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Abstract
In recent years, concerns over whether the humanitarian regime as we know it will survive a many-pronged challenge have spurred humanitarian organisations to embark on processes of soul-searching and innovation. With a steadily increasing aid budget and its more active and vocal role in development and humanitarian politics—and in global politics more generally—India has acquired the label of ‘emerging’ humanitarian actor. This article, however, shows that in many ways India has been a humanitarian pioneer, and connects the norms and values of the international humanitarian regime with India’s own philosophical, religious and democratic traditions. It also discusses how Indian policy-makers have critiqued the current United Nations-led international humanitarian regime and investigates how the government of an increasingly powerful and influential Commonwealth country from the South interacts with an international regime created in Europe. For many Indian policy-makers, current humanitarian practices are tainted by what they see as North American and European interventionist and highly political agendas in the South. The article concludes that while there is still a lot to be said for a global, multilateral humanitarian regime led by the United Nations, it need not be Western-biased, either in theory or in practice.
Notes
1. A graphic overview of the European Commission’s humanitarian assistance in the aftermath of the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami can be found at http://ec.europa.eu/echo/files/map/20141217_ECHO_2004-2014_Indian_Ocean_Tsunami.png, accessed 15 April 2015.
2. Bass (Citation2013) provides a vivid account of this fraught relationship between the Indian government and the US Administration during the 1971 war in East Pakistan.
3. The Global Humanitarian Assistance website provides an overview of India’s humanitarian contributions, http://www.globalhumanitarianassistance.org/countryprofile/india#tab-home, accessed 15 April 2015.
4. This article was written before India's large-scale relief effort in the aftermath of the Nepal earthquake of 25 April 2015. The Indian relief effort was significant in its size and reach, but also in the debate it engendered in both Nepali and Indian media of perceived Indian high-handedness towards the Nepali government and victims.