India’s Republic Day parade is a popular public spectacle: a display of military hardware, leavened by cheesy floats and folk-dancing troupes. It is also the annual highlight of India’s diplomatic calendar, given New Delhi’s decades-old tradition of inviting a strategically important foreign leader as the parade’s “chief guest”.

When India’s missiles and tanks roll down New Delhi’s Rajpath for this year’s parade tomorrow morning, the VIP dais — graced in recent years by Shinzo Abe, Japan’s prime minister, Barack Obama, the former US president, and Fran?ois Hollande, the former French president — will be heavier than usual.

Rather than a single high-profile foreign dignitary, New Delhi is hosting 10 leaders from the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, a strategically important region with which India is seeking to deepen ties to counter China’s increasing sway. “India does not want an Asia that is dominated by China,” says Dhruva Jaishankar, a fellow at Brookings India, a think-tank. “And a big part of where that will be determined is Southeast Asia.”