A Sanskrit invocation and a multilateral forum — Union Defence Minister Rajnath Singh opened India's case at the ADMM-Plus meeting on Thursday, 29 October 2026 by anchoring his country's defence philosophy in an ancient ideal: सर्वे भवन्तु सुखिनः ('May all beings be happy'). That is not just poetry. It is a foreign-policy claim — one that India has been building, forum by forum, for the better part of a decade.

What Singh said — and what it signals

Singh's post, delivered in Hindi, placed the Sanskrit phrase 'Sarve Bhavantu Sukhinah' at the centre of India's defence and foreign-policy doctrine, calling it the foundational spirit of both. He pointed to the ADMM-Plus theme — 'Navigating Our Future, Together' — as a direct expression of shared responsibility, mutual trust, and cooperation. India, he said, is committed to building an 'open, inclusive and Rules-Based Indo-Pacific' in which ASEAN's central role and India's long-term strategic partnerships are indispensable.

The phrasing is deliberate and calibrated. 'Rules-based' is the term the West, India, and ASEAN's democratic members routinely use to push back, without naming it, against unilateral maritime assertions in the South China Sea. By pairing it with 'ASEAN centrality', Singh is reaffirming that India does not seek to bypass the bloc or supplant its leadership with any rival architecture — a position Prime Minister Narendra Modi first put on record at the Shangri-La Dialogue in 2018.

ADMM-Plus and India's fifteen-year stake in the platform

The ASEAN Defence Ministers' Meeting-Plus (ADMM-Plus) brings together defence ministers from all ten ASEAN nations and eight dialogue partners — including India, the United States, China, Japan, and Australia. It is one of the few forums where all these powers sit in the same room under an ASEAN-chaired agenda. India joined at the platform's launch in 2010 and has since worked through its Experts' Working Groups on maritime security, counter-terrorism, and humanitarian assistance and disaster relief.

Sixteen years of participation have given India both credibility and leverage inside the mechanism. Singh's invocation of 'long-term Strategic Partnership' with ASEAN members signals that New Delhi sees ADMM-Plus not as a talking shop but as a foundation for deeper bilateral defence ties — defence industry cooperation, joint exercises, and intelligence-sharing arrangements that have been expanding steadily across Southeast Asia.

The 'Sarve Bhavantu Sukhinah' framing — soft power with a strategic edge

Opening a defence ministers' meeting with a classical Sanskrit invocation is a conscious branding choice. India has increasingly used civilisational vocabulary — Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam ('the world is one family') at the G20, and now Sarve Bhavantu Sukhinah at ADMM-Plus — to position itself as a benign, non-hegemonic power whose strategic interests happen to align with regional stability. For ASEAN states navigating pressure from multiple great powers, that framing carries real appeal.

It also inoculates India against the charge that its Indo-Pacific engagement is purely a containment exercise. By rooting the argument in universal welfare rather than alliance politics, Singh is making the case that a stronger Indian presence in the region is a public good — not a zero-sum move.

The real test will come in the joint statements and working-group deliverables that emerge from this ADMM-Plus cycle. Words at ministerial level matter, but the architecture they authorise — port access, logistics agreements, joint patrols, technology transfers — is where India's Indo-Pacific commitment gets measured. Singh has set the frame; now the region will watch how much structure follows the sentiment.