successive administrations have struggled to translate primacy into durable wins.

Iran is the latest example, where the US has so far been unable to end the conflict with a strategic victory, even with a regime that has been under US sanctions for over four decades and is undoubtedly an authoritarian regime that represses its own people. A hyperpower that keeps failing to close out the wars it enters isn’t demonstrating strength, it’s revealing the gap between potential on paper and execution.

Russia, the world’s second most significant military power, has spent the better part of four years consumed by a war in Ukraine it expected to win in weeks. Whatever the eventual settlement, the war has already done the damage that matters strategically: it has tied down Russian materiel, manpower, and diplomatic bandwidth for almost half a decade and pushed Moscow into a subordinate economic relationship with Beijing it would never have accepted a decade ago.

China’s brittleness and the Emperor’s new clothes

China is the most interesting case, because it is still widely assumed to be on the rise. The numbers tell a more complicated story.

China’s total debt across government, corporate and household balance sheets is now estimated at over 300% of GDP — a level that constrains the very stimulus tools Beijing has historically used to paper over slowdowns in property, exports and local-government finance.

Xi Jinping’s response to mounting internal pressure has been to tighten his grip, with unprecedented purges extending into the People’s Liberation Army’s top ranks. He also abolished the presidential two-term limit and is now serving his third term.

The scale of the purge in the last three years is remarkable even by China’s standards: five of the seven senior figures in the Central Military Commission have now been removed — He Weidong, Xi’s hand-picked number two; Zhang Youxia, once regarded as one of Xi’s most trusted generals; Liu Zhenli, the PLA’s senior operational commander; Miao Hua, its former top political commissar; and Li Shangfu, the former defence minister. US-based Center for Strategic and International Studies estimates the actual number potentially caught up in the purge could be as high as 101. Qin Gang, the former foreign minister, was also abruptly removed in 2023.

In another stunning incident, in October 2022, China’s former president and Xi’s immediate predecessor Hu Jintao was unexpectedly escorted from the closing session of the Communist Party Congress. The precise reason remains ‘unknown’ but the optics appeared deeply humiliating for a former Chinese president. This is not the behaviour of a confident state, but of a weak leader increasingly paranoid about losing his grip on power.

Then there was the bloody nose China got in Galwan. It was the first serious pushback to China against its ‘salami slicing’ tactics against its neighbours. In June 2020, Chinese and Indian troops clashed in the Himalayas. India lost 20 soldiers — a toll New Delhi acknowledged within days. China’s response was silence, followed by denial, followed, eight months later, by a grudging admission that it had lost precisely four men, even as Indian and Western intelligence estimates at the time put Chinese casualties to around 40 or more.

It is worth remembering how the leadership of Jiang Zemin and Hu Jintao operated: patient accumulation of leverage, avoiding premature confrontation and letting economic growth do the talking. Xi’s China behaves differently — more brittle, and increasingly prone to what might be called emperor’s-new-clothes syndrome, where no one is willing to tell the leadership when they are jumping off a cliff.

None of this erases what China achieved. It rose largely because the United States opened its markets, capital, and technology to it after the Cold War, and Beijing deserves real credit for using those decades of access more effectively than any other developing economy in history.

But while a one-party system can mobilise resources and create infrastructure with a speed democracies envy, there are always serious limitations to that system, especially if a dictator with delusions of grandeur becomes the leader. If Xi Jinping does not course correct, he could take China on an irreversible downward spiral. Trying to bully your neighbours all at once including superpowers like India and Russia, in order to distract from internal weaknesses, will not bode well for China. It also will have to, sooner or later, deal with the issue of occupied Tibet. Tibetan freedom will come; the question is not if but when.

Operation Sindoor: 21st century’s most successful military campaign

Against this backdrop, Operation Sindoor in May 2025 stands out. On May 7, the Indian Air Force struck terror infrastructure deep inside Pakistan and Pakistan-occupied Jammu and Kashmir after the Pahalgam terror attack. India initially focused solely on terrorist infrastructure, deliberately not targeting Pakistani military installations, to give Islamabad an off-ramp. But Pakistan did not take it.

Pakistan threw much of its arsenal at India over the next two days, including ballistic missiles. But India’s layered air-defence network largely neutralised the attacks, denying Pakistan any major success against Indian military or civilian targets. This is particularly striking given that even advanced air-defence systems in the US and Israel have faced successful penetrations in recent conflicts, arguably making India’s air-defence the best in the world so far, when judged by demonstrated combat performance.

By May 10, India decided to end the conflict decisively and it did. There is a lesson here for the United States and Russia as well. It hit eleven Pakistani air bases — Nur Khan, Rafiqui, Murid, Sukkur, Sialkot, Pasrur, Chunian, Sargodha, Skardu, Bholari, and Jacobabad across the length and breadth of Pakistan. Given this strategic decimation, Pakistan sought a ceasefire, and India being a responsible superpower that it is, decided to end the conflict. While India has long been regarded as the world’s fourth most powerful military, the scale and depth of its hard power still took some by surprise.

India’s economic success, meanwhile, has been well documented. It has posted the fastest average GDP growth rate among G20 economies over the last decade, a run no other large economy in the group can currently match. It also has the highest decade-long CAGR (compound annual growth rate) in the G20.

Together, these factors also help explain something that has puzzled observers of the US-India relationship: a partnership once described as the most consequential bilateral relationship of the century has recently encountered unexpected friction. That friction is not really about one issue in particular — it reflects the structural discomfort that inevitably arises when an established power is adjusting to relative decline while a rising power is coming into its own.

A press that won’t call it straight

Part of why this rise appears to be contested in the western mind, rather than acknowledged, is that a large share of the international press and Western academia is not a neutral referee. Much of the same legacy media that struggled, even after October 7, to call Hamas a terrorist organisation outright is hardly positioned to describe India’s actions with any more honesty — an establishment reluctant to name a movement that massacred civilians is not one equipped to speak plainly about a democracy defending itself.

It should surprise no one, then, that the more India rises, the more contested and, at times, hostile the coverage from parts of the Western press and academia becomes. China, by contrast, spent years buying favourable column space directly — state-run China Daily purchased paid advertising supplements inside The New York Times and The Washington Post for years, packaged to resemble editorial content. India, being an actual democracy with no equivalent state propaganda budget for foreign newsrooms, doesn’t do this, and largely wears the coverage it gets, favourable or not.

That does not make every criticism of India wrong. Nor does it mean that the world’s oldest continuous civilisation and its largest secular democracy does not have major socio-economic challenges that need to be overcome. But it does mean that the information environment surrounding a rising India deserves to be examined with the same scepticism applied to every other major power.

What It Means for Australia

For Australia, sitting in the middle of the Indo-Pacific with China as its largest trading partner and one of its biggest strategic anxieties at once, this churn isn’t an abstract academic exercise.

A more brittle Beijing, a United States less reliably decisive, and a rising India increasingly willing to act unilaterally when required, reshape the strategic map for Canberra.

India’s role is already extending beyond its own borders. Its navy has increasingly taken on maritime-security responsibilities across the Indian Ocean and Arabian Sea, while India has repeatedly undertaken evacuation missions involving civilians of multiple nationalities from conflict zones such as Yemen and Ukraine, and provided disaster assistance across countries including Nepal and Venezuela.

In January 2021, India became the first major vaccine-producing country to launch a dedicated global COVID-19 vaccine diplomacy initiative, Vaccine Maitri, using its vast production capacity to supply vaccines to countries around the world.

The strategic logic for Australia is therefore becoming increasingly straightforward.

India and Australia share core political values — democracy, freedom, secularism and the rule of law — even if, like all democracies, they may differ on individual policies.

So, a deeper, more sophisticated and more ambitious Australia-India strategic relationship is a no-brainer.

On India’s 80th Independence Day, it is also worth asking just how improbable the current moment would have seemed to the people who witnessed August 15, 1947.

Who could have imagined — amid a horrific partition of India which resulted in millions of deaths, mass displacement, poverty — that within a few generations India would build one of the world’s largest technology sectors, become a nuclear power, send missions to the Moon, become one of the world’s most powerful militaries and emerge as one of the world’s biggest and fastest-growing major economies?

What is visible right now is a churn of the kind the world sees perhaps only once every few centuries. The real question is, how will the ascent of an ancient civilisational power, rising from the wounds of history to reclaim its place at the forefront of the global order, reshape the world.

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With over 350,000 Australians in NSW of Indian cultural heritage and over $6.8 billion in two-way trade between NSW and India, Sloane said that strengthening the relationship to unlock more investment opportunities would be part of the Liberals and Nationals plan to grow the NSW economy and create more local jobs.

“India is the world’s fastest growing economy, and I want to strengthen the NSW-India relationship, so that our state is first in line to attract investment and unlock new export markets.”

“The former NSW Liberals and Nationals Government understood the importance of the NSW-India relationship to our economy and established trade and cultural arrangements in Gujarat with Narendra Modi and the Sister State Relationship with the Maharashtra Government”, added Sloane.

NSW Nationals Leader Gurmesh Singh said the Australia-India Economic Cooperation and Trade Agreement, signed by the Federal Liberals and Nationals Government in 2022, had created new opportunities for regional NSW.

A future Liberal and Nationals Government would “turbocharge” those opportunities, he said.

“NSW farmers produce the best food and fibre in the world, and we want to back them to access the opportunities that India presents to grow exports and create more jobs in regional NSW,” Singh said.

He went on to say that after four years, the Minns Labor Government had failed to strengthen the NSW-India relationship and called on the Premier to match the Liberals and Nationals pledge.

The Liberals and Nationals highlighted several initiatives undertaken by their former NSW Government as part of their record on strengthening ties with India including:

• Successful trade missions led by Premiers Barry O’Farrell, Mike Baird and Dominic Perrottet.
• Established productive trade, research and cultural arrangements in Gujarat with then Chief Minister (now Prime Minister) Narendra Modi.
• Supported the former Federal Liberal and Nationals Government’s Australia-India Economic Cooperation and Trade Agreement.
• Established a Sister State Relationship with the Maharashtra Government in 2012. 

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The move comes against the backdrop of years of cooperation between NASA and ISRO. Their partnership includes NISAR, the NASA-ISRO Synthetic Aperture Radar mission, a joint Earth-observation satellite launched by ISRO in 2025 after more than a decade of technical collaboration between the two agencies.

ISRO has also emerged as one of the world’s leading space agencies, with a string of landmark achievements. In 2023, Chandrayaan-3 made India the first country to successfully land in the Moon’s southern polar region and deploy a rover there, demonstrating capabilities directly relevant to NASA’s growing focus on the lunar South Pole. India’s Mangalyaan, meanwhile, made history by reaching Mars orbit on its very first attempt in 2014, making ISRO only the fourth space agency to successfully place a spacecraft in Martian orbit at the time.

ISRO has repeatedly demonstrated its ability to deliver complex missions at remarkable scale. In February 2017, its PSLV-C37 rocket launched 104 satellites in a single mission, a world record at the time. These achievements have helped establish India as a credible and increasingly influential space power.

The invitation opens the door to discussions on how ISRO could contribute its lunar expertise, technology and scientific capabilities to NASA’s Moon Base effort — potentially taking the India-US space partnership from joint missions on Earth and in orbit to humanity’s next major frontier: a sustained presence on the Moon.

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The earthquake struck on August 10, with the epicentre near San José del Palmar in the department of Chocó. The tremor was felt across a wide area of Colombia, including major cities such as Cali, Pereira, Quibdó and Manizales. Shaking was also reported in neighbouring countries.

Authorities said the earthquake caused extensive damage to buildings and infrastructure across several departments. Around 1,600 buildings were reported to have been damaged, including 61 that collapsed completely.

Pereira, the capital of Risaralda, was among the worst-affected areas. Emergency crews and local residents searched damaged buildings for people who may have been trapped beneath the rubble. Significant damage was also reported in Cali and parts of Chocó.

The earthquake also disrupted transport and communications. Airports in parts of western Colombia were temporarily closed while authorities checked buildings and facilities for structural damage. Communications were particularly difficult in some remote areas, making it harder for emergency teams to establish the full extent of the destruction.

Emergency services, soldiers and residents have been involved in search-and-rescue operations as authorities work to locate survivors and assess damaged communities.

More than 20 aftershocks were reported following the main earthquake, adding to the challenges faced by rescue teams working around damaged structures.

Colombian President Abelardo de la Espriella declared a national emergency as the government mobilised resources for rescue and relief efforts. The president said the immediate priority was to assist people affected by the disaster and respond to those still trapped or in need of medical attention.

The earthquake has been described by Colombian authorities as the country’s strongest seismic event of the 21st century. Colombia is located in a highly active seismic region, where interactions between tectonic plates regularly generate earthquakes.

The latest disaster has also renewed attention on the country’s vulnerability to major earthquakes. Colombia suffered another devastating earthquake in 1999, when a magnitude 6.2 quake struck the coffee-growing region, killing more than 1,000 people.

For now, rescue and damage-assessment operations remain underway across western Colombia. Authorities have warned that casualty and damage figures could change as emergency teams reach more affected areas.

The confirmed toll currently stands at 111 dead and 87 injured.

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To understand the desperation behind this pact, you need to understand a little Islamic history. For centuries, the Ottoman Empire controlled the Hijaz—home to Islam’s two holiest cities, Mecca and Medina. After World War I, the Ottoman territories were dismantled and redrawn by European powers, creating much of today’s Middle East. Modern Turkey embraced secularism, while the House of Saud emerged as custodian of the Hijaz; but the rise of Saudi Arabia and the transformation of secular Turkey into Erdoğan’s increasingly Islamist, neo-Ottoman power project have created two competing centres of influence in the Sunni Muslim world. Erdoğan invokes the Ottoman legacy and Turkish influence, while MBS seeks to position Saudi Arabia as the modern centre of the Muslim world. Pakistan’s desperation to join this pact is understandable after its stunning military defeat against India—but the real story is the desperation of two historic rivals, Riyadh and Ankara, putting old competition aside and joining hands.

So why the sudden embrace? The honest answer is that this isn’t a marriage of shared vision — it’s three parties, each in genuine trouble, pooling their weaknesses and calling it strength. Tehran, for its part, wasted no time saying as much. Iranian MP Ebrahim Rezaei, a member of its parliament’s national security and foreign policy committee, wrote on X that “Saudis must know that a paper agreement with Türkiye and Pakistan will not bring them security, just as years of one-sided nursing to the Americans did not bring them security,” adding that Riyadh should “reform your policies so that you do not need to beg for security from others.” Coming from the country these three governments have implicitly organised against, the jibe lands with unusual precision.

A Pattern of Contempt and Failure

Strip away the ceremony and the underlying relationship looks less like partnership and more like a patron humiliating its client while still finding it useful. Saudi Arabia deported roughly 24,000 Pakistanis rounded up as beggars through 2025, on top of a formal warning to Islamabad, even as the two governments prepared to call each other strategic allies. That is the real texture beneath the pageantry: Pakistan as a source of cheap labour and expendable manpower, not an equal.

Pakistan’s attempt to buy relevance by mediating between Washington and Tehran collapsed just as predictably. Any serious observer could have told you Islamabad had neither the leverage over Iran nor the standing with Washington to broker anything durable — it had no cards, only geographical proximity and an eagerness to be useful to Donald Trump. Islamabad nonetheless plastered its own capital with posters celebrating a ceasefire it claimed credit for, only to watch the truce unravel within weeks as the wider Iran war reignited. It ended up looking exactly like what common sense predicted: a messenger running errands for a bigger power, mistaking the errand for a diplomatic triumph, and exposing to the whole region how little actual weight it carries.

The pact itself has already failed its two real tests, despite a Strategic Mutual Defence Agreement Riyadh and Islamabad signed as recently as September 2025. When a militant ambush killed twenty Pakistani soldiers in October 2025 and Islamabad struck back at targets inside Afghanistan, plunging into open conflict with the Taliban government in Kabul, Saudi Arabia offered mediation and nothing more — no material or military backing for its supposed ally. Then the reverse happened: as Iran rained missiles and drones on Saudi territory during the escalating regional war in 2026, Pakistan’s contribution was its foreign minister publicly reminding Tehran that a defence agreement existed. Not troops. Not aircraft. A phone call citing a clause. Whatever this arrangement is, it isn’t collective security in any meaningful sense. A pact signed with fanfare produced, in both directions, nothing more than words when it actually mattered.

The Muscle That Isn’t There

Look closely at who’s supposed to supply the actual defence in this new triangle, and the logic collapses further. In May 2025, after a terror attack in Pahalgam, India launched Operation Sindoor, striking nine terrorist camps deep inside Pakistan and Pakistan-occupied Jammu and Kashmir in a matter of minutes.

When Pakistan attempted retaliation, India escalated further, hitting a string of Pakistani military air bases with near-total impunity. Within days, it was Pakistan’s own military that picked up the hotline to plead for a ceasefire.

A country that had to implore for a ceasefire after its air defences were exposed and its bases struck at will is not in a position to guarantee anyone else’s security.

The economics tell the same story. Pakistan has spent the past two years inside an IMF bailout programme just to keep its economy from collapsing outright, and even that has needed constant Gulf life support. In 2026, with a $3.5 billion loan repayment to the UAE coming due and its foreign reserves under severe strain, Islamabad had to turn around and ask Saudi Arabia for fresh money — Riyadh deposited $3 billion directly into Pakistan’s central bank, money that went straight back out the door to settle what Islamabad owed Abu Dhabi. One has to wonder what does a state that has to borrow from one Gulf capital to settle its debt to another Gulf capital bring to the table if not hired foot soldiers. Add to that a resurgent militant insurgency along the Afghan border, the eight decades old freedom movement in Pakistan-occupied Balochistan intensifying, growing unrest in Pakistan-occupied Jammu and Kashmir over sheer economic neglect, and the picture is of a state fighting for its own survival on three fronts internally. Whatever value Pakistan brings to this pact, it clearly isn’t credible defence — at best it is bodies and a nuclear flag that can be pointed at, at most the Houthis, nothing more.

That, ultimately, appears to be the real backdrop to Saudi Arabia’s sudden warmth toward old rival Turkey and a de facto failed state like Pakistan. Its oldest Gulf partnership is fraying — Riyadh and Abu Dhabi have gone from wartime allies in Yemen to open rivals, clashing directly over rival factions in Aden and the country’s east, which explains why the Kingdom may be attempting to hedge with whoever it can, rather than trusting a Gulf Cooperation Council that can no longer agree with itself.

Saudi Arabia in fact had made a request to Pakistan in 2015, asking for fighter jets, naval ships and ground troops for its Yemen war, but Nawaz Sharif’s government then wisely declined, mindful of Pakistan’s sectarian sensitivities and sizeable Shia population. However, a decade later, Pakistan’s economic and strategic desperation has changed the calculus, enabling Riyadh to use Pakistan’s military as a source of manpower for conflicts it may prefer not to fight directly.

Meanwhile Washington’s security umbrella looks thinner than it has in decades: Iran put missiles into Al Udeid air base in Qatar, the largest American air base in the region, in June 2026, and saturated Saudi, Emirati, and other Gulf skies with drones and missiles for weeks without a conclusive American answer — a visible marker of receding US deterrence that is pushing Gulf states into a chaotic security situation.

And Turkey arrives at this table not as a rising power but a desperate one: the Turkish lira has suffered a spectacular collapse against the dollar over the past seven years leaving Erdoğan’s Ottoman ambitions dependent on Gulf money he cannot raise at home.

Pakistan’s desperation to be part of such a pact is understandable after the bludgeoning it received from India and the unravelling of its nuclear bluff—but the pact offers no reassurance: Turkey is unlikely to materially alter the stark military asymmetry with India which is among the world’s most powerful militaries while Saudi Arabia is unlikely to shoot itself in the foot by jeopardising a strategically and economically important relationship with New Delhi for the sake of Islamabad. India is Saudi Arabia’s second-largest trading partner, with bilateral trade reaching US$41.88 billion in FY2024–25—while Pakistan’s entire annual goods exports are only around US$32 billion so you can do the maths.

Put together, this isn’t a Sunni bloc, a civilizational alliance, or a rising axis of power. It’s three governments, each cornered by a different crisis — a fraying Gulf order, a collapsing currency, a state fighting itself on three fronts — signing a document that had already failed its first real tests before the ink was dry, and one that Tehran itself is happy to dismiss as paper.

Strip away the religious and civilizational language, and what’s left is transactional to the point of bluntness. Turkey needs money it cannot print its way out of needing. Saudi Arabia needs hired soldiers and diplomatic cover as its own Gulf order fractures and Washington’s guarantee looks shakier by the month. And Pakistan, staring at an existential crisis on three internal fronts and a treasury that survives on borrowed cash, has effectively put its military up for hire. That’s not an alliance. It’s a desperate transaction dressed up as one.

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