Thousands of kilometres from New Delhi, on the sidelines of a major multilateral defence forum, Union Defence Minister Rajnath Singh stepped off the diplomatic circuit and into a Gurudwara in the heart of the Philippines — a deliberate signal that India's strategic outreach is as much about people as it is about policy.

On Thursday, 29 October 2026, Singh visited the Gurudwara complex at Gochan Street in Cebu City, where he interacted with members of the Indian diaspora on the margins of the 13th ASEAN Defence Ministers' Meeting Plus (ADMM-Plus). He acknowledged the community's role in preserving Indian culture and in deepening people-to-people ties between India and the Philippines.

Why a Gurudwara visit matters at a defence summit

The ADMM-Plus is one of Asia-Pacific's most consequential multilateral defence platforms, bringing together the ten ASEAN member states and eight dialogue partners — including India — to build regional security architecture. India has been part of the forum since its launch in 2010, using it to advance interoperability, humanitarian cooperation, and maritime security dialogue with Southeast Asian partners.

But Singh's stop at the Gochan Street Gurudwara was not incidental. Indian ministers attending ASEAN-centred forums have increasingly combined official sessions with community outreach — a pattern that reflects New Delhi's wider understanding that soft power and diaspora networks are strategic assets, not just ceremonial footnotes.

India-Philippines ties and the Act East backbone

The Philippines sits at the centre of India's Act East Policy, a framework that has steadily elevated defence and economic engagement with Southeast Asia. Bilateral defence ties between the two countries have expanded in recent years, with India emerging as a potential defence supplier and partner in maritime domain awareness — a priority for Manila given its contested maritime environment in the South China Sea.

Cebu City, the venue for the 13th ADMM-Plus, is the Philippines' second-largest urban centre and a hub for its Visayas region — lending the meeting, and Singh's community visit, a reach beyond the national capital.

Diaspora as a bridge between New Delhi and Manila

The Indian community in the Philippines, though smaller than diaspora concentrations in the Gulf or North America, has maintained strong cultural and commercial ties to the homeland. By visiting the Gurudwara and engaging directly with community members, Singh reinforced the message that the Indian state sees its overseas citizens as active participants in bilateral relationship-building — not passive beneficiaries of consular services.

As the 13th ADMM-Plus concludes, any joint statements or follow-up bilateral defence engagements between India and the Philippines will indicate how much the formal diplomacy matched the warmth of the community outreach.