Canberra and New Delhi's relationship is flourishing, with a shared wariness of Beijing's aggression prompting closer cooperation on security.
Both Australia and India last year recommitted to the Quad partnership (along with Japan and the United States) to support an "open, resilient and inclusive region".
Prime Minister Scott Morrison has described India's leader Narendra Modi as a "dear friend" and highlighted the exchange of vaccines and ventilators between the two countries during the pandemic.
Meanwhile, the head of the Australia-India Institute, Lisa Singh, described 2021 as the year the two countries' relationship soared "to unthinkable new heights".
But who exactly is Australia wooing?
His critics say Mr Modi is steering India down an illiberal path, stoking religious tensions and undermining democratic institutions.
Last year, US-based non-profit Freedom House downgraded India from a free democracy to a "partially free democracy".
But Mr Modi's supporters argue he's up-ending a political system rife with corruption and restoring democracy, not eroding it.
They say he is a champion of the poor, ushering in a new era of economic development that will benefit all — regardless of class, caste or religion.
Whether you support him or not, most experts agree his leadership has been transformational.
So, as India ushers in its 75th year of independence, we take a look at how Mr Modi is reshaping the country.
'For the common people… he has delivered'
In 2014, India's political landscape underwent a seismic shift.
The Nehru-Gandhi familial dynasty, which had dominated the country's politics since independence, had been dethroned — a new leader had swept to power in a stunning election victory.
Mr Modi and his Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) achieved a majority in parliament at the national elections, the first time any party had done so in decades.
Election analyst Sanjay Kumar says Mr Modi modelled himself as a modernising technocrat — someone who would prioritise development and uplift the poor.
The ruling Congress party meanwhile was perceived as corrupt, sclerotic and nepotistic.
"2014 changed everything in Indian politics… the BJP made huge inroads in rural areas, among the downtrodden, marginal sections of society," Professor Kumar says.
Mr Modi promised he would transform India's economy — as he had done in the state of Gujarat where he was previously chief minister.
But even with a thumping mandate, enacting his ambitious vision to alleviate poverty has proved challenging — and controversial.
Since he came to power, India's overall growth has not changed dramatically and has by some measures slowed since 2014.
Designed to quash India's black market and combat tax evasion, the ill-fated attempt in 2016 to remove much of the nation's hard currency was considered by many to be disastrous.
Pradeep Taneja, senior lecturer in Asian Politics at the University of Melbourne, says it "failed".
"It created a lot of suffering for a lot of people, a lot of poor people," Dr Taneja says.
Some of Mr Modi's other policies aimed at uplifting the poor have fared better.
A toilet building campaign has, according to the government, built 110 million toilets for 600 million people — an astonishing feat Mr Modi says means India is "open-defecation free".
Delhi-based political analyst Manisha Priyam says "for the common people, he has delivered".
"The delivery of cooking gas, rural housing construction… amongst the poorer castes, especially women, there have been direct benefits," Dr Priyam says.
According to the roads ministry, Mr Modi's government has also built an average of 25 kilometres of road every single day — almost three times more than was built under the previous government.
'There is anger brewing'
Perhaps Mr Modi's most ambitious — and controversial — economic reforms were the much maligned proposals to change agriculture laws.
The laws would have loosened up rules around the sale, pricing and storage of farm produce — something Mr Modi and his government say would benefit farmers.
According to the United Nations, just under 60 per cent of Indians are employed in agriculture, but the sector produces only 23 per cent of the country's GDP.
Professor Taneja says that's an imbalance Mr Modi is seeking to rectify.
"As a political economist, I think these policies could have actually made Indian agriculture more productive," he says.
But instead, the proposals sparked a widespread, and sometimes violent, protest movement from farmers who argued the laws would expose them to the free market and make them poorer.
Late last year, Mr Modi backed down.
With a key state election looming in Uttar Pradesh, India's most populous state and a BJP heartland, Professor Kumar thinks electoral politics swayed the decision.
"I think the government started sensing that there is anger brewing, the BJP was going to suffer badly," he says.
Nonetheless, Professor Kumar says other issues, like questionable pandemic management, haven't appeared to dent the Prime Minister's popularity.
According to Professor Kumar, a lot of Indians still believe in the promise of economic reform — and they're buying into Mr Modi and the BJP's Hindu-nationalist agenda.
"This 'Hindu-first' agenda has penetrated the minds of lots of Indians… it has attracted a lot of voters towards the BJP," he says.
The BJP and Mr Modi have long appealed to Hindu-nationalists by championing Hindu causes and promoting a Hindu-centric identity.
But in a country where religious and ethnic tensions have always existed, there are signs that agenda is fraying India's fragile social fabric — and having a dramatic impact on Indian society.
'Hindus are finally being able to get their dignity back'
India is a nation teeming with identities — religion, ethnicity, language and caste.
Hindus make up about 80 per cent of the population, but India also has the second biggest Muslim population of any country, and there are significant numbers of Christians, Sikhs, Jains and Buddhists.
The country's secular constitution — devised after independence from the UK — was designed to provide equality under the law for all religions and ethnicities.
But some worry Mr Modi and his party are mining religious fault lines for political gain — coalescing the Hindu majority against minorities.
Journalist and Modi biographer Nilanjan Mukhopadhyay says behind the image of a modernising reformer, Mr Modi's past as a proponent of Hindu-nationalism has always loomed large.
Mr Mukhopadhyay says Mr Modi's political character was shaped during his time with an organisation called Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) in his youth.
"It's a group that believes in the principle of Hindu dominance and asserting Hindu identity," he says.
Mr Modi worked with the group for years in his youth, and it is often described as the ideological fountainhead of the BJP.
When religious riots engulfed the state of Gujarat in 2002 during Modi's tenure as chief minister, he was accused of doing little to stem the violence and his complicity in the events has long been debated.
Two decades since those riots, Mr Modi and his political party continue to be torch-bearers of the Hindu-nationalist movement.
Since coming to power, he and his party have renamed several streets, towns and landmarks — removing Islamic names and replacing them with Hindu-centric ones.
After a long-drawn Supreme Court battle, the government has sanctioned the construction of a Hindu temple on the site of the Babri mosque — infamously destroyed by a mob of Hindu activists in 1992.
There have been challenges to interfaith marriages too, and a recent hijab ban at some schools in southern India has led to protests and violent clashes.
But some argue that Mr Modi has also worked for the welfare of the Muslim community when his government criminalised "triple talaq" — a form of Islamic divorce — in 2019 and brought in a reform to allow Muslim women to travel for Hajj without a male companion.
'It probably feels extremely threatening to be a minority'
A 2019 citizenship amendment is often touted as a naked example of Mr Modi's discrimination.
The law grants citizenship to unregistered residents from Pakistan, Afghanistan and Bangladesh — all religions are welcome except Muslims.
Mr Modi and the BJP argue because the three nations included are Islamic, the law is needed to protect Hindus and other minorities there from persecution.
The amendment provoked unrest, and Mr Modi was criticised for remaining silent for nearly three days as anti-Muslim riots left 53 people dead in the capital New Delhi in 2020.
BJP ministers have also met with — and financially supported — people convicted of lynching Muslims.
The head of the BJP's foreign office, Vijay Chauthaiwale, acknowledges that the violence, and any support of it, is unacceptable.
"[Hindu-Muslim relations] are a systemic issue in India… politicians do fall prey to it," he says.
"We would like to have much more harmonious relations between all communities."
He also denies that the BJP is a Hindu-nationalist party.
"Show me one instance where the government's development agenda has discriminated on the basis of caste or religion… there is no such example," he says.
"There is absolutely no question India is secular in its tradition and heritage… the BJP fully adheres to the principles of secularism in that context."
Meenakshi Ganguly, the South Asia director at Human Rights Watch, says that while Mr Modi's government may not be directly responsible for violence, it's nurturing an environment that condones it.
"When there's a political movement that is majoritarian, it does give opportunity for others to then act against minority groups," she says.
'The effect on speech has been chilling'
Mr Modi rarely speaks to the press — and he never holds press conferences.
Critics say this distrust of the media at the top has cascaded down.
Reporters Without Borders put India at 142nd among 180 countries in the 2021 World Press Freedom Index and called Mr Modi a "predator" of press freedom.
Mostly in BJP-ruled states, journalists have been charged with sedition for rudimentary reporting perceived to be anti-government — and recent protests over the citizenship law saw a wave of arrests against dissidents.
In May last year, after throwing out a case against two protesters, the Delhi High Court said: "The line between the constitutionally guaranteed right to protest and terrorist activity seems to be getting somewhat blurred."
India also has the most internet shutdowns of any nation.
When Mr Modi's government controversially withdrew the autonomy of India's only Muslim-majority state — Kashmir — in 2019, this tactic was frequently applied.
Ms Ganguly laments the impact of these draconian measures and says they have had "a chilling effect on the freedom of speech".
"There is a real challenge to the Constitution right now," she says.
"The most fundamental freedoms of the right to speech, the right to expression, right to association, are all being challenged."
'India has a very long tradition of democracy'
So what would an illiberal trend mean for Australia's relationship with India?
Former Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade secretary and high commissioner to India, Peter Varghese, says Australia should stand up for human rights in all contexts.
"It's right and proper that we raise that and to the extent that we have concerns about what's happening in India, I'm sure we can find appropriate ways to raise those as well."
Mr Varghese also thinks it's far too early to be writing off India's democracy.
"India has a very long tradition of democracy, but it has also been a democracy which, in the past, has been sorely tested," he says.
"The point I would make is that there's nothing wrong with Indian democracy that can't be fixed by what's right with Indian democracy."
Editor's note 30/03/22: This story has been updated to clarify the decision on the Babri mosque site was made by the Supreme court and that the criminalisation of the triple talaq was not related to the Hindu-nationalist movement.
