Rajnath Singh social media diplomacy was on display again on Friday, when the Defence Minister thanked his Japanese counterpart Shinjiro Koizumi on X for a message of regards that reached New Delhi in the hands of Belgium's Minister of Defence and Foreign Trade, Theo Francken.

Francken had been in Tokyo on 31 August. Three days later he was in New Delhi for bilateral talks with Singh, and he carried the Japanese Defence Minister's greetings with him.

It fits a familiar pattern for the minister. Rajnath Singh's social media diplomacy runs largely through his own X account, in quick, bilingual posts that carry official exchanges straight to the public well ahead of any formal readout.

How this round of Rajnath Singh social media diplomacy played out

Koizumi set out the sequence himself. Meeting Francken in Japan, he had asked the Belgian minister to convey his best wishes to Singh should the Delhi leg of the trip go ahead. Francken did exactly that, and the Indian side acknowledged it in public.

"This is also a product of the exchange between ministers," Koizumi said, thanking both Francken and Singh in a post carrying footage from the New Delhi meeting.

Singh replied the following morning. The message was well received, he said, "and duly reciprocated" during what he described as a highly productive visit by the Belgian minister. He closed by looking ahead to "further strengthening our deep-rooted partnership during my next visit to Japan".

Both ministers posted in two languages, Singh in English and Japanese, Koizumi in Japanese.


Tokyo, 31 August, and a first for Belgium

The Tokyo meeting that started all this ran for roughly 50 minutes on the afternoon of 31 August. It was the first visit to Japan by a Belgian Minister of Defence, and Koizumi opened by congratulating Francken on the 160th anniversary of friendship between the two countries and on Belgium's appointment of its first Defence Attache to Tokyo, according to the Japanese Ministry of Defense readout.

Francken, who holds the foreign trade portfolio alongside defence, told his host he wanted closer work between the two defence industries.

The two ministers recorded a shared view that the security of the Euro Atlantic and the Indo Pacific cannot be separated, and agreed to keep deepening cooperation and exchanges between the two countries. They also restated their opposition to unilateral attempts to change the status quo by force or coercion, and their intent to uphold a free and open international order based on the rule of law.

A milestone year for Tokyo and Brussels

The anniversary has run through the calendar. Emperor Naruhito and Empress Masako made a State Visit to Belgium in June, the first by a reigning Japanese emperor since 1993. Japan's Ministry of Foreign Affairs recorded a reception in Tokyo for Francken on the same day, attended by State Minister for Foreign Affairs Kunimitsu Ayano.


What Francken's Delhi visit produced

The Belgian minister's India programme was a full one. He held bilateral talks with Singh on Thursday, on the sidelines of Prime Minister Narendra Modi's meeting with Belgian Prime Minister Bart De Wever, with the two sides reviewing the spread of defence cooperation between them.

Ten defence industry agreements were signed in New Delhi during the visit, with 15 Belgian companies travelling in the delegation. A separate Defence CEOs Roundtable brought Francken together with Minister of State for Defence Sanjay Seth and a set of Indian and Belgian firms, adding a further tranche of memoranda covering ammunition lines, mine countermeasure toolboxes, rocket assembly, tank electro optics and marine diesel engines.

Rajnath Singh social media diplomacy was not limited to the Koizumi exchange that week. Singh also used the bilateral to raise Pakistan, with Belgium conveying that it would not pursue defence cooperation or extend technological assistance to Islamabad, according to government sources.

https://www.instagram.com/reel/Dc003u7yCH_/


The Japan track Singh returns to

Singh's reference to a next visit sits on a bilateral calendar that was busy well before this week's India Japan Belgium diplomacy. Koizumi was in India himself on 20 August, his first trip to the country as Defence Minister, taking in the Western Naval Command in Mumbai before talks in the capital.

That meeting produced a Memorandum of Arrangement on Maritime Security Cooperation between the Indian Navy and the Japan Maritime Self Defense Force, the first standalone maritime accord between the two. It gives the two navies a structured framework to work through, covering information sharing on maritime domain awareness, along with search and rescue and humanitarian assistance and disaster relief.

The ministers also set up a Working Group at Director General and Joint Secretary level to run cooperation across the operational, intelligence, equipment, technology and industrial domains as one effort rather than as parallel tracks.

The joint press statement issued after those talks records that the two sides concurred on accelerating discussions towards convening the fourth Japan India Foreign and Defence Ministerial Meeting in Tokyo within this year, following the guidance set out in the leaders' joint statement of July 2026.

Japan and India describe the relationship as a Special Strategic and Global Partnership. Belgium, until 31 August, had never sent a defence minister to Tokyo at all.