The Digital Transformation Of India's Foreign Policy: Cyber Diplomacy, Sovereignty And International Security
Dr. Kiran Singh, Assistant Professor, Faculty of Law, Allahabad Degree College, University of Allahabad
ABSTRACT
This article undertakes a doctrinal and policy analysis of cyber diplomacy as an evolving instrument of Indian foreign policy, examining how international legal principles of state sovereignty, non-intervention, and use- of-force doctrines are being reinterpreted in cyberspace. It situates India's position within the contested application of customary international law to cyber operations, engaging with the Tallinn Manual 2.0's attempt to extend jus ad bellum and jus in bello frameworks to state-sponsored cyber activity, and with the International Law Commission's Draft Articles on State Responsibility as applied to cyber attribution. It draws on the International Court of Justice's reasoning in Nicaragua v. United States (1986) and Corfu Channel (1949) to interrogate the threshold for "intervention" and due diligence obligations in the digital domain. On the domestic front, it analyzes landmark Indian jurisprudence shaping cyber governance, including Justice K.S. Puttaswamy v. Union of India (2017) on informational privacy as a facet of sovereignty, Shreya Singhal v. Union of India (2015) on digital speech regulation, and the statutory architecture of the Information Technology Act, 2000 and the Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023. The article further examines India's engagement with the UN Group of Governmental Experts and Open-Ended Working Group processes on responsible state behaviour in cyberspace, absent accession to the Budapest Convention. It argues that India's cyber diplomacy reflects a distinctive legal strategy asserting techno- sovereignty while resisting binding multilateral cyber treaties, and offers a framework for understanding how emerging powers reconcile international legal obligations with strategic autonomy in digital governance.
Keywords: cyber diplomacy, sovereignty, techno-sovereignty, jus ad bellum, attribution, data protection, India, international law.
