From chanakya to modi evolution of india’s foreign policy

Part of seeing India as a future great power has been the gradual recognition
that India’s interests are not limited to its immediate geographic vicinity but
are spread all over the globe. India’s vast diaspora, from Africa and the
Americas to Fiji and Australia, is now considered an asset in exercise of
global influence though, unlike some other countries, it is only in recent
years that the Indian government has strengthened ties with and tapped into
the potential of Indian communities spread all over the world.
Interestingly, the Indian National Congress had passed a resolution as
early as 1925 to set up a foreign department that would ‘look after the
interests of Indians abroad and to carry on educative propaganda in the
country regarding their position in the British Empire and foreign

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countries’. 
33
In 1940, the Congress created an Indians Overseas
Department.
The view championed by the leaders of the Congress in the early
twentieth century with respect to the Indian diaspora was: ‘make Burma
thine home’, ‘make Ceylon thine home’ and ‘make Malaya thine home’. 
34
As explained by a former foreign secretary, ‘Gandhi and Nehru and the
Congress did not want the overseas Indian to want or claim the best of both
worlds. If you lived in Burma, treat Burma as your home, live and move
and have your being in Burma, do not cast covetous eyes on India, not all
the time. Your loyalties were to be towards the country of your adoption.
When the Congress came into power in 1946–47 the entire outlook on
overseas Indians was based on this theoretical viewpoint.’ 
35
Before championing the Indian independence struggle, Mahatma Gandhi
fought for the rights of Indians and other immigrants in South Africa. It is
interesting that he fought for their rights to be treated as South African
subjects of the British Crown, not as Indian citizens.
36
Both Gandhi and
Nehru believed that once someone left their country and based themselves
in another homeland, they should be expected to integrate themselves with
their adopted country. An Indian living abroad would remain Indian in a
cultural and civilizational sense but he or she was now the responsibility of
their new country, not of India.
Nehru voiced that view whenever the issue of the Indian diaspora was
raised in the Constituent Assembly right after Independence, resulting in
discussions on Indians in South Africa, Burma and Sri Lanka. In his
speeches, Nehru praised those who went abroad as merchants, traders,
workers, indentured labourers and students, worked hard and managed to
do well in life. ‘They worked hard for themselves, and for the country of
their adoption. They made good themselves and the country they had gone
to also profited. It is a romance and it is something which India can be
proud of.’
37

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The first prime minister of India recognized the perils of xenophobia in
many of the countries to which Indians had emigrated. ‘India is a country
which in spite of everything has abounding vitality and spreads abroad,’ he
said. ‘We tend to overwhelm others both by virtue of our numbers, and
sometimes by virtue of the economic position we might develop there. That
naturally frightens others who may not have that vitality in them and they
want to protect themselves against it.’
38
While asserting that the Indian
government wished to protect the interests of Indians abroad, the principled
Nehru asserted ‘we cannot protect any vested interest which injure the
cause of the country they are in’.
39
During the Constituent Assembly debates, when the issue of citizenship
was discussed with respect to the Indian diaspora, Nehru remarked that only
those could be offered citizenship who chose to be exclusively Indian
citizens. If they chose another citizenship, he said, ‘our interest in them
becomes cultural and humanitarian, not political’. Nehru argued against
dual citizenship for overseas Indians, telling the Constituent Assembly that
it could not treat them as Indians while also demanding complete franchise
for them in the countries where they lived. ‘Of course, the two things do not
go together,’ he observed, adding, ‘Either they get franchise as nationals of
the other country, or you treat them as Indians minus the franchise and ask
for them the most favoured treatment given to an alien.’
40
This view resulted in India’s decision to not offer the option of dual
citizenship even though it is widely practised by many countries. In recent
years, India has offered a lifelong visa and access to their country of origin
for Indians settled abroad, giving them an identification card as an overseas
Indian or a person of Indian origin (PIO) though they are not given an
Indian passport and cannot vote in India though they may own property
there.
Over the years the Indian diaspora has grown, especially in the Gulf, the
United Kingdom and North America. The NRIs serve as a source of

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economic benefits to India, providing employment to a large number of
Indians and making India one of the top recipients of remittances. New
Delhi took time to grasp the enormous economic, strategic and diplomatic
benefit of having a large and generally prosperous diaspora. Now, however,
the Indian government views the diaspora as an extension of India’s
influence abroad and an additional source of prestige. A separate Union
ministry dealing with non-resident Indian affairs was set up early in the first
decade of the next century. The first conference for overseas Indians
(Pravasi Bharatiya) sponsored by the Government of India was held in 2003
during which ten eminent persons of Indian origin were officially honoured.
The idea of giving some form of dual citizenship – overseas Indian
citizenship – is also of recent origin.
41
These days, foreign citizens of Indian origin play an active role in
determining policy towards India in countries such as the United States, the
United Kingdom, Australia and Canada. Indians were always described as
global ambassadors and were asked to uphold India’s name and honour
internationally. Nehru once remarked, ‘If you cannot be, and if you are not,
friendly to the people of that country, come back to India and do not spoil
the fair name of India.’
42
It is unlikely that he envisaged a time when
Canada’s federal cabinet would have six members of Indian origin,
including the defence minister, as happened after the 2015 election that
resulted in Justin Trudeau becoming prime minister. At the same time, both
Canada and the United States had persons of Indian origin as ambassadors
to India.
In 1947, there were 3,410,215 persons of Indian origin in the British
dominion and colonies: 700,000 in Burma, 700,000 in Ceylon, 700,000 in
Malaya, 282,400 in South Africa, 184,100 in British East Africa, 271,640 in
Mauritius (64 per cent of population), 125,675 in Fiji (47 per cent of
population), 406,000 in British West Indies, 30,000 in Indonesia, 4,000 in
the Persian Gulf (Oman, Kuwait, Bahrain), 2,500 in Iran, 1,000 in Egypt,

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700 in Iraq and 200 in Afghanistan.
43
As of 2015, there are over twenty-
seven million people of Indian origin, including temporary migrants, with
the vast majority in the Gulf and in Western countries. Annually, India
receives $70 billion a year in remittances, the largest for any expatriate
group and this contributes to 3.5 per cent of India’s GDP.
44
Concomitant with the growth of Indian economic and global influence,
the Indian government has sought to display its power by playing a direct
role in the well-being of overseas Indians. For example, during outbreaks of
violence in the Middle East (the 1991 Gulf War, the 2003 Iraq war, the 2012
Libyan crisis and the Syria–Iraq civil wars since 2013), India has sent
military airplanes and ships to the region to rescue its migrant workers.
Further, the Indian government has signed agreements with Arab countries
in the Gulf to protect the rights of its workers and to help them when
necessary.
45
Matters that were considered internal affairs of other countries during the
Nehru era, such as issues of wages or living standards for Indian workers to
visas and immigration policies of countries which affect Indian migrant
labour, have now become part of India’s foreign policy concerns. This
contrasts sharply with Nehru’s view that Indians settled abroad were the
responsibility of the countries they had made their homes, not India’s.
Nehru had argued that Indians abroad got into difficulties that could not
be helped, nor was it India’s business to help find employment for Indians
abroad. ‘The tendency of any country is to reserve its employment for its
own nationals,’ he said. ‘It is difficult to criticize that tendency.’
46
A similar
attitude about Indians working overseas or settled abroad permanently is no
longer possible. Today, the impact of American immigration policy on
Indian companies and Indians studying and employed in the United States
has become one of the key issues in bilateral discussions. The issue of
employment visas for Indians (H-1B and L-1) was a key topic of discussion
between former president Obama and Prime Minister Modi and will remain

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one when President Donald J. Trump meets with Premier Modi.
47
India now
proudly considers persons of Indian origin all over the world as purveyors
of its interests in other countries.

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5
Institutions and Strategic Culture
FOR SEVERAL YEARS after Independence, India’s leaders saw external
relations as being mainly about diplomatic stature, not about competing
interests and strategies. Nehru waxed eloquent about India’s special
position in the world but as K. Subrahmanyam points out, ‘the much needed
synergy for effective national security management’, involving interaction
of different components of the security establishment, was totally absent.
1
India’s vision of its place in the world, its historic civilization, the writings
of its ancient philosophers and actions of its medieval kings, as well as the
policies of its Western colonizers, failed to bequeath a uniquely Indian
strategic culture.
Jaswant Singh, who served both as minister of defence and as minister
for external affairs at different times, pointed out that India sits at the
crossroads of four collapsed empires – the Chinese, Ottoman, British and
Russian – while its security challenges are defined by four lines –
McMahon Line, Durand Line, Line of Actual Control, and Line of Control.
2
Influenced by other empires and circumscribed by boundaries drawn by
outsiders, India lacks a clear set of beliefs, attitudes and norms about the
use of force or defining its frontiers that could be described as exclusively
Indian.

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Most of the institutions currently engaged in shaping India’s foreign
policy are built on the edifice of the British Raj. They function with varying
degrees of efficacy in different situations but cannot be said to represent an
Indian strategic ethos. Subrahmanyam, India’s leading strategic analyst,
argued that the key reason for this was the absence of a strategic culture
from the pre-British era. Prior to British rule various princely states focused
on their own security in an ad hoc manner and there was little emphasis on
global strategy. Since the princes saw a threat only from one another and
not to India as a whole, they did not care to think about a strategy for the
defence of the subcontinent. During British rule, the Raj framed its interests
in terms of what benefited the empire and no Indian took part or was
allowed to be involved in formulation of strategy.
3
Subrahmanyam goes on to argue that after 1947, India saw itself as a
status-quo-oriented, non-expansionist power. It, therefore, did not have the
‘paranoid sense of insecurity’ that leads to serious strategic planning.
4
 The
country’s early post-British era leaders assumed that if India does not
threaten others, others will leave India alone and refrain from threatening its
security. In addition, civilian control of the military under domestic-policy-
oriented politicians prevented the development of a large Indian military–
industrial complex. India was thus denied the post-Independence
institutional structure that could encourage strategic thought, which in its
essence is about national security. More than strategic security it is national
pride that defined India’s foreign policy in the immediate aftermath of
Independence.
Under Nehru, the military and intelligence apparatus were treated as
tactical executors of policy and kept away from decision making. This
ensured civilian supremacy but did not create vertical and horizontal
integration in planning for national security. The Ministry of Defence,
manned by civilians, kept the three uniformed services – the army, navy and
air force – out of policymaking. Most of the proposals considered by the

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highest defence body – the Cabinet Committee on Security (CCS) – dealt
with procurement proposals for necessary supplies or issues relating to
soldiers’ emoluments, not with real strategy.
At the time of India’s independence in 1947, the Indian military’s officer
corps was unacquainted with national security management. The British
started giving commissions to Indians as officers in the military only in
1920, having reserved officers’ ranks exclusively for British of Caucasian
descent until then. This meant that the Indian officers’ corps was only
twenty-seven-years-old at the time of Independence. India had inherited an
army from the Raj but with inexperienced junior generals, some of whom
were excellent field commanders but lacked proficiency in leading a larger
force. Only three Indian generals had experience of commanding a brigade
during World War II. Nehru refused to retain British generals, pushing
Indians into senior command positions without adequate prior preparation.
The situation was exacerbated when generalist civil servants, with little
knowledge of security issues and international relations, came to dominate
the Ministry of Defence. Diplomats at the Ministry of External Affairs soon
insinuated themselves into all aspects of national security. In an interview a
former head of the defence department noted that for decades even the
introductory chapter of the annual report of the defence ministry was
traditionally written by the foreign secretary, not the defence secretary.
5
Thinking on defence and national security was seen as prerogatives of civil
servants and diplomats, not of the uniformed military. Moreover, while
Nehru was interested in economic planning, defence planning really started
only after 1964 under American insistence in the backdrop of India’s
military defeat in 1962 at the hands of China.
6
Subrahmanyam cites ‘serious systemic flaws in the Indian national
security structure and processes’ that began under Nehru, which he believes
were never fully redressed even under his successors. In his book