More than half a century ago, India’s first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru, when asked about India’s role in the international sphere, stated that considering India’s civilizational heritage it can either be a major player or perish. He was confident that between these two extremes; there was no fringe role for India. Aware of India’s lack of material capabilities, he had put almost all his fruits in one basket – Non-alignment. Non-alignment, often misunderstood, was a new approach to world politics and one that sought to re-balance the world, not based on claims to power but instead on the basis of claims to empowerment of the erstwhile emaciated colonized nations. This however is a topic to be discussed elsewhere, and for now the focus ought to go back to Nehru’s assertion about India’s role in world politics.
Post-Nehru, as Western prophecies about end of India gained ground, the focus definitely shifted from salvaging the country itself rather than salvaging its pride outside. With Nehru’s death, India also lost its only world statesman and thus the focus shifted inward. Surprisingly, the Indian juggernaut kept rolling with occasional hiccups. In between, India kept the world aware of itself with events like 1965 and 1971 wars with Pakistan and 1974 Pokhran test, when it conducted its first underground nuclear weapons test.
The epiphany, it is said, came in 1991, though not necessarily after great thought. Necessity, as the cliché goes, is the mother of invention. That was the year India adopted economic reforms after it was pushed to the wall by the implosion of its all-weather friend USSR and financial bankruptcy. As India opened its economic gates to the world, although one must confess pretty consciously, the world had got another China – a huge market. The rest as they say is history, and two decades past India stands at the threshold of great power status.
In this run down of sixty years of India’s existence in world politics, one can clearly see that while India has redeemed its place in the international sphere, or even gone much ahead of where Nehru had taken India, as some would like, the levers of Indian foreign policy have changed. Nehru’s India, as both his critics and his followers suggest, was attempting to be the spiritual leader of the world. Material capabilities in Nehru’s calculations seldom figured in, partly because India did not have them and partly because he felt India had much better resources in form of civilizational knowledge and acclaimed anti-colonial struggle that could help the world. The India of 21st century makes no pretences about its moral role, apart from of course when it becomes necessary as in case of harping on its commitment to non-proliferation to gain a back entry into nuclear club, and is more than ready to play the power game.
In this bargain, the gains are often played out loud. Strategic partnerships with the US, Russia and European powers, leadership of the developing world, de-facto nuclear status, a high table seat in all emerging international regimes as well as legitimate claims in the old ones, software-hub of the world and along with China the new deadly two combo. However, a little reflection is never a bad idea. From being the champion of non-alignment, it is surprisingly India itself which has come to conclude that obituaries of non-alignment were long due. Coming from this pretence, it is only natural that India has for long discouraged any efforts to institutionalize the Non-Alignment Movement (NAM). Even though countries like South Africa have long demanded the NAM be institutionalized to lend it more credence, India has continued with the same pill that it believed was apt for the patient 50 years ago. No wonder, the patient is at deathbed.
The world, to say the least, is an interesting phase of history. Apart from the famed decline of American hegemony, there are clearly three discernable patterns visible in the dynamics of international politics:
First, for the first time in modern world, power is being distributed across continents. So while China and India are emerging as the hardware and software superpowers of the world, Brazil, South Africa, Mexico and Saudi Arabia are also becoming increasing stakeholders in the upcoming world, not to forget the already-there claimants – Russia, Japan and the European Union. Dr Richard Haass, President of the Council on Foreign Relations think-tank describes this current situation as a non-polar world (as opposed to the commonly held view that the cold war had a bipolar world caught between the USA and the USSR).
Second, for the first time in history, raw power, in terms of pure military capabilities, is no more the preponderant factor in ascertaining the power potential of a country. The term security itself has in fact been broadened to include economic, energy and welfare needs. For example, Saudi Arabia and Venezuela positions as energy powers hold sufficient screws to twist other nations to their tune.
Third, with so many emerging powers, it is pretty natural that the permutations and combinations that add up to gauge potential alliances would even baffle mathematicians. Scholars and practitioners of international politics, for that matter, are even less equipped. The proliferation of forums like NATO, SCO, BRIC, GCC, IBSA, APEC et al., as against the static bloc politics of the cold war or the great power club just before World War One, has a double effect of enticing states into networked relationships thus giving more space for deliberations and also increasing the number of potential flashpoints. The geographical spread of the new power architecture, proliferation of power-determining variables and the volume of emerging powers all contribute to the novelty and complexity of the current international system.
In such a scenario, India’s choices are not as constrained as strategic experts make out to be. Power and interest, in the new emerging world, do not still remain confined to Morganthau’s six principles. In this there is ample scope to bring the Nehruvian thrust back into India’s foreign policy. Democratisation of global governance structures, an equitable relationship between the developing and the developed world, disarmament etc. are still the declared primary aims of Indian foreign policy but how far India lives by it is a matter of contention. Of late, going by India’s stances on major issues of World politics, one gains an impression that India is only concerned about these issues so long as it affects India directly. Whenever these ideals are pitted against India’s narrowly defined interests, looked at through American-made glasses, it promptly shifts side, such as India’s repeated voting against Iran and its stance on nuclear issues.
Although on specific issues, there are common synergies between developing countries which India tries to tap into by forming and often leading developing country blocs, a major platform like NAM which looks to develop holistic ties among developing countries is lacking. A platform like this also becomes the incubator of alternate visions and alternate futures for the world. It is in formation of such a platform that India along with other developing country leaders like South Africa and Brazil should come together. Sadly, IBSA only looks like a combined effort by third-world countries to get an entry into the first world.
Source: Rogue Diplomat (http://www.roguediplomat.com/)
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