The internal and external constraints on foreign policy in India: exploring culture and ethnic sensitivities

Abstract

The main argument of this contribution is that the distinction between internal and external is at best blurred and in reality does not make much sense in the case of India’s foreign policy. It may start and end at the border and be determined by negotiations, diplomacy or brute force but there is no conclusive evidence in the literature to decide what determines what. There are important dynamics and interplays across the thin line between the domestic and international spheres, especially in terms of understanding the reciprocal challenges related to how factors of culture and ethnicity relate with the legitimacy of the state. The aim of the paper is to serve four purposes. To unpack and give a critical overview of the debates concerned with the internal and external aspects of India’s foreign policy; to situate the literature dealing more specifically with domestic issues related to culture and ethnicity and outline the main approaches involved; to give an overview of how external factors impact foreign policy conduct and relate to India’s role in defining international norms and regulations; and, finally, to give some theoretical markers, suggestions and concluding remarks.

Keywords:

• Foreign policy
• India
• South Asia
• ethnicity and diaspora

Notes

1. Adeney and Lall, “Institutional Attempts,” 260–1, 263.

2. Malone, Does the Elephant Dance?, 6.

3. Quoted in Mukherjee and Malone, “Polity, Security, and Foreign Policy,” 147.

4. Miller, “India's Feeble Foreign Policy.”

5. Hudson 2008, “The History and Evolution of Foreign Policy Analysis,” 14 in Smith et al. 2012, Foreign Policy: Theories, Actors, Case, 13–34.

6. Rosenau, “Pre-Theories and Theories of Foreign Policy”; Rosenau, “Roles and Role Scenarios”; Holsti “National Role Conception.”

7. Mohan, Making of Indian Foreign Policy; Mohan, “Re-making of Indian Foreign Policy,” 148.

8. Kumaraswamy, Security Beyond Survival, 29.

9. Subrahmanyam, “Grand Strategy.” 5.

10. Hiro, Longest August.

11. Adeney and Lall, “Institutional Attempts,” 264.

12. Ibid., 271.

13. Carlsnaes, “Foreign Policy,” 335.

14. Hill, Changing Politics of Foreign Policy, 3.

15. Gujral, Foreign Policy for India.

16. Kronstadt, India: Domestic Issues.

17. Mohan, “Re-making of Indian Foreign Policy,” 155.

18. Rosato, “Flawed Logic of Democratic Peace Theory,” 589.

19. Caprioli and Trombore, “Human Rights Rogues,” 132.

20. Özdamar and Akbaba, “Religious Discrimination and International Crises,” 415 and 417.

21. Mohan, “Re-making of Indian Foreign Policy,” 2.

22. Karnad, Bharat Karnad at CNAS/GWU Conference; Schmidt, “Asia-Pacific Strategic Triangle,” 215.

23. Pai, Paradox of Proximity.

24. Kautiliya argued that neighbours are often enemies and such enemies often seek to balance their enemies with powerful friends in more distant places; Gordon, Nation, Neighborhood, and Region, xxx.

25. Routray, National Security Decision-making in India, 8.

26. Mohan, “Re-making of Indian Foreign Policy,” 156.

27. Gordon, Nation, Neighborhood, and Region, 156.

28. Tellis, Nonalignment Redux.

29. Khilnani et al. 2012, Nonaligment 2.0, 16.

30. Hindustan Times, 17 November 2006.

31. Khilnani et al., Nonalignment 2.0, 44.

32. Gordon, Nation, Neighborhood, and Region, 81.

33. Basrur, “Paradigm Shift,” 169.

34. Pai, “India and International Norms,” 306.

35. Mohan, Crossing the Rubicon; Pant, China Syndrome.

36. Appadurai, Modernity at Large, 110–2; Behera, “International Relations in South Asia,” 14.

37. Appadurai, Domestic Roots.

38. Katzenstein, Culture of National Security.

39. Wendt, “Collective Identity Formation”; Wendt, Social Theory of International Politics.

40. Smith, India's Identity and its Global Aspirations, 371.

41. Beasley et al., Foreign Policy in Comparative Perspective, 333–6.

42. Sharma, “India and East Asia.”

43. Khandekar, “Modi’s Foreign Policy Mantra.”

44. Ogden, Indian Foreign Policy, 4.

45. Hiro, Longest August.