49neighbourhood. Thus, though both were members of the NAM, their
understanding of non-alignment and role of external players in the region
differed considerably.
Since the early 1960s the politico-diplomatic power asymmetry was
shifting in favour of Saudi Arabia. If the Sino-Indian conflict exposed
India’s security limitations, the oil crisis underscored its economic vulner-
ability. Around the same time, the defeat in June War and the sudden flow
of wealth in the 1970s transformed the Saudi political status. The oil
wealth and its traditional Islam-centric power projection resulted in the
Kingdom exercising a greater influence. Oil wealth and pan-Islamism pre-
sented Saudi Arabia as a far greater power vis-à-vis India and this asym-
metry prevented the latter from dealing with the Kingdom on an equal
footing. And this equation would continue to haunt New Delhi until the
late 1990s when economic reforms began to bear fruits and brought about
a relative power balance.
The limited political engagement and interest convergence came against
the backdrop of a greater social convergence in the form of Islamic link-
ages between the two. The centuries of people-to-people contacts flour-
ished despite political differences between the two and could have become
the basis for greater synergy between the two.
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DRIFTING APART