From chanakya to modi evolution of india’s foreign policy

mai-baap
(literally, mother-father but figuratively ‘the font of authority’) or ultimate
protector and benefactor. As the king sat in the capital, he was remote from
the average person. The local landlord or priest, often supported by a
mansabdar (imperial bureaucrat under the Mughals) enjoying the king’s
patronage, represented authority in India’s small towns and villages. The
British, starting with the East India Company, took this culture of
government through patrons/benefactors down to the grass roots. Under the
British, the district magistrate was both judge and collector of taxes.
Independent India inherited the British arrangement, under which every
aspect of life – from schooling to health care, from law and order to
infrastructure development and business – required patronage, approval or
permission from a government official. India’s founding fathers, including
Nehru, had a paternalistic outlook and were also suspicious of market
forces. While the British used their expansive bureaucracy solely for
colonial advantage, Nehru and his successors concentrated powers in the
hands of the bureaucracy and the state because of the belief that they knew
best how to protect India’s unwashed and unlettered millions.
In the field of foreign relations, this paternalism resulted in diplomacy
conducted mostly outside the realm of public discussion with foreign visits
put on display to show the respect and prestige of India. India’s foreign

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service thus became an elite within the elite of the country’s permanent
bureaucracy.
In addition to the personalities and institutions, external relations of any
country are also defined by its sense of self and its view of its place in the
world. The overarching idea that shaped Indian foreign policy right after
Independence was the notion of India’s geostrategic as well as civilizational
primacy. India occupies the largest area of the South Asian subcontinent.
Surrounded by the Himalayan mountain ranges to the north and the Indian
Ocean to the south, Indians believe geography has dictated that the
subcontinent is one entity.
For every Indian government security has meant ensuring that the
subcontinent remains stable and peaceful. India’s outlook on its immediate
neighbours is heavily influenced by the Indian view that these countries are
an integral part of Indian civilization. While the concept of a geographic
‘sphere of influence’ for a major power is widely understood, Indian
philosophers and empires have, over time, also delineated a ‘civilizational
sphere of influence’
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 for India.
Located at the intersection of the trade routes between South Asia, Central
Asia and the Middle East, ancient Indian kingdoms and empires maintained
cultural and economic relations with Mesopotamia, Greece, China and
Rome. With the exception of the Chola dynasty (300 
BC
–
AD
1300), which
built an overseas empire, Indian armies did not seek conquest of lands
outside the subcontinent. Ancient Hindu treatises on statecraft and religion
recommended isolation from other civilizations. Kings could conquer
territory from neighbouring kings within India but annexing other cultures
or peoples was deemed unethical.
Ancient Indian philosophers and strategists fall both in the realist as well
as the idealist camps. The foremost strategist and writer on Indian realism

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was Kautilya, also known as India’s Machiavelli. His masterpiece the
Arthashastra
(literally ‘Science of Political Economy’) was actually a
treatise on statecraft and management of kingdoms. For some analysts, the
Arthashastra
has framed modern India’s foreign policy though others count
it as only one of several influences. Idealist literature from ancient times
reflects the moralist influence of Buddhism and Jainism. It is reflected most
prominently, in the modern era, in the views of Mahatma Gandhi, the most
well known face of the Indian national struggle and the father of the modern
Indian nation.
Although ancient Indian strategists and Indian empires were aware of the
world around them, it was under the British Raj that India found itself
connected strategically to a neighbourhood beyond the subcontinent,
spreading from the Gulf to South-East Asia. India’s policy towards its
geographic neighbours today is heavily influenced by the Raj’s view that
the interests of the Raj dictated the interests of the nearby states, not vice
versa. This is the root of India’s oft-expressed desire to keep outside powers
from gaining influence in South Asia, often referred to by some as the
Indian Monroe doctrine. The treaties that India signed with her immediate
neighbours after Independence also bore the British legacy. India’s 1949
treaty with Bhutan was identical in almost all respects to the one Bhutan
signed with the British in 1910. In 1950, when India and Afghanistan
signed a treaty, the tribes on both sides of the Durand Line asked if India
‘would continue British Raj policy of subsidy and arms’ but India declined
the offer.
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Belief in the greatness of Indian civilization lies at the core of
contemporary Indian nationalism. As early as 1922 an Indian editor argued
in an article published by the 
New York Times
: ‘India, with a population
comprising one-fifth of the human race, cannot eternally remain the
“adjunct” of a little island [Britain] 7000 miles away from her shores’.
8

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Under Gandhi’s leadership, the Indian national movement embraced
moral ideals, which in turn have led to the emergence of a sense of Indian
exceptionalism – that India is unique, special and an example for the rest of
the world. The very first resolution passed by the Constituent Assembly of
India on 13 December 1946 stated: ‘This ancient land attains its rightful and
honoured place in the world and makes its full and willing contribution to
the promotion of world peace and the welfare of mankind.’
9
 An anonymous
article in the July 1949 issue of 
Foreign Affairs
described India as ‘an infant
state’ that was ‘no newcomer to history, no offshoot or colony newly risen
to nationhood’.
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In the decades immediately after Independence, this desire to be seen as a
global leader, albeit a moral one, often amplified the preaching overtones of
Indian foreign policy. India’s championing of anti-colonialism and anti-
racism and its campaign against apartheid in South Africa were part of this
policy. So was India’s demand for reforms not only in the United Nations
Security Council but also in the international economic order, including the
International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. India saw the world’s
major powers, especially the industrialized capitalist nations, as unwilling
to cater to the interests of previously colonized poorer countries. India’s
leading role in the creation of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM), the
Group of 77 (G-77) and BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa)
represents its effort to create international institutions that are not run by
western European powers or the United States of America.
Lacking resources to participate in the cold war and fearing that