From chanakya to modi evolution of india’s foreign policy

Why India Is
Not A Great Power? (Yet)
, leading Indian strategist Bharat Karnad asserts
that India does not fulfil the requirements of global power status, at least at
the present moment. Karnad maintains that to be a great power a country
needs ‘a driving vision’, a sense of ‘national destiny’, defining of ‘national
interests’, and ‘willingness to use coercion and force in support of national
interests’ along with ‘imaginative’ use of both hard and soft power.
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 India is
several steps short of that position.
That Indians believe that the popularity of yoga is evidence of India’s
importance in the world explains how India views itself from a very
different perspective than other nations. Indian leaders often suggest that
the more India participates in multilateral organizations, adopts principled
stands on global issues, champions global peace and disarmament and
speaks out against military alliances, the higher the pedestal it occupies on

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the world stage. The reality of the world – and the role India plays in it – is
more complex. This book is an effort to examine how India’s world view
has evolved over the years and what institutions, ideas and attitudes have
shaped it.

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India and the World
AN APOCRYPHAL STORY suggests that on his first day in office, every
prime minister of modern India reads a letter on India’s foreign policy
ostensibly written by the country’s first prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru.
The letter starts with the words, ‘Dear successor, many generations have
passed since this letter was written but this letter is as valid for you today as
it was for me and your other predecessors.’ It goes on to list India’s interests
and concerns and outlines the parameters within which an Indian leader can
formulate his country’s foreign policy. The story about the imaginary letter
demonstrates the abiding grip of history and tradition on the way India sees
and interacts with the world.
With some variation, India’s external relations have shown remarkable
continuity and consistency since Independence in 1947, notwithstanding
changes in leaders and ruling political parties. India is not alone in such
constancy. Most countries base their foreign policy on a template shaped by
their national experience and view of self. In India’s case, its foreign policy
paradigm borrows from its civilizational heritage as much as from modern
ideas about national interest. Even when a policy idea appears new, it
actually echoes one of several recurrent themes.

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In his book 
Special Providence
(2001) leading American thinker Walter
Russell Mead identified four approaches that have shaped American foreign
policy since US independence in 1776. US relations with the world, Mead
argues, can be understood in light of defining ideas advanced by significant
individuals at various times in US history. Thus, according to Mead, the
Hamiltonian school of foreign policy, named after first secretary of the
treasury, Alexander Hamilton, ‘sees the first task of the American
government as promoting the health of American enterprise at home and
abroad’. The Wilsonian ideal, enunciated by President Woodrow Wilson,
‘believes that the United States has both a moral and a practical duty to
spread its values through the world’. The Jeffersonian view, put forward by
President Thomas Jefferson, ‘has seen the preservation of American
democracy in a dangerous world as the most pressing and vital interest of
the American people’. The Jacksonian approach, crafted by President
Andrew Jackson, ‘represents a deeply embedded, widely spread populist
and popular culture of honor, independence, courage and military pride
among the American people’.
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 Makers of US foreign policy have tended to
follow one or a combination of these schools of thought through most of US
history though some have tried to embrace the European approach, which
Mead terms ‘continental realism’, based on maintaining a balance of power
to protect America’s global interests.
A similar analysis of India’s global outlook would help identify the
context and underlying principles of India’s foreign policy. Several scholars
have attempted to explain India’s world view though, unlike Mead in
relation to the United States, they have not offered neat categories of Indian
policy approaches. For example, in