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Continuity and Change in India's Foreign Policy

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Chapter 4

Continuity and Change in India’s

Foreign Policy

Rohan Mukherjee

Introduction
On the 24th of July 1991, Dr. Manmohan Singh — then India’s Finance
Minister — presented in the annual budget speech to Parliament a plan for
the comprehensive overhauling and liberalization of the Indian economy.
During the preceding two years, India had rapidly approached the brink of
an economic crisis, facing an unprecedented and severe shortage of foreign
exchange reserves, a severely devalued currency, low investor confidence, a
high fiscal deficit, and double-digit inflation. In announcing a sweeping
reform program intended to significantly reduce government control over
the economy, Dr. Singh at the end of his budget speech quoted Victor
Hugo: “No power on earth can stop an idea whose time has come,” he said.
“I suggest to this august House that the emergence of India as a major eco-
nomic power in the world happens to be one such idea” (Government of
India, 1991).
These words turned out to be prophetic. Over the next two decades,
Indian citizens witnessed their lives and prospects improve remarkably, with
the economy growing at a rapid clip. As trade and financial integration with
global markets expanded, the effects were felt in almost all corners of society.
Externally, India began to gain the attention of the great powers of the post-
Cold War world, especially the United States and China. A more confident
India began developing new strategic partnerships with a host of nations
previously off Delhi’s radar. By the new millennium, India was invited to
the high table at key multilateral groupings, notably in the World Trade

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Organization (WTO) and at the United Nations (U.N.) climate change

negotiations. In January 2011, India joined the U.N. Security Council
(UNSC) for its seventh non-permanent term, and was in the thick of great-
power controversy over proposed interventions in Libya and Syria for the
next two years.
Few observers of Indian diplomacy and foreign policy in the 1940s would
have predicted the sheer scale of India’s achievement over the next six decades.
In order to comprehend the tremendous changes that have taken place during
this time, one must study the evolution of India’s relationships with key actors
in its region and in the international system. This chapter focuses on India’s
relations with the United States, China, South Asia, and the UNSC.
Four major trends reveal themselves. First, with the passing of the Cold
War that had necessitated much rhetorical posturing aimed at avoiding alli-
ances with the superpowers, Indian foreign policy has shed its moralizing
façade and embraced a more overt pragmatism. Second, India’s growing
economic power has added significant economic content to its foreign policy,
which also contributes to pragmatism. Third, India’s foreign policy is increas-
ingly complicated by the fragmentation of its domestic political sphere into a
multitude of regional parties that form often-unwieldy coalition governments
at the federal level. Finally, India’s approach to the international order estab-
lished and dominated by the West has changed from one of enthusiastic
endorsement to what one analyst has termed “cautious prudence” — unwill-
ing to use force, resort to allies, or effect any significant change abroad; but
at the same time profoundly aware of the importance of power in interna-
tional relations (Mehta, 2009, p. 230).

Four Key Relationships

One can best understand India’s trajectory by viewing it through the lens of
four key relationships: with the United States, China, South Asia and the
UNSC, respectively.

India and the United States

The antagonistic nature of India–U.S. relations prior to 1991 remains one of
the enduring puzzles of both American and Indian diplomacy, prompting a
former U.S. diplomat to describe the two countries as “estranged democra-
cies” during this period (Kux, 1992). Indeed, on paper, the two countries
had every reason to be friends and allies when India became independent in
1947. Aside from being constitutional democracies and having similar views

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Continuity and Change in India’s Foreign Policy 77

against imperialism and for national self-determination in international

affairs, the U.S. and India both had strategic interests in balancing China’s
power in Asia — America sought to contain the growth of a communist
power in East Asia, while India remained wary of its large and powerful
neighbor’s intentions. However, India’s foreign policy of non-alignment,
which resolutely eschewed alliances with either superpower bloc during the
Cold War, did not sit well with America’s staunchly anti-communist foreign
policy. Consequently, relations were “characterized by disappointment on the
part of India and suspicions on the part of Washington” (Dixit, 2003, p. 44).
The sense of mutual alienation was exacerbated by America’s alliance with
Pakistan, which began in the 1950s and is active even today (though much
transformed by the intervening years). Nonetheless, when China went to war
with India in 1962, the U.S. was quick to provide military assistance to Prime
Minister Jawaharlal Nehru’s government. However, in 1971, when the U.S.
came to the aid of Pakistan in a conflict with India in East Pakistan, India
abandoned its policy of non-alignment and signed a defense treaty with the
Soviet Union, a development that was also influenced by the socialist leanings
of India’s early leaders, especially Nehru. The Soviet Union in turn used its
veto power in the UNSC to stave off three resolutions condemning India’s
role in what came to be known as the Bangladesh War. From this point until
the end of the Cold War, India and the U.S. would find themselves at odds
on most issues, ranging from India’s nuclear program to the Soviet invasion
of Afghanistan in the 1980s.
Indo-U.S. estrangement began to decrease with the end of the Cold War,
if only because both countries had other problems to grapple with. As India
reeled under economic crisis and governments collapsing in quick succession,
the U.S. for its part lost focus on South Asia (with the end of the superpow-
ers’ proxy war in Afghanistan) and concentrated on shoring up its presence
and influence around the world. Away from the gaze of governments, how-
ever, the private sectors of the two countries began developing stronger ties
largely due to India’s ambitious economic liberalization program and the
opportunities it presented to American businesses. Between 1991 and 2006,
trade between the two nations grew sixfold to US$32 billion, causing one
American official to assert that “The big breakthrough in U.S.–India relations
was achieved originally by the private sector” (Burns, 2007).
As the Indian economy grew stronger, India’s policymakers were embold-
ened to follow through on their nuclear program, which until then was in
cold storage out of fear of American economic sanctions (see Perkovich, 2000).
In 1998, India’s second round of nuclear tests (after 1974) sharply refocused
America’s and the world’s attention on South Asia and compelled a thorough

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rethinking of U.S. policy toward the region. Whereas earlier American poli-
cymakers tended to view the South Asian region as a whole — to hyphenate,
as it were, India and Pakistan — new arguments emerged for a stronger
bilateral engagement with India as a strategic partner that did not pose a
threat to U.S. interests and might in fact be a valuable asset (Cohen, 1998).
India, for its part, gradually abandoned its traditional antipathy toward the
West and began a rapprochement with the U.S., which was now the only
game in town and a significant source of investment and trade for the
expanding Indian economy. The payoff arrived soon enough, when President
George W. Bush and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh signed a framework
for Indo-U.S. strategic cooperation in July 2005. Most importantly, this
agreement paved the way for what came to be known as the Indo-U.S.
Nuclear Deal, according to which India would be brought out of the diplo-
matic isolation into which it had been cast by its first nuclear test in 1974.
The final agreement, concluded in 2008, allowed India to resume civilian
nuclear cooperation with the U.S. and other countries, and in particular to
engage in nuclear commerce that many argued would indirectly benefit
India’s nuclear weapons program. Proliferation and nuclear security issues
aside, the deal signified a major breakthrough in India–U.S. relations, one
with significant ramifications for India’s relations with its neighbors —
especially Pakistan and China.
The greatest achievement for Indian foreign policy with regard to the
U.S. is that in the new millennium, U.S.–India relations and U.S.–Pakistan
relations run on different tracks. Indeed, as one observer has pointed out,
India is part of a “new [strategic] triangle” involving China and the U.S.,
with Pakistan a secondary concern (Varshney, 2006). Today, India and the
U.S. cooperate on a variety of issues, including science and technology, agri-
culture, energy, defense, disaster relief, maritime security, and investment.
The relationship has never been broader or deeper, though it is not without
challenges. Chief among the challenges is a mismatch between India’s self-
perception and America’s strategic view of India: as one analyst has argued,
since the Second World War, the U.S. has faced allies, adversaries and subor-
dinate states (for example, Britain, the Soviet Union and Pakistan, respec-
tively), but it has never encountered a partner, i.e., a country such as India
that “does not pose any strategic challenge to the U.S., but at the same time
it does not automatically fall in with America’s desires and seeks to advance
its own interests” (Raghavan, 2011). Consequently, the U.S. desire for greater
cooperation in line with its own interests is often (legitimately) frustrated by
India’s own foreign policy objectives.

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Continuity and Change in India’s Foreign Policy 79

India and China

Asian, neighbors, anti-imperialist, pro-Third World — India and China had
many things in common when they entered the post-Second World War
international system in the late 1940s. Their region, however, proved too
small to contain their respective strategic weights and ambitions, and conflict
was the near inevitable result. Differences first emerged over leadership of the
Third World, with Nehru and Zhou Enlai vying to place their respective
nations in the top spot. In 1950, China occupied Tibet, a region with strong
cultural ties to India and an important buffer zone between the two Asian
giants. To Beijing, Delhi’s reaction appeared duplicitous, acquiescing in the
Chinese maneuver while allowing the United States CIA to train Tibetan
rebels in Indian territory (Conboy and Morrison, 2002). India–China rela-
tions in relation to Tibet worsened in 1959, when a fleeing Dalai Lama was
given refuge by India. All this while a border dispute simmered between the
two nations due to divergent views of the validity of their respective colonial
territorial legacies. The dispute erupted in a month-long military conflict in
1962, which resulted in a decisive victory for China and a humiliating defeat
for India, fundamentally calling into question the latter’s military planning
and preparedness.
China’s first nuclear test in 1964 launched an intense debate in India over
the need for a nuclear weapons program and led Delhi to approach the U.S.
and the Soviet Union for nuclear guarantees against the Chinese threat — the
superpowers were not forthcoming (Noorani, 1967). The following year,
China inaugurated a long and fruitful alliance with Pakistan by providing
military aid to the latter in its conflict with India in Kashmir. During the
Bangladesh War of 1971, China increased its arms transfers to Pakistan more
than four-fold compared to the previous year (SIPRI, 2008). The U.S.–China
rapprochement of the early 1970s in effect ended any hopes for a credible
Indian response to the so-called Chinese threat, particularly because the
Soviet Union — India’s ally — would be unwilling to engage both the U.S.
and China in a potential Sino-Indian conflict.
In the early 1980s, as Sino-Soviet tensions looked like they might ease,
India and China began a tentative dialogue aimed at resolving their border
dispute. By 1986, the dialogue had degenerated into a military standoff,
though both nations managed to avoid full-blown war through some last
minute backpedaling. In 1988, Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi made a historic
visit to Beijing, which in effect heralded a new phase of Sino-Indian relations
in which the border issue was de-linked from the broader bilateral relationship.
The period since then has been marked by a series of high-level diplomatic

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visits between the two nations. Although India cited China as the “number
one threat” motivating its nuclear test of 1998 (Express News Service, 1998),
Sino-Indian relations since the end of the Cold War have been relatively stable
compared to the earlier decades. China remains a major arms donor to
Pakistan, but its rhetoric on India–Pakistan issues has gradually shifted from
one of involvement to one of detachment, casting issues such as Kashmir in
bilateral (i.e., India–Pakistan) terms rather than terms calling for third-party
interference.
The overall trend in Sino-Indian relations remains positive, yet potential
flashpoints exist. The border issue remains intractable. The prospect of pro-
gress through dialogue was belied for Delhi when Chinese Premier Wen
Jiabao on a visit to India in 2010 stated flatly that the border issue “will not
be easy to resolve … it requires patience” (Chakravarty, 2010). This state-
ment prompted a recent group of prominent Indian strategists and public
intellectuals to urge the Indian government to upgrade its border infrastruc-
ture and develop capabilities to deter a Chinese attack (Khilnani et al.,
2012). Tibet is another potential source of conflict. China remains extremely
sensitive to the Dalai Lama’s leadership of the Tibetan government-in-exile
in India, along with approximately 100,000 Tibetan refugees living in India.
In an effort to undermine Chinese attempts to interfere in the appointment
of his successor, in 2011 the Dalai Lama took the unprecedented step of
renouncing political leadership of the Tibetan diaspora and passing the man-
tle to an elected Prime Minister, Lobsang Sangay, who will be located in the
Indian town of Dharamsala, the seat of the Tibetan government-in-exile.
This move ensured that while the Chinese government may claim to have
“found” the religious successor to the Dalai Lama in China, the Tibetans’
political leader will remain in India. More worrisome for Delhi is the poten-
tial for Sangay to take on more radical stances toward the Chinese than the
Dalai Lama (Madhukar, 2011). If this were the case, India could be unwit-
tingly drawn into a standoff between Tibetans in exile and the Chinese
government.
While certain redline issues such as Tibet and the border may spark an
India–China conflict, trade offers some reason to be hopeful. India–China
trade has increased steadily since the end of the Cold War and stands at
US$73 billion in 2011 (Gupta and Wang, 2012), making China India’s largest
trading partner. Although the structure of bilateral trade advantages China —
India largely exports raw materials to and imports capital goods from China,
and currently runs a trade deficit with China amounting to US$27 billion in
2011 (Ibid.) — the growing mutual dependence between the Asian giants is

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Continuity and Change in India’s Foreign Policy 81

a positive sign, suggesting that the low politics of trade might gradually cre-
ate the bedrock for more conciliatory high politics (Athwal, 2008,
pp. 11–12).

India and South Asia

India’s relations with Pakistan have loomed ominously in the background of
discussions of both India–U.S. and India–China relations. This fact brings
into relief the importance of India’s neighborhood in a future world in which
India might play a prominent role as a great power. Although India has come
a long way in terms of economic performance, military prowess and nuclear
capability since independence, the nature of India–Pakistan relations has not
changed significantly and if anything, has worsened over the years despite
recent efforts by both sides to build confidence through cease-fires and
greater people-to-people contacts. India has spent considerable resources and
manpower in four major military conflicts (in 1948, 1965, 1971, and 1999),
a number of skirmishes, and constant defense of its Western (and, until 1971,
Eastern) border with Pakistan. In addition, the Indian government has lost
considerable financial and political capital in its efforts to hold onto the
Kashmir valley in the face of Pakistani intrusions, particularly since the rise of
a Pakistan-backed insurgency in the Kashmir valley following the end of the
Cold War, which made available large quantities of manpower and materiel
left over from the 1980’s proxy war in Afghanistan and hence paid for by
both superpowers (see Human Rights Watch, 1994). The period since 1991
has also seen an increase in the use of state-sponsored (or at the very least
state-endorsed) terrorism by Pakistan via groups such as Lashkar-e-Taiba,
which was responsible for the attacks on the Indian Parliament in 2001 and
in Mumbai in 2008 respectively.
The status of Kashmir forms the core of the India–Pakistan dispute, which
has remained unresolved despite attempts at intervention by the U.N., the
United States, Britain, China and other parties at various times. These
attempts have often been welcomed by Pakistan but not by India, the latter
viewing them as endorsement of the issue as a legitimate international dispute
rather than an infringement of Indian sovereignty and territory by Pakistan
originating in 1947. Nonetheless, it was Jawaharlal Nehru that turned to the
UNSC in 1947 when Pakistan-backed tribal militias invaded the Princely
State of Jammu and Kashmir, whose ruler at the time acceded to India in the
face of the invasion. Much to Nehru’s (and India’s) consternation, the
Western powers on the UNSC treated the matter as an international dispute

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requiring the self-determination of the Kashmiri people via plebiscite.

Subsequently, the dispute was mired in debates over whether conditions were
appropriate for a plebiscite in the territory, and over the years India and
Pakistan developed de facto control of different portions of Jammu and
Kashmir. India accords special legal status to its portion of Kashmir, which
allows the military considerable freedom to impose Indian rule on the terri-
tory. The Indian military’s human rights record in the valley (and in other
conflict-ridden parts of India such as the northeast) has been criticized by civil
society groups in India and abroad, and India remains conscious of its global
human rights image with regard to Kashmir. It is hardly surprising therefore
that India has consistently rejected attempts by Pakistan and its allies to inter-
nationalize the Kashmir issue, most recently by successfully derailing the
Obama administration’s attempt to include Kashmir in the remit of its Special
Representative to Afghanistan and Pakistan in 2009.
With regard to the wider South Asian region, India has faced a number of
challenges with neighboring countries such as Nepal, Bangladesh, and Sri
Lanka. Most of India’s neighbors are weak states: in the Fund for Peace’s
2012 Failed States Index, six of India’s neighbors ranked in the 30 most
unstable states in the world (Messner et al., 2012). The weakness of these
states magnifies the already complex challenges arising out of the sheer asym-
metry of size and influence between India and its neighbors, which inherently
breeds insecurity among the latter. Political factions, insurgent groups and
ideological movements in these states have frequently resorted to anti-Indian
rhetoric and politics when seeking to challenge or overthrow governments in
power. Moreover, the shifting socio-political alignments that sustain these
weak regimes make it challenging for Delhi’s foreign policy establishment to
form lasting relationships or cooperative mechanisms with the political elites
of these states. A deal struck with a government today may no longer be valid
tomorrow. Worse yet, given the zero-sum nature of politics in India’s neigh-
borhood, a deal struck with a party in government today might prejudice its
opponents against India and poison relations when they eventually come to
power. Events in Nepal as of June 2012 offer an example of this type of situ-
ation, where a split in the ruling Unified Communist Party saw a breakaway
radical group criticizing the party for, among other things, its conciliatory
policy toward India. Observers speculated that not only would the split cause
instability in Nepal’s largest political party, it might also impact Nepal’s rela-
tions — especially on the economic front — with India (Jha, 2012).
On balance, however, although India’s relations with Nepal have fluctu-
ated over time, its relations with Sri Lanka and Bangladesh have improved in
recent years. As India’s decade of intervention — the 1980s — in Sri Lanka’s

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civil war has receded, and as the civil war itself has come to a close with a
decisive victory for the government against the Liberation Tigers of Tamil
Eelam (LTTE), India has found it easier to maintain a distance from Sri
Lankan affairs except in the face of domestic political pressure from Indian
Tamils to protect and promote the interests of Tamils in Sri Lanka. This
pressure is exacerbated by the weight of Tamil Nadu’s two regional political
parties in any coalition government that forms in Delhi. With regard to
Bangladesh, relations have improved since the election of Sheikh Hasina as
Prime Minister of Bangladesh in 2009 and her historic visits to India in 2010
and 2012, as well as Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s visit to Bangladesh
in 2011 during which India and Bangladesh made record progress on border
demarcation and trade (though they were unable to move forward a long-
standing water-sharing dispute). Improvements in India’s relations with its
neighbors, while encouraging, will however remain hostage to political
winds in the latter countries, more so than in the normal course of states’
domestic politics because South Asia’s states exhibit considerable weakness
(see Paul, 2012).

India and the UNSC

The UNSC is the premier multilateral institution for the maintenance of
international peace and security. Although it was largely immobilized by the
East–West divide during the Cold War, since 1989 it has developed into a
zealous promoter of international security even though most wars in this
period have been intra-state affairs rather than inter-state ones. Concurrently,
the UNSC has expanded its definition of security to include coups, humani-
tarian emergencies, and acts of terrorism (Malone, 2003, p. 489). Therefore,
the manner in which a country’s relationship with the UNSC evolves over
time can say a great deal about how that country’s foreign policy approach to
international peace and security changes over time.
India was among the 51 original members of the U.N. when the organi-
zation was formed in 1945. India’s first experience of great-power politics
within the UNSC was in 1948, when it referred the matter of Pakistan’s inva-
sion of Kashmir to the body. As noted above, India was disappointed at the
unwillingness of the UNSC to view the matter from the Indian perspective.
The experience taught Indian leaders that “the Security Council was a strictly
political body and that decisions were taken by its members on the basis of
their perspective of their national interest and not on the merits of any par-
ticular case” (Gharekhan, 2007, p. 200). Nonetheless, India went onto to
serve seven two-year terms as a non-permanent member of the UNSC. The

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first, in 1950, coincided with the Korean War. India emphasized the need for
peaceful resolution of the conflict; when this did not appear likely and the
U.N. instead decided to send troops to defend South Korea, India met its
obligation by sending a field ambulance unit.
India went on to develop a reputation as a “champion of peaceful
settlement” (Schleicher and Bains, 1969, p. 108) at the U.N., contributing
peacekeeping troops, military observers, and humanitarian aid to conflicts in
the Israel–Egypt conflict, Lebanon, Yemen, the Congo, Cyprus, and
Indonesia (Bullion, 1997). Its next term was in 1967, during which it criti-
cized Israel’s role in the Middle East conflict involving Israel, Egypt, Jordan,
and Syria. This stance was in keeping with India’s staunchly pro-Third World
and pro-Arab leanings, the latter arising in no small part from India’s own
large Muslim population. A few years later, India ran afoul of the UNSC and
most countries in the world by intervening in a conflict in East Pakistan.
Delhi narrowly avoided diplomatic isolation through Prime Minister Indira
Gandhi’s hectic diplomacy and the support of the Soviet Union, which
vetoed three UNSC resolutions calling for a ceasefire in the immediate after-
math of India’s entry into the conflict. India returned to the UNSC for a
third term in 1972 and once again weighed in on the side of the Arab states
in the Middle East conflict.
During its fourth term in 1977, India took strong positions against the
apartheid regime in South Africa’s treatment of its citizens and neighboring
countries. These themes continued in India’s fifth term in 1984, during
which India condemned the involvement of South Africa and Israel in the
internal affairs of their neighbors while itself beginning a period of extensive
involvement — both overt and covert — in neighboring Sri Lanka’s civil war.
This gap between rhetoric and practice had so far characterized India’s
approach to international security at the U.N., where on the one hand it
advocated the protection of state sovereignty while on the other hand itself
intervening in the affairs of other states.
India returned for a sixth term on the UNSC in 1991, which was a crucial
time for both India and the world body. Inter-state and intra-state conflicts
that had remained somewhat muted or static in the Cold War stalemate now
began to emerge and re-emerge with the disappearance of the Soviet Union
as a superpower. During India’s tenure, the UNSC dealt with conflicts involv-
ing a range of countries including Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Israel, Lebanon,
Cyprus, the former Yugoslavia (and its successor states), Libya, Angola,
Somalia, Liberia, South Africa, Mozambique, and Cambodia. As the U.N.’s
appetite for humanitarian intervention increased through the 1990s, India
repeatedly counseled restraint for both normative and prudential reasons. In

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Continuity and Change in India’s Foreign Policy 85

the post-Cold War World, it appeared that India’s rhetoric did match its
practices, as Delhi began steering clear of unilateral intervention in conflicts
in its neighborhood as well as multilateral intervention in conflicts elsewhere.
Even as far as its own security challenges were concerned, India eschewed
multilateral approaches. In stark contrast to Nehru’s actions of 1948, when
Pakistan invaded the Kargil sector of Kashmir in 1999 Delhi did not consider
any form of multilateral action but instead chose to repel the attack and rely
on back-channel diplomacy routed through the U.S. to bring Pakistan to the
negotiating table. A similar approach was evident in India’s reactions to the
major terrorist attacks perpetrated by Pakistan-backed Lashkar-e-Taiba in
2001 and 2008.
India returned to the UNSC a far more confident and self-assured inter-
locutor for a seventh term in 2011, which rapidly turned into an exceptionally
challenging and active year for the UNSC. Crises in Libya and Syria posed
real challenges for the Council and created deep divisions within the P-5 as
well as between the Brazil–Russia–India–China (BRIC) grouping of powers
and the Western powers. In March 2011, India — along with Brazil, China,
Russia and Germany — abstained on a resolution authorizing multilateral
military intervention in Libya. Later in the year, India abstained on a draft
resolution — vetoed by Russia and China — condemning the Syrian regime
for its brutal crackdown on anti-government protesters. In both cases, India
offered clear and well-argued reasons for its decisions, though it failed to
provide any reasonable alternatives to the proposals put forward by the reso-
lutions’ sponsors. At best, India’s argument came down to the need for a
“calibrated and gradual approach” (Permanent Mission, 2011) that respected
the sovereignty of the states in question, though it did not do much to elu-
cidate the details of such an approach.

Four Major Transitions

Before analyzing the changes in Indian foreign policy over the last six dec-
ades, it is important to highlight one important aspect of continuity, which is
India’s quest for strategic autonomy. States prioritize a variety of external
goals, including power, security, survival, justice, equality, etc. In this vein,
strategic autonomy has been India’s primary foreign policy goal for the last
six decades. It can best be understood as a state of independence from the
constraints imposed by the goals, policies and actions of other actors in inter-
national affairs. While every country strives for strategic autonomy, the extent
to which they achieve it varies and is correlated at least in part with the power
of a country to influence outcomes in world politics. The more powerful a

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country, the more autonomous it can afford to be. It stands to reason that
countries that can bring significant military and economic resources to bear
on their challenges can earn for themselves a greater degree of strategic
autonomy than weaker countries. However, India’s case shows that even
weak countries, if they are skillful in their use of diplomacy and the instru-
ments of moral suasion, can secure a larger degree of autonomy in world
affairs than their material capabilities might allow.
This thinking was in large part the motivation behind India’s Cold War
foreign policy of non-alignment. Although Indian decision-makers were chas-
tised by the world community for their naivety and idealism, and many a
contemporary retrospective on that period has passed similar judgment, there
is a sense in which non-alignment was the only policy that could create the
space for India to pursue its national interests with maximum autonomy given
the intensely polarized conditions of the Cold War. Nehru’s brainchild, non-
alignment was a policy that required “adjustment to both sides, all the time,
obstinately defending and projecting genuine independence, the real power
to choose and not be compelled to accept the policies of other states rooted
in their national interests” (Damodaran, 2000, p. 116). In practice, it meant
that every time a situation requiring a response or action from India arose,
India’s decision-makers would evaluate their options keeping only the
national interest and the merits of the case in mind. Alliances were therefore
imprudent, because they restricted the scope of choice available in these situ-
ations. Although India’s actions showed otherwise, its leaders were open to
ad hoc mutually beneficial relations with both the Soviet Union and the U.S.,
even after the U.S. developed a thriving alliance with Pakistan.
Strategic autonomy as the underlying motive of Indian foreign policy has
remained a constant since 1947. Even today, influential thinkers in the realm
of Indian foreign policy advocate policies designed to achieve strategic auton-
omy. Indeed, this “defining value and continuous goal” of Indian foreign
policy (Khilnani et al., 2012, p. 6) has been a source of frustration for those
seeking closer ties with Delhi. In particular, the U.S. has found India extraor-
dinarily uncooperative and independent-minded when it comes to issues such
as sanctioning Iran for its nuclear program, intervening in Libya and Syria,
promoting democracy in Myanmar, and awarding defense contracts to
American suppliers. Needless to say, strategic autonomy is not a positive for-
eign policy; India seeks the negative goal of autonomy, but is unclear what this
autonomy is to be used for. The current state of affairs calls for grand strategy,
which India has often been accused of lacking (Tanham, 1992). Until such
strategizing takes place, India’s contemporary partners are likely to continue
being frustrated by Delhi’s proclivity for autonomous foreign policy, which

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Continuity and Change in India’s Foreign Policy 87

often translates into and is misused as a cover for unpredictability and

capriciousness. Keeping the above in mind, one can glean from the historical
record four major transitions in India’s relations with the world.

Idealism to pragmatism
This particular characterization of change in India’s foreign policy is perhaps
overly simplistic, though simplicity in this case has the value of elucidating a
vital divide in Indian strategic thinking between “Nehruvians” and others.
Idealism in Indian foreign policy is associated primarily with Jawaharlal
Nehru, and is defined by the so-called utopian notion that the constant threat
of war in international relations can be overcome through “international laws
and institutions, military restraint, negotiations and compromise, coopera-
tion, free intercourse between societies, and regard for the well-being of
peoples everywhere and not just one’s own citizens” (Bajpai, 2012, p. 522).
Recent historical scholarship also ascribes a utopian quality to Nehru’s and
Gandhi’s views on sovereignty, in particular that they espoused the vision of
One World, “a post-sovereign-nation-state-dominated reality, a world of
states governed by the meta-sovereign institution of the U.N.” (Bhagavan,
2010, p. 313).
Shaped by the end of the Cold War and domestic economic success,
contemporary Indian strategic thinking evinces a conscious rejection of
Nehruvian idealism in favor of more traditional notions prioritizing military
and economic power in foreign policy (Parekh, 2008). In 2010, India
became the largest importer of arms in the world (BBC News, 2011).
Although the fundamental basis of Nehru’s foreign policy — strategic auton-
omy — has remained intact, the tone and conduct of India’s foreign policy
has over time abandoned its hectoring, moralizing quality and embraced a
more pragmatic mode of business. Indian policymakers are also far less naïve
about their relations with other states: referring matters to the UNSC or
mouthing slogans such as Hindi-Chini Bhai Bhai (Indians and Chinese are
brothers) are traits of a distant past. The India–U.S. rapprochement of the
new millennium is perhaps the greatest emblem of pragmatism in Delhi —
an establishment with strong cultural and strategic ties to the Eastern bloc
was able to eventually reorient itself productively toward American hegem-
ony. In South Asia, India has left behind its interventionist ways and absolute
intolerance of great-power involvement, tolerating U.S. and U.N. involve-
ments in Nepal, Myanmar, Sri Lanka, and even Kashmir (as election observ-
ers). In international institutions, India has abandoned its traditional position

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88 R. Mukherjee

as a leader of what one observer has termed the Third World “trade union”
(Mohan, 2004, p. 46), i.e., groupings designed to promote the interests of
developing countries, such as the G-77 at the U.N. or the Non-Aligned
Movement (NAM). Instead, India now pursues its own interests as a rising
power in multilateral forums, often alienating its traditional constituency that
had provided critical support in the Nehruvian period. The transition from
idealism to pragmatism is therefore complete in almost every sphere of
India’s external relations.

Economic diplomacy
As India’s economy has grown, its diplomacy has taken on significant eco-
nomic overtones, and this change has significantly contributed to Indian
pragmatism in foreign relations. In 1949, India’s total trade was worth
US$2.3 billion; in 2012, this figure was estimated at more than US$568 bil-
lion, with much of the growth occurring in the post-1990 era (Government
of India, 2012, p. A81). India’s growing integration into world markets —
incomplete by far — has had two major consequences. At the domestic level,
it has made foreign policy an issue that the private sector cares about and
seeks to influence. At the international level, it has required stability in India’s
bilateral and multilateral engagements in order to develop further investment
and trade linkages. Both these factors have changed the type and level of
control the Indian state is accustomed to exercising over foreign policy. In an
interdependent world with multiple channels of contact between societies,
the Indian state is inevitably found playing catch-up with its own private sec-
tor and the world economy.
The inclusion of economic objectives has added diversity to India’s dip-
lomatic portfolio, and India’s growing economic power has added weight to
its voice in world affairs, particularly in forums such as the WTO and the
G-20 forum aimed at global economic recovery. As a consequence, India has
developed a diverse portfolio of economic partners and a more stable pattern
of engagement with the world. Whereas India during the Cold War took
ideological positions on a number of issues such as the Arab–Israeli war and
apartheid in South Africa, the economic imperatives of its present growth
trajectory have made such positions a luxury. In the present climate, India
sees value in doing business with a wide range of countries irrespective of
regime type. In 2012, Delhi was poised to sign a free trade agreement with
Israel, a country it had repeatedly criticized and ostracized in the U.N. during
the Cold War. Trade was also on the agenda of India–Pakistan talks in 2012,
with a growing constituency in India seeing the cross-border flow of goods

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Continuity and Change in India’s Foreign Policy 89

and services as a profitable means of promoting shared interests between the

two countries and perhaps even diminishing the cross-border flow of terror
from Pakistan to India. In the WTO, although India was seen as a saboteur
of the Doha round of trade talks in 2008, Delhi has done everything in its
power since then to bolster its multilateral trade credentials while also hedg-
ing its bets with a number of regional and bilateral free trade agreements. On
the whole, India has taken on greater responsibility for the management of
the international economy while also cultivating economic partnerships on a
non-ideological basis, including with countries such as the U.S., China,
Japan, Iran, Israel, Pakistan, Bangladesh, and others.

Domestic politics
India’s foreign policy under Nehru was largely a one-man show — the prime
minister, who was also the foreign minister, made every important decision
and representation to the outside world (Singh, 1965). This fact reflected the
dominance not just of Nehru in the post-colonial Indian political landscape
but also the dominance of his political party, the Indian National Congress.
The trend of prime ministerial dominance in Indian foreign policy continued
well into the 1980s. However, by the 1970s, as the Congress party split and
regional parties began to challenge its dominance, India’s foreign policy —
less so than domestic policy but still non-trivially — experienced an influx of
different (but not necessarily new) ideas, outlooks and agendas. Most notable
was the Janata Party-led government that took power in 1977 after a decade
of rule by the government of Indira Gandhi, Nehru’s daughter. Criticizing
Gandhi for signing a defense treaty with the Soviets, the Janata Party announced
a new policy of “genuine non-alignment” that would act as a sequel to Nehru’s
original policy (Jain, 2000).
The Janata period was a harbinger of what political change at the federal
level could mean for Indian foreign policy. The rise of regional identities in
the Indian polity eventually led to a fragmentation of political power and the
advent of coalition governments in 1989, after which India elected six gov-
ernments in the span of little more than seven years (a government is nor-
mally elected for a tenure of five years in India). This political turmoil had the
effect of unmooring Indian foreign policy from prior analytical foundations
and setting it adrift in the highly unpredictable waters of the post-Cold War
world. India abruptly withdrew its peacekeepers from Sri Lanka, causing fur-
ther political turmoil in the island nation; Delhi flip-flopped in its approach
to the 1991 Gulf War, first opposing then supporting and then again oppos-
ing use of Indian refueling facilities by American airplanes en route to Iraq

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90 R. Mukherjee

(Malik, 1991). In the new millennium, coalition governments are the norm
in India and relatively small regional parties are often able to derail India’s
foreign policy objectives, as when India was pressured by its Tamil political
parties to override its strategic interests and vote against the Sri Lankan gov-
ernment at the U.N. Human Rights Council in March 2012; or when the
Chief Minister of West Bengal, a state bordering Bangladesh, was able to
single-handedly block a landmark bilateral agreement in September 2011 on
sharing the waters of the Teesta river that flows through both India and
Bangladesh. In general, political currents in Indian states adjacent to neigh-
boring countries tend to interact with events across the border in ways that
Indian policymakers often cannot control, particularly on issues such as immi-
gration, arms and human trafficking, and insurgency.

International order
Observers of Indian foreign policy, particularly in the West, are frequently
keen to understand India’s approach to the international order that was
established and is currently dominated by the West. Analysts frequently seek
to determine whether India will be a “rule breaker”, “rule taker”, or “rule
maker” with regard to the norms, institutions and rules that constitute the
international order (Sidhu, 2011). In its early years, India was a reluctant rule
taker and a frequent rule breaker. Particularly in the realm of international
security, India frequently violated or circumvented international law and insti-
tutions as it went about pursuing policies that it perceived to be morally cor-
rect. For example, in 1961, India used military force to gain control of the
Portuguese-controlled territories of Goa and Daman and Diu; in 1968, India
took a principled stance against the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT)
because it unfairly privileged nations that already possessed nuclear weapons;
in 1971, India intervened in East Pakistan against the grain of international
law (though India’s act is today considered one of the early 20th century
instances of unilateral humanitarian intervention — see Finnemore, 2003); in
1974 India diverted nuclear technology meant for civilian purposes in order
to conduct its first nuclear test; in the 1980s, India intervened in conflicts in
neighboring Sri Lanka and the Maldives; and even as late as the mid-1990s,
India resolutely refused to sign the NPT as it was extended indefinitely, as
well as the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT). India went on to shock
the world and its non-proliferation and test-ban regimes with its second
round of nuclear tests in 1998.
The nuclear test of 1998 was in many ways a symbol of India’s regional
power status and new foreign policy. Since then, India has developed deeper

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Continuity and Change in India’s Foreign Policy 91

strategic and economic partnerships with almost all the major powers of the
world. Concurrently, India has developed a greater stake in the international
system by either joining smaller decision-making groupings within large mul-
tilateral institutions (such as the Five Interested Parties at the WTO, or the
BASIC group of countries in the climate change negotiations) or by joining
new groups at the initial stages where Delhi can actively participate in estab-
lishing institutional norms, as in the G-20. The UNSC remains the one insti-
tution where India has so far failed to obtain a seat at the high table, and this
institution will likely be a litmus test of how well the international order and
India can accommodate each other’s interests in the years to come. India
seeks a permanent seat with veto power on the Council, a privilege the exist-
ing five permanent members (the U.S., China, Russia, England, and France)
are unwilling to share. India claims that by virtue of its size and weight in
world affairs, and its contributions to international peace and security, it
deserves a permanent seat. Until the UNSC can accommodate Indian ambi-
tions, Delhi is unlikely to deepen its stake in an international order that does
not recognize its changing power and influence. In this sense, contemporary
India is more a “rule shaper”, a state that attempts to create exceptions for
itself or modify rules that do not accord with its interests.

Conclusion
Seen through the lens of four key relationships — with the United States,
China, South Asia, and the UNSC — India’s foreign policy has evolved in
interesting ways as its power has increased in international affairs. While the
quest for strategic autonomy has remained a fundamental objective, the con-
tent of Indian foreign policy has undergone a pragmatic transformation and
is far more oriented toward economic diplomacy today than ever before. At
the same time, India’s domestic politics are now more fragmented, allowing
smaller parties and groups to determine the nation’s external agenda on an
issue-by-issue basis. While political fragmentation is certainly a sign of greater
democratic participation in India, it does have significant implications for the
stability and predictability that India seeks in its relations with the world.
Finally, India’s approach to the international order has changed over time
as well. India today is less of a rule taker and rule breaker than before, seeking
instead to actually shape the international order in ways that suit its interests,
be they in opening new markets to Indian trade, promoting sovereignty and
non-intervention in the affairs of states, reconnecting with global markets for
civilian nuclear technology, or addressing domestic and regional security chal-
lenges. Although its efforts have not always borne fruit, their success and

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92 R. Mukherjee

India’s level of engagement with the international order will depend on the
extent to which the order and its dominant powers can make room for India’s
growing power and ambitions. Much is therefore at stake in the world of
Indian foreign policy, both at home and abroad. Charting a course for the
future will be challenging, but Delhi is fortunately endowed with an excellent
(though thinly staffed) corps of foreign policymakers that possesses the capa-
bility and the skill required to navigate the politics of an increasingly multipo-
lar world in which India is already a nation to be reckoned with.

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