Introduction-

Foreign policy is the sum total of principles, interests and objectives which a
state formulates in conducting its relations with other states. Similarly, each state
has its foreign policy through which it tries to develop relations with other
nations at international level. Through its foreign policy, states make efforts to
change the behavior of other states or to control and regulate the activities of
other states to attain its nation interests. Hence, foreign policy represents both
continuity and change in the relations among states. Besides, it represents both
positive and negative dimensions. It is positive when it makes efforts to change
the behavior of other states, while it works negative when it do not try to change
the activities of other states. Therefore, foreign policy is a commitment by the
state to put forward its principles, interests and objectives by way of which one
state tries its best to pursue its relations with other states in the international
system.
In Indian context, the foreign policy is sum total of principles, interests and
objectives with an aspiration of becoming a global power, influencing the world.

Historical background:
  Other than international and national environment shaping the IFP of a
country, its historical narrative too, plays an important role in determining the
base for an approach that has developed over the course of time. 
India’s policy while contributing to the international domain is, thus not limited
to the contemporary times. The ancient trade with Mesopotamia that of
Harappa, followed by constant interactions form Magnolia, Greek, Arabs and
etc. defines the historic contribution of India to the world. The approach is
considered to be a by-product of the two dominant ideological streams prevalent
in its culture since the ancient times. The tradition of advocating friendship,
cooperation, peace and non-violence as proclaimed by Buddha and later by
Gandhi. Realism, that developed not in the contemporary time hence can be seen
as relevant approach by Kautilya in his advice to the kings. 
With the onset of colonialism, the Indian Foreign policy took shape in 3 processes
that can be categorized as,
1. Criticism of Colonialism; as the congress, the leading force behind Indian
struggle for independence took international stances, contemplating the British
rule. The INC, advocated the struggle of Ireland’s independence in 1920 as in
1892, its object to various British policies that reflected India as a base for
political maneuvering in South Asian region. In 1921, for the first time in its All
India Congress Committee meeting in Delhi, it declared through a general
resolution that "the present environment of India in no way represents Indian
opinion". Besides, it also declared that its neighbors not at all threaten India. 
2. International status; already acquiring the international identity even prior
to its independence. India played an important role in rising its concerns and
making representation in international conferences starting from 1817 Colonial 
conference to 1917.
3. The WW2; which laid the foundations for Indian Independence, giving an
upper hand to the Indian leaders in influencing foreign policymaking though
negotiation and consensus building wherein understanding of gaining state
legitimacy through foreign policy making, hence achieving independence
Leadership- Post Independence and cold war era, NAM, Phases, Paradigm
shifts.
Consequently, foreign policy has largely been shaped by the chief executive, who
has the added burden of approximating what domestic groups want and
balancing his or her perception of domestic political concerns with other foreign
policy interests. Jawaharlal Nehru, India's first prime minister, asserted,
according to V.K. Krishna Menon, Nehru’s closest political confidant, that "so
far as the public was concerned, the presentation and handling (of foreign policy)
was his. 
With independence came the cold war era that can be categorized in 3 phases.
The first section deals with the period from 1947 to 1962, the second from 1962
to 1991 and the third from 1991 to the present. The first in the circle of Idealism,
second drifting away from that and 3rd, entering in the sequence of a Realist
world order, post cold war.

Once again, global, regional, and personal factors contributed to the major
policy shift.
Despite a fleeting moment of military cooperation with India in the aftermath of
the 1962 war, the United States disengaged itself from South Asia, loosing its
intrest in India. Sensing an opportunity to expand their influence in the
subcontinent, the Soviets brokered a peace agreement between India and
Pakistan in the Central Asian city of Tashkent in 1966. With this American
disengagement from the subcontinent, Pakistan sought to expand the scope of its
security cooperation with the PRC to balance Indian power, thereby
contributing to a growing security nexus between India’s two major adversaries.
At a regional level, India’s misgivings about its security increased in the
aftermath of the first Chinese nuclear test at Lop Nor in 1964. After considerable
debate, the ruling Congress party and the new Prime Minister, Lal Bahadur
Shastri, reaffirmed the country’s public commitment to nonalignment and
eschewed any immediate plans to acquire nuclear weapons. However, in 1966,
Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, Shastri’s successor, decided to seek a nuclear
guarantee from the great powers. This effort proved to be quite fruitless.28 In
the aftermath of this failure, Prime Minister Gandhi authorized India’s
Subterranean Nuclear Explosions Project (SNEP) which culminated in India’s
first nuclear test of May 1974. Under Indira Gandhi, India’s foreign policy
sought to sustain two competing visions of world order by still supporting the
cause of decolonization and reversing its idealist approach by steering towards
more realist approach. Part of this strategy involved the acquisition of a tacit
security guarantee from the Soviet Union to counter possible Chinese
malfeasance, by signing 20 years pact with the former. Shortly after, the 1971
war with Pakistan, India emerged as the undisputed dominant power within the
subcontinent.
But, was unable to transcend the region. The failure of the tactic was due to
several reason from economic stagnation. The failure to develop ties with the
global economy contributed to a paucity of foreign investment, important
technological lags. India’s political choices at systemic and national levels also
did very little to enhance its global stature as was evident in the case of OPEC
and oil crisis of 1973. This granted India, a status of Marginal Asian Player,
confined in the Asian boundaries.
This period also saw a shift of Indian preference towards USSR, owing to USA’s
growing interest in Pakistan to counter Soviets in afghan. 

• Post 1991 Changes-

Few events, barring the shock of the 1962 Sino-Indian border war, has had as
much of an impact on India’s foreign and security policies as the collapse of the
Soviet Union and the concomitant end of the Cold War. This transformation of
global order led Indian policy makers make fundamental changes in Indian
Foreign outlook.
The NAM lost its gravity and in words of Inder Kumar Gujral, “It is a mantra
that we have to keep repeating, but who are you going to be nonaligned against?
Not only this but the country was also confronted with an unprecedaented fiscal
crisis partly as a consequence of the first Gulf War of 1991 including spike in oil
prices, extraction of workers from Gulf that considerably contributed to the
economy of the country and lost of substantial remittances that the workers from
the Gulf had contributed to the Indian exchequer. The then Finance Minister
Manmohan Singh, chose to dramatically alter India’s domestic and international
economic policies
Finding opportunity in the crisis, the Indian executive proceeded with reforms as
it was convinced that global economic integration was imperative for India for
factors beyond the immediate crisis and sought to forge a new vison for the
country.
The starboard turn towards US and growing its participation in world economic
order along with its strategic engagement of Southeast Asian reflected in its
“Look East” policy stemmed from India’s search for new friends and partners
after the loss of its superpower patron in 1991. Closer to home, Narasimha Rao
regime sought to improve relations with China and Pakistan through various
confidence building measures in the shadow of insurgencies arising in 1989 in J
and K.
• Crossing the Nuclear Rubicon and Beyond:
The conventional military capabilities, the persistence of the border dispute and
the PRC’s nuclear weapons posed an altogether different order of threat to
India’s security, led the leadership to push India into nuclear weapons program
with no first use policy.  The specific timing of the program, contrary to much
polemical writing on the subject had little to do with the ascendance of the right-
of-center Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) to power.56 Instead it was closely tied to
the successful extension of the NPT in 1995 and the seeming inexorable efforts of
the Clinton administration to conclude a comprehensive nuclear test ban treaty.
Fearful that the passage of the test ban treaty was all but inevitable, Indian
policymakers chose to exercise the nuclear option before ineluctable pressures
were brought to bear on India to accede to the regime. Despite the initial burst of
hostility from the United States and the other great powers, the international
community has come to grudgingly accept India as a de facto nuclear weapons
state. This pushed India closer to US as the Bush administration offered India a
substantial civilian nuclear, that ended India’s nuclear isolation. 
These attitudes had enabled India’s successful dominance of South Asia, and a
gradual spreading of her influence eastwards into South-East Asia and the
Indian Ocean.
The post 1999 phase sought Through a Hindutva emphasis on regaining India’s
glorious Hindu past, the BJP wished to reverse the perceived failure of India to
successfully impose itself regionally and globally, and they resuscitated calls for
India to reclaim her rightful place in the world. Indian government and Ministry
of External Affairs officials undertook a policy of ‘total diplomacy’ with all states
.As India aimed to inculcate new and deeper relationships across the world
whereby greater attention was given to the P-5 powers and second/middle-tier
powers such as Japan, Australia, the European Union (EU) and Israel.
New diplomatic groupings (often with countries also striving for increased
international status) also began to emerge, such as the Russia-China-India (RCI),
Brazil-Russia-India-China (BRIC), and India-Brazil-South Africa (IBSA)
formations. Such pragmatic and strategic developments were now a signal to
other states ‘that India’s strategic frontier may not be coterminous with its
political borders. By the beginning of the 21st century, India’s Great Power
aspiration was ascendant as her political, diplomatic and trade links increased
exponentially: ‘India matters’.
Critically, the USA began to accept the new consequences of India in terms of
her economy, nuclear capabilities, stable democracy and large middle class. Such
respect and acceptance increased India’s international standing and made closer
US ties a new pillar of India’s foreign policy. In turn, India became a key
strategic partner of the USA, witnessed in their bilateral Defense Agreement
drawn up in 2005.
CHALENGES IN CONTEMPORARY WORLD 
Citizenship tangle Protests over the nature of CAA and its fallout in India’s
neighbourhood policy is likely to present India’s foreign policy establishment
with considerable challenges in 2020. The CAA specifically mentions three
Muslim-majority na... 
Fallout of India’s ‘rightward’ turn It does not augur well for India’s foreign
policy as it dents India’s image as a liberal, secular democracy. Owing to this,
India is likely to face difficult times in Western capitals because influential
human rights 

Introduction-
Foreign policy is the sum total of principles, interests and objectives which a
state formulates in conducting its relations with other states. Similarly, each state
has its foreign policy through which it tries to develop relations with other
nations at international level. Through its foreign policy, states make efforts to
change the behavior of other states or to control and regulate the activities of
other states to attain its nation interests. Hence, foreign policy represents both
continuity and change in the relations among states. Besides, it represents both
positive and negative dimensions. It is positive when it makes efforts to change
the behavior of other states, while it works negative when it do not try to change
the activities of other states. Therefore, foreign policy is a commitment by the
state to put forward its principles, interests and objectives by way of which one
state tries its best to pursue its relations with other states in the international
system.
In Indian context, the foreign policy is sum total of principles , interests and
objectives with an aspiration of becoming a global power, influencing the world.
 
Historical background:
  Other than international and national environment shaping the IFP of a
country, its historical narrative too, plays an important role in determining the
base for an approach that has developed over the course of time. 
India’s policy while contributing to the international domain is, thus not limited
to the contemporary times. The ancient trade with Mesopotamia that of
Harappa, followed by constant interactions form Magnolia, Greek, Arabs and
etc. defines the historic contribution of India to the world. The approach is
considered to be a by-product of the two dominant ideological streams prevalent
in its culture since the ancient times. The tradition of advocating friendship,
cooperation, peace and non-violence as proclaimed by Buddha and later by
Gandhi. Realism, that developed not in the contemporary time hence can be seen
as relevant approach by Kautilya in his advice to the kings. 
With the onset of colonialism, the Indian Foreign policy took shape in 3 processes
that can be categorized as,
1.     Criticism of Colonialism; as the congress, the leading force behind Indian
struggle for independence took international stances, contemplating the British
rule. The INC, advocated the struggle of Ireland’s independence in 1920 as in
1892, its object to various
British policies that reflected India as a base for political maneuvering in South
Asian region. In 1921, for the first time in its All India Congress Committee
meeting in Delhi, it declared through a general resolution that "the present
environment of India in no way represents Indian opinion". Besides, it also
declared that its neighbors not at all threaten
India. 
2. International status; already acquiring the international identity even prior to
its independence. India played an important role in rising its concerns and
making representation in international conferences starting from 1817 Colonial 
conference to 1917.
3.The WW2; which laid the foundations for Indian Independence, giving an
upper hand to the Indian
leaders in influencing foreign policymaking though negotiation and consensus
building wherein understanding of gaining state legitimacy through foreign
policy making, hence achieving independenceLeadership- Post Independence
and cold war era, NAM, Phases, Paradigm shifts.
Consequently, foreign policy has largely been shaped by the chief executive, who
has the added burden of approximating what domestic groups want and
balancing his or her perception of domestic political concerns with other foreign
policy interests. Jawaharlal Nehru, India's first prime minister, asserted,
according to V.K. Krishna Menon, Nehru’s closest political confidant, that "so
far as the public was concerned, the presentation and handling (of foreign policy)
was his. 
With independence came the cold war era that can be categorized in 3 phases.
The first section deals with the period from 1947 to 1962, the second from 1962
to 1991 and the third from 1991 to the present. The first in the circle of Idealism,
second drifting away from that and 3rd, entering in the sequence of a Realist
world order, post cold war Once again, global, regional, and personal factors
contributed to the major policy shift.
Despite a fleeting moment of military cooperation with India in the aftermath of
the 1962 war, the United States disengaged itself from South Asia, loosing its
intrest in India. Sensing an opportunity to expand their influence in the
subcontinent, the Soviets brokered a peace agreement between India and
Pakistan in the Central Asian city of Tashkent in 1966. With this American
disengagement from the subcontinent, Pakistan sought to expand the scope of its
security cooperation with the PRC to balance Indian power, thereby
contributing to a growing security nexus between India’s two major adversaries.
At a regional level, India’s misgivings about its security increased in the
aftermath of the first Chinese nuclear test at Lop Nor in 1964. After considerable
debate, the ruling Congress party and the new Prime Minister, Lal Bahadur
Shastri, reaffirmed the country’s public commitment to nonalignment and
eschewed any immediate plans to acquire nuclear weapons. However, in 1966,
Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, Shastri’s successor, decided to seek a nuclear
guarantee from the great powers. This effort proved to be quite fruitless.28 In
the aftermath of this failure, Prime Minister Gandhi authorized India’s
Subterranean Nuclear Explosions Project (SNEP) which culminated in India’s
first nuclear test of May 1974. Under Indira Gandhi, India’s foreign policy
sought to sustain two competing visions of world order by still supporting the
cause of decolonization and reversing its idealist approach by steering towards
more realist approach. Part of this strategy involved the acquisition of a tacit
security guarantee from the Soviet Union to counter possible Chinese
malfeasance, by signing 20 years pact with the former. Shortly after, the 1971
war with Pakistan, India emerged as the undisputed dominant power within the
subcontinent.
But, was unable to transcend the region. The failure of the tactic was due to
several reason from economic stagnation. The failure to develop ties with the
global economy contributed to a paucity of foreign investment, important
technological lags. India’s political choices at systemic and national levels also
did very little to enhance its global stature as was evident in the case of OPEC
and oil crisis of 1973. This granted India, a status of Marginal Asian Player,
confined in the Asian boundaries.
This period also saw a shift of Indian preference towards USSR, owing to USA’s
growing interest in Pakistan to counter Soviets in afghan.
Post 1991 Changes- Few events, barring the shock of the 1962 Sino-Indian
border war, has had as much of an impact on ndia’s foreign and security policies
as the collapse of the Soviet Union and the concomitant end of the Cold War.
This transformation of global order led Indian policy makers make fundamental
changes in Indian Foreign outlook.
The NAM lost its gravity and in words of Inder Kumar Gujral, “It is a mantra
that we have to keep repeating, but who are you going to be nonaligned against?”
Not only this but the country was also confronted with an unprecedented fiscal
crisis partly as a consequence of the first Gulf War of 1991 including spike in oil
prices, extraction of workers from Gulf that considerably contributed to the
economy of the country and lost of substantial remittances that the workers from
the Gulf had contributed to the Indian exchequer. The then Finance Minister
Manmohan
Singh, chose to dramatically alter India’s domestic and international economic
Policies Finding opportunity in the crisis, the Indian executive proceeded with
reforms as it was convinced that global economic integration was imperative for
India for factors beyond the immediate crisis and sought to forge a new vison for
the country. The starboard turn towards US and growing its participation in
world economic order along with its strategic engagement of Southeast Asian
reflected in its “Look East” policy stemmed from India’s search for new friends
and partners after the loss of its superpower patron in 1991. Closer to home,
Narasimha Rao regime sought to improve relations with China and Pakistan
through various confidence building measures in the shadow of insurgencies
arising in 1989 in J and K.
·Crossing the Nuclear
Rubicon and Beyond:
The conventional military capabilities, the persistence of the border dispute and
the PRC’s nuclear weapons posed an altogether different order of threat to
India’s security, led the leadership to push India into nuclear weapons program
with no first use policy.  The specific timing of the program, contrary to much
polemical writing on the subject had little to do with the ascendance of the right-
of-center Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) to power.56 Instead it was closelytied to
the successful extension of the NPT in 1995 and the seeming inexorable efforts of
the Clinton administration to conclude a comprehensive nuclear test ban treaty.
Fearful that the passage of the test ban treaty was all but inevitable, Indian
policymakers chose to exercise the nuclear option befor ineluctable pressures
were brought to bear on India to accede to the regime.
Despite the initial burst of hostility from the United States and the other great
powers, the international community has come to grudgingly accept India as a de
facto nuclear weapons state. This pushed India closer to US as the Bush
administration offered India a substantial civilian nuclear, that ended India’s
nuclear isolation. 
These attitudes had enabled India’s successful dominance of South Asia, and a
gradual spreading of her influence eastwards into South-East Asia and the
Indian Ocean.
The post 1999 phase sought Through a Hindutva emphasis on regaining India’s
glorious Hindu past, the BJP wished to reverse the perceived failure of India to
successfully impose itself regionally and globally, and they resuscitated calls for
India to reclaim her rightful place in the world. Indian government and Ministry
of External Affairs officials undertook a policy of ‘total diplomacy’ with all states
.As India aimed to inculcate new and deeper relationships across the world
whereby greater attention was given to the P-5 powers and second/middle-tier
powers such as Japan, Australia, the European Union (EU) and Israel. New
diplomatic groupings (often with countries also striving for increased
international status) also began to emerge, such as the Russia-China-India (RCI),
Brazil-Russia-India-China (BRIC), and India-Brazil-South Africa (IBSA)
formations. Such pragmatic and strategic developments were now a signal to
other states ‘that India’s strategic frontier may not be coterminous with its
political borders. By the beginning of the 21st century, India’s Great Power
aspiration was ascendant as her political, diplomatic and trade links increased
exponentially: ‘India matters’.
Critically, the USA began to accept the new consequences of India in terms of
her economy, nuclear capabilities, stable democracy and large middle class. Such
respect and acceptance increased India’s international standing and made closer
US ties a new pillar of India’s foreign policy. In turn, India became a key
strategic partner of the USA, witnessed in their bilateral Defense Agreement
drawn up in 2005.
CHALENGES IN CONTEMPORARY WORLD
Citizensh ip Tangle- Citizenship tangle Protests over the nature of CAA and its
fallout in India’s neighbourhood policy is likely to present India’s foreign policy
establishment with considerable challenges in 2020. The CAA specifically
mentions three Muslim-majority nations in South Asia (Afghanistan, Pakistan
and Bangladesh) and their non-Islamic minorities It affects India's South Asia
policy, provides ammunition to India's detractors in these countries and is likely
to inject religion as a significant factor in its dealings with neighbours.
Bangladesh is long considered as a bright spot for foreign policy. However, the
CAA is likely to adversely impact India-Bangladesh relations as the Bangladeshi
leadership has to respond to its domestic political compulsions.
Kashmir back on the table-
Moreover, abrogation of Article 370 and its negative international impact is also
hard to miss. India’s actions have re-hyphenated it with Pakistan, undone
diplomatic efforts of the last 20 years and put Kashmir back in international
diplomatic discussions. Sensing this, China has tried to create troubles for India
in the United Nations (UN) and is likely to do so in 2020. US Congress too
discussed Kashmir and many influential voices in the West, including the likes of
the US presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren, are critical of India. Kashmir is
likely to feature in international discourse in the coming year more prominently
than it did in 2019.
Moreover, the internet shutdown in Kashmir, continuing detention of senior
political leaders such as Farooq Abdullah and restrictions over political activities
in the region have not made it any easier for Indian diplomats abroad to argue
India’s case convincingly.
A case in point here is the latest tussle within the bloc of Islamic nations to
organise meetings for criticising India’s actions related to Kashmir. So far, India
did not face harsh criticism from the traditional leader of the Islamic bloc, Saudi
Arabia However, as Malaysia, Turkey and Qatar took the lead, with the tacit
support of Iran, in criticising India, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates
(UAE) are finding it difficult to stay quiet.
Jammu and Kashmir was the only Muslim majority state in India. Coupled with
CAA’s focus over non-Islamic minorities and Ayodhya verdict in the favour of
Hindus, international observers believe that India seems to have taken a decisive
turn towards right-wing, majoritarian politics.
Conclusion-
India has come a long way since independence when the challenge to Indian
Foregin Policy was to stabilize the internal environment. In the current year, if
we look closely, India has just moved a step ahead and the biggest challenge
stands before India is its neighbourhood. China’s border hostility and its another
hostile neighbour ally Pakistan has posed great challenges and play an
important  part in influencing India’s foregin Policy. The quad formation in
Indo-Pafic region, has shaped India’s approaches in the South Asian regain
which is again challenges by China