By Dr. Shadab Ahmed
Since its national inception and the establishment as a nation more than 50 years ago, India seemed poised on two radically different trajectories – development or collapse. When the spectre of collapse passed away, India established her foot firmly in civilizational inheritance, emerging as a robust regional South Asian power. Despite decades of western neglect and misunderstandings, India gained a reputation as a solid middle power in global geopolitics, before her induction into the nuclear club consolidated herself as a rising power, if not an aspiring major power.
The Indian leaders and policy makers over the decades have evolved India's strategic foreign policy incorporating philosophical traditions from a number of assimilated religions and military traditions from the great Hindu epics, Ramayana and Mahabharata, as well as Arthashastra, an extraordinary treatise on diplomacy and statecraft written during the Mauryan period in the 4th century BCE. India's strategic foreign policy hence, evolved over three distinct vantage points:
(1) Nehruvianism – remarkably against Hindu nationalism and realpolitik, distinguished by India's post-colonial non-alignment policy and restrained international behaviour, where on one hand India wanted to preserve her autonomy but was careful and cautious in the use of her military power. She steadily modernized and militarized, retaining her strategic restraint but building up a credible nuclear deterrence, nuclear triad capabilities and technologizing her sky wing, battery and brigades. She was careful to reject overly effusive Western overtures, though retained her credibility within the United Nations framework.
(2) Neoliberalism – with an emphasis on economic interactions and mutual gains, when India faced a sudden balance of payments crisis. Though a drift towards liberalization had started since 1980's, India’s tryst with transformative neoliberalism – the economic skeleton that delineates market fundamentalism, but uses the state to engineer a redistribution of income and assets in favour of finance capital and big businesses started in the 1990's. Prior to liberalization, India had a dirigiste regime where the economy had high levels of protection from foreign goods, controls over cross-border capital flows, state support for the petty production including agriculture, and a significant public sector. India successfully managed to economically decolonize herself and pushed her orbit to deregulation, privatization and globalization.
(3) Hyper-Realism – a pragmatic and cynical approach that emphasizes national interests and power, often at the expense of idealism or moral considerations. This approach recognizes the realities of international relations, where power and self-preservation are paramount. This Indian shift away from the Nehruvian emphasis on non-alignment and pacifism reflected her emergent realist diplomatic approach that the world is a power-based system, and India must evolve herself strategically due to security pressures from the international and regional alliance systems in geopolitics. The Indian realism puts India's military power at the centre of the diplomatic philosophy – both as a defensive strategy for survival and an offensive strategy for power maximization. Military strength has helped India acquire the status of a regional hegemon in South Asia and acts as a significant unit in today’s multipolar world.
Indian diplomacy is often noted to be adept in nature. The present Modi government’s proclivity for strategic autonomy over non-alignment through engagement with all poles of influence in the international political and diplomatic system indicates the continuation of elements of Nehruvianism. The push to attract foreign investments to facilitate India’s economic and financial development demonstrates the streaks of neoliberalism. The emphasis on "internal balancing" by strengthening, revamping and modernizing the capabilities of the military, and "external balancing" through working diplomatically with states and countries with a history of difficult relations, shows the persistence of hyper-realism in India's foreign policy.
India is a reformist rather than a revisionist power. She seeks more recognition on the global order and wants placid changes to the international system but not through turbulent means, instead she sees herself as an indispensable bridge between the collective Western hemisphere and the Global South meridian. Her blueprint for her resurgent identity is not through anti-Western egocentrism, but through non-Western altruism. She has a view on heterogeneous economies, multiracialism and pluralistic societies, and multifaceted international law. She is the architect in emerging regional and global initiatives. New Delhi has thus referred to itself as a Vishwamitra (friend to the world). This view is reflected in India's ambition to become Viksit Bharat (Developed India).
(Dr Shadab Ahmed is an Oral and Maxillofacial Surgeon, acclaimed Columnist and author, renowned for his insightful writings on Indian History, Geopolitics and Ethnic Culture)
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