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Hogwash. The Himalayas form a powerful shield but they're really only an extreme barrier to the northeast. To the east is SE Asia which Indian states rarely bothered with, which stands in contrast to China's centuries of bashing on Vietnam. Invasions from the northwest happened several times (Alexander, Mongols, Ghurids, Timurids, Mughals) while invasions from Indian nations rarely happened in the reverse direction, and when they did they didn't go far. Finally, in the south was the rich trade of the Indian Ocean. If the Greeks and the Vikings could send colonists and military expeditions hundreds or thousands of miles from their original homeland, then the technology certainly existed for India to do something similar, at least more than just Chola.
Because an emboldened China would presumably be bad news for India. One could ask why Poland and the Baltics are sending every gun and tank they can spare to Ukraine, but I'd say the reasoning is pretty obvious. Yet those countries have Article 5 to fall back on if Ukraine collapses, while India has nothing similar. China still claims hundreds of square miles of Indian land in the Northeast, and border disputes flare up pretty frequently these days. India has a vested interest in seeing Chinese revanchism flame out in Taiwan rather than on its own territory, either in the Northeast or by a China-Pakistan alliance doing something in Kashmir.
This is a non-answer.
"Why isn't India more geopolitically active?"
"Because it's government doesn't want to be. "
"Why not?"
"Because it doesn't think it would gain much"
"Why not?"
If the response is that India is perfectly content to free-ride on Pax Americana, that explanation goes out the window when China seeks to explicitly overthrow that order and bring about a Chinese Century.
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