The making of Indian diplomacy: a critique of Eurocentrism (original) (raw)

CARING FOR INDIA: POSTCOLONIAL DIPLOMACY, HERMENEUTICS, VIOLENCE

India’s top diplomat, who became National Security Advisor (NSA) and is a third generation member of the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA), stated ‘strategic discourse is not yet developed enough to describe what we face as reality around us. The use of concepts from other situations and interests bear little relationship to our unique circumstance. We need to develop our own concepts.’ (Menon 2007). Implicit in the explicit call to rethink International Relations (IR, the discipline) for Indian reality, is the denial of universal concepts. The import is astounding, for undermined is the story of how European diplomacy became diplomacy and the general narrative it arises from: modernity and modernization. Patently, there is something else which makes for two investigative possibilities: dismissal which amounts to a charge of either trickery or insanity, or taking him at his word and probing. Even if at issue is the minor one of his morality, determining it requires examining him. Following him into the proverbial rabbit hole then, is unavoidable. To do so is to map the Anglosphere’s substance and limits, and to exceed them, by engaging the postcolonial not only as a temporal and spatial entity, but also capable of politics. Evidently politics is manifest in everyday practices and to interpret them in terms of practitioners, might reveal Indian politics to be generated by a rationality altogether different. Precisely that makes Henry Kissinger list the multitude of ways in which Indians are Westernised, but to bemoan: ‘Americans have great difficulty in coming to grips with the way Indian leaders approach foreign policy’ (2001: 154).

The Forgotten History of Indian International Relations

Observer Research Foundation

Indian International Relations (IR) is commonly presented as merely a derivative of 'western' disciplinary traditions in Europe and North America. This obscures the vast body of work on political science and international thought that emerged from the beginning of the 20th century amongst South Asian intellectuals, scholars, and activists. This forgotten history forces a reappraisal of the origins, purpose, and vitality of IR in South Asia at this time, revealing a discipline that expanded the purview of IR, offering powerful anti-imperial visions of world order after empire, and establishing the foundations for an independent Indian foreign policy. Contemporary scholars and analysts of Indian international affairs should take note.

INDIA'S INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS: GLORY

What is speaking of an 'Indian' way to deal with universal issues? Indian International Relations (IR) is regularly introduced as simply a subsidiary of 'western' disciplinary conventions in Europe and North America. This darkens the immense group of work on political science and worldwide suspected that rose up out of the start of the twentieth century among South Asian erudite people, researchers, and activists. This overlooked history powers a reappraisal of the sources, reason, and essentialness of IR in South Asia right now, uncovering a train that extended the domain of IR, offering groundbreaking hostile to magnificent dreams of world request after realm, and setting up the establishments for a free Indian foreign policy. Contemporary researchers and experts of Indian universal undertakings should observe.

Exceptionalism in Indian Diplomacy: The Origins of India's Moral Leadership Aspirations (South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies, 2014)

South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies, 2014

Indian diplomacy has often been accused of carrying a ‘moralising tone’. This article examines the roots of ideas of exceptionalism in Indian diplomacy, particularly those centring on India's moral leadership aspirations. By exploring the discourses, identities and institutions that shaped Indian diplomacy and diplomatic institutions in the decades before and after Independence, it shows how Indian diplomats drew lines of comparison between their nation and others, understood India's global standing, and conceived of special moral responsibilities for India in world politics. Since moral leadership aspirations persist as a component of Indian foreign policy today, a historical and institutional analysis of diplomatic self-understandings can be of contemporary relevance to scholars and practitioners seeking to understand India's increasingly influential global role.

Threads of Indian Foreign Policy Down The Ages

Integrated Journal for Research in Arts and Humanities

India has witnessed transformation and transition in foreign policy and diplomacy from Ancient Vedic Period till today. But the conceptualization of Bharatvarsha and later India has impacted formulation of foreign policy and diplomacy during the course of civilization of India. There was change in approach from war oriented policy to peace and trade oriented policy. This paper attempts to bring the journey of transition, transformation, innovation and ideation of foreign policy and diplomacy based on changing socio-political, socio-cultural and socio-economic dynamics of Indian civilizational discourse.

Liberal, Liminal and Lost: India's First Diplomats and the Narrative of Foreign Policy

Indian historiography has largely overlooked the contribution of Indian Liberals in the pre-independence era. It is worse in Indian diplomatic history where studies on pre-independence are few and far between. Responding to this double excision, this article traces the emergence of a new Indian narrative of foreign policy around the issues of equality and justice in the immediate aftermath of the First World War. Anchoring their argumentativeness in diplomatic finesse, Indian Liberals such as Satyendra Sinha, VS Srinivasa Sastri and Tej Bahadur Sapru relentlessly campaigned for racial equality and predominance of the rights of people over the rights of states at the Imperial Conferences. In articulation of these views, South Africa, a country where ideas about the status of Indians and Indian civilisation were most contested, emerged as the singular foreign policy 'other' around which India's foreign policy narrative was constructed.

Beyond Eurocentrism: Kautilya’s realism and India’s regional diplomacy

Humanities and Social Sciences Communications

The article is a modest attempt to deparochialize Eurocentrism embedded within the discipline of International Relations by examining Kautilya and his Arthashastra. Kautilya’s text serves as a potent non-Western theoretical and conceptual reservoir to engage with and thereby to interrogate the Eurocentric realist tradition. The subject matter of Arthashastra precisely earns him the title of ‘first great political realist’ because much of the bedrock assumptions of realism that Europe came to know very late, Kautilya had in ancient India grasped them. Therefore, his Arthasastran realism offers an indigenous theoretical toolkit to examine India’s strategic culture. In fact, Kautilya’s realism is there in the DNA of India’s strategic culture and has been the default strategy for South Asia as India still perceives the region through the historical sub-continental prism. Nevertheless, its application varied across leadership. However, the rise of Modi had revitalized the dynamic of Arth...