India's Identity and its Global Aspirations

Abstract

This article engages with the question whether India's identity predisposes it to playing a specific international role, in particular one which promotes the redistribution of power and wealth in the international system. This is done by exploring emerging and competing identity constructions and perspectives on the role that India should play in the world. It is argued that the liberal or pragmatic view, which advocates working within the prevailing global order and integration with the global economy in order to advance India's economic performance, is currently dominant. At the same time, however, it is contended that India has numerous identities that are not necessarily mutually exclusive, and which lead to what has been called India's foreign policy ambiguity. Four possible explanations for this ambiguity are proposed, namely: mimicry versus differentiation; reluctant radicalism; strategic moral posturing; and differentiation across issue areas. The article concludes that the Indian state is predominantly concerned about its own position in the global order, and less so about the plight of the developing world, but that global redistribution may well be a by-product of India's foreign policy.

Notes

*This article was first presented as a paper at the GIGA Regional Powers Network Workshop on Emerging Regional Powers and Global Redistribution, Stellenbosch, 6–7 September 2010. The author, Karen Smith, would like to thank Dirk Nabers, Philip Nel and two anonymous reviewers for their valuable comments. Karen is a senior lecturer in the Department of Political Studies at the University of Cape Town.

1. For an overview of India's foreign policy, see the following: Sumit Ganguly (ed.), India's Foreign Policy: Retrospect and Prospect (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2010); V.P. Dutt, India's Foreign Policy Since Independence (New Delhi: National Book Trust, 2007); Stephen Philip Cohen, Emerging Power India (Washington DC: Brookings Institution Press, 2002). For a fascinating exploration of the changing nature of the identity, or what he calls the “idea of India”, by means of a historical perspective, see Sunil Khilnani, The Idea of India (New York: Farrar, Strauss and Giroux, 1999).

2. Ted Hopf, “The Promise of Constructivism in International Relations Theory”, International Security, Vol. 23, No. 1 (1998), p. 175.

3. Sankaran Krishna, Postcolonial Insecurities: India, Sri Lanka, and the Question of Nationhood (Minneapolis: University of Minneapolis Press, 1999), p. 4.

4. Yosef Lapid and Friedrich Kratochwil (eds.), The Return of Culture and Identity in IR Theory (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 1997).

5. Rawi Abdelal, Yoshiko M. Herrera, Alastair Iain Johnston and Rose McDermott, “Identity as a Variable”, Perspectives on Politics, Vol. 4, No. 4 (2006), p. 698.

6. For useful discussions of identity and how it is used in the social sciences, see James Fearon, “What is Identity (as we now use the word)?”, Unpublished paper (Stanford University, 1999) available: <http://www.stanford.edu/~jfearon/papers/iden1v2.pdf> (accessed 5 December 2010); Abdelal, Herrera, Johnston and McDermott, op. cit., pp. 695–711.

7. Jutta Weldes, Constructing National Interests: The United States and the Cuban Missile Crisis (Minneapolis: University Minnesota Press, 1999), p. 7.

8. Peter Katzenstein (ed.), The Culture of National Security: Norms and Identity in World Politics (New York: Columbia University Press, 1996).

9. Hopf, op. cit.

10. Alexander Wendt, Social Theory of International Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999); Alexander Wendt, “Collective Identity Formation and the International State”, American Political Science Review, Vol. 88, No. 2 (1994), pp. 384–396.

11. Although an important topic, this will not be the focus of this paper.

12. Khilnani, op. cit., p. 2.

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14. Gitika Commuri, Indian Identity Narratives and the Politics of Security (New Delhi: SAGE, 2010).

15. Cohen, op. cit., p. 34.

16. For a detailed analysis of how Indian civilization was constructed both by Western and Indian thinkers, see Priya Chacko, Indian Foreign Policy and the Ambivalence of Postcolonial Modernity, unpublished doctoral dissertation, (Adelaide: University of Adelaide, 2007).

17. Cohen, op. cit., p. 8.

18. For an excellent overview of India's aspiration and rise to major power status, see Baldev Raj Nayar and T.V. Paul, India in the World Order: Searching for Major Power Status (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003).

19. Stephen Cohen, “India Rising”, The Wilson Quarterly, Vol. 24, No. 3 (2000), p. 46.

20. I would like to thank Vineet Thakur for introducing me to the scholars I refer to here.

21. See Rajiv Sikri, “Mahatma Gandhi's Influence on India's Foreign Policy”, in I. Ahmed, R. Sikri, D.M. Nachane and P.N. Mukherji (eds.), The Legacy of Gandhi: A 21st Century Perspective (Singapore: Institute of South Asian Studies, 2008), available: http://www.isn.ethz.ch/isn/Current-Affairs/Security-Watch/Detail/?ots591=0c54e3b3-1e9c-be1e-2c24-a6a8c7060233&lng=en&id=46805 (accessed 18 June 2010).

22. Krishna, op. cit., p. 14.

23. Sikri, op. cit., p. 11.

24. Nayar and Paul, op. cit., also identify various non-material constraints on India's aspiration to achieve great power status, including the legacy of non-violence and resistance to becoming involved in power politics, as well as the perceptions of India held by the West and based in orientalist cultural stereotypes.

25. Deepa Ollapally, “New Discourses on India as an Economic Power”, Paper presented at the Institute of Peace and Conflict Studies, New Delhi, India, 4 January 2010.

26. See, for example, Nayar and Paul, op. cit.

27. Future Strategic Balances and Alliances (Carlisle, PA: Strategic Studies Institute, 2002), pp. 245–303.

28. Cohen, Emerging Power India, op. cit.

29. Ollapally, op. cit.

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31. See the BJP's website for a treatise on “Hindutva: The Great Nationalist Ideology”, <http://www.bjp.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=369:hindutva-the-greatnationalist-ideology&catid=92&Itemid=501>.

32. Quoted in Cohen, Emerging Power India, op. cit., p. 50.

33. Sagar, op. cit., p. 802.

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38. Pranab Mukherjee, “Shaping India's Foreign Policy to its Rightful Place in the Comity of Nations”, Address at the Defence Services Staff College, Wellington, 22 January 2008, in Bhasin, Avtar Singh (ed.), India's Foreign Relations—2008 Documents (New Delhi: Geetika Publishers, 2009), pp. 47–52.

36. Sagar, op. cit., p. 813.

37. Manmohan Singh, Statement by Prime Minister at Asian-African Conference, 23 April 2005, available: <http://www.mea.gov.in/mystart.php?id=53019413> (accessed 5 September 2011).

39. L. Mansingh, D. Lahiri, J.N. Dixit, B.S. Gupta, S. Singh and A. Sajjanhar (eds.), Indian Foreign Policy Agenda for the 21st Century, Vol. 1 (New Delhi: Foreign Service Institute, 1997).

40. B. Bhattacharyya, “India's Foreign Economic Policy: Evolving Context and Tasks”, in Mansingh et al,(eds.), Indian Foreign Policy Agenda, op. cit., p. 218.

41. Ibid.

42. P.M.S. Malik, “The Changing Face of India's Economic Diplomacy: The Role of the Ministry of External Affairs”, in Mansingh et al. (eds.), Indian Foreign Policy Agenda, op. cit.

43. These discussions took place in December 2010 in Delhi. I would especially like to thank Siddharth Mallavarapu, Vineet Thakur, Samir Saran, and Chris Miller for their valuable inputs.

44. Bhikhu Parekh, “Defining India's Identity: An Alternate Vision”, Mainstream, Vol. XLV, No. 39, (2007), available: <http://www.mainstreamweekly.net/article320.html> (accessed 10 June 2010).

45. Nirupama Rao, “Key Priorities for India's Foreign Policy”, Address at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, 27 June 2011, available: <http://meaindia.nic.in/mystart.php?id=530115731> (accessed 5 August, 2011).

46. S.M. Krishna, Inaugural Address by the External Affairs Minister at the India—Least Developed Countries Ministerial Conference, New Dehli, 18 February 2011, available: <http://www.mea.gov.in/mystart.php?id=530117194> (accessed 28 July 2010).

47. Andrew Hurrell, “Hegemony, Liberalism and Global Order: What Space for would-be Great Powers?”, International Affairs, Vol. 82, No. 1 (2006), p. 19.

48. Partha Chatterjee, Nationalist Thought and the Colonial World—A Derivative Discourse (London: Zed Books, 1986).

49. Chacko, op. cit., p. 10.

50. See Ashis Nandy, The Intimate Enemy: Loss and Recovery of Self under Colonialism (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1983).

51. Ibid., p. 127.

52. Ibid., pp. 125–126.

53. Ravi Arvind Palat, “A New Bandung? Economic Growth vs. Distributive Justice among Emerging Powers”, Futures, Vol. 40 (2008), pp. 721–734.

54. Bhupinder Brar, “State, Civil Society, Nation, Nonalignment: Discourses of Freedom and Foreign Policy in India”, in K. Bajpai and S. Mallavarapu (eds.), International Relations in India – Theorising the Region and Nation (New Delhi: Orient Longman, 2005), p. 207.

55. See, for example, Robert Cox, “Middlepowermanship: Japan and the Future of World Order”, in R. Cox and T. Sinclair (eds.), Approaches to World Order (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), pp. 241–275; Eduard Jordaan, “The Concept of a Middle Power in International Relations: Distinguishing between Emerging and Traditional Middle Powers”, Politikon, Vol. 30, No. 2 (2003), pp.165–181; and Janis van der Westhuizen, “South Africa's Emergence as a Middle Power”, Third World Quarterly, Vol. 19, No. 3 (1998), pp. 435–455.

56. Amrita Narlikar, “Peculiar Chauvinism or Strategic Calculation? Explaining the Negotiating Strategy of a Rising India”, International Affairs, Vol. 82, No. 1 (2006), p. 60.

57. David Black and Zoe Wilson, “Rights, region, and identity: Interpreting the Ambiguities of South Africa's Regional Human Rights Role”, Politikon, Vol. 31, No. 1 (2004), p. 33.

58. Currently, two-thirds of India's population is under 35, see Nivedita Mukherjee “Raring to Grow”, India Today (23 August 2010), available: <http://indiatoday.intoday.in/site/Story/113791/Top> (accessed 2 September 2010).

59. Cohen, Emerging Power India, op. cit., p. 37.

60. Quoted in James Lamont, “India: The Loom of Youth”, Financial Times (10 May 2010), available: <http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/8aefdf1e-5c68-11df-93f6-00144feab49a,s01=1.html> (accessed 30 July 2010).

61. Ibid.

64. Sikri, op. cit.

62. Narlikar, “Peculiar Chauvinism”, op. cit., p. 75.

63. Amrita Narlikar, “All That Glitters is Not Gold: India's Rise to Power”, Third World Quarterly, Vol. 28, No. 5 (2007), p. 989.

65. Sagar, op. cit., pp. 805–806.

66. Palat, op. cit., p. 729.

67. Nirupama Rao, “India's Global Role”, Address by Foreign Secretary at Harvard, 20 September 2010, available: <http://meaindia.nic.in/mystart.php?id=530116512> (accessed 5 August 2011).

68. Nirupama Rao, “Key Priorities for India's Foreign Policy” Address at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, 27 June 2011, available: <http://meaindia.nic.in/mystart.php?id=530115731> (accessed 5 August 2011).

69. Amrita Narlikar, “India and the World Trade Organisation”, in S. Smith, A. Hadfield and T. Dunne (eds.) Foreign Policy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), pp. 269–284.

70. Ibid., p. 271.

71. Ibid.

72. Ibid., p. 281.

73. Narlikar, “Peculiar Chauvinism”, op. cit., p. 74.

74. Ibid.

75. Sumit Ganguly, “India's Foreign Policy: Retrospect and Prospect” (n.d.), available: <http://www.ufmg.br/cei/wpcontent/uploads/indianforeignpolicy_ganguly.doc> (accessed 12 June 2010).

76. Subrata K. Mitra and Jivanta Schöttli, “The New Dynamics of Indian Foreign Policy and Its Ambiguities”, Irish Studies in International Affairs, Vol. 18 (2007), p. 20.

77. Cohen, Emerging Power India, op. cit., p. 63.