Table Of ContentTHE MAKING OF INDIAN DIPLOMACY
DEEP K. DATTA-RAY
The Making of
Indian Diplomacy
A Critique of Eurocentrism
A
A
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available
Datta-Ray, Deep K.
The Making of Indian Diplomacy: A Critique of Eurocentrism
ISBN 978-0-19-020667-3
CONTENTS
Transliteration vii
Glossary ix
Abbreviations xiii
Introduction 1
1. Delusive Utopia 11
Modern diplomacy 12
Reflexivity and civilization 19
Civilized genealogy 21
Conclusions 24
2. Irrepressible Present 27
Managing the MEA 28
The structure-of-structures 34
The diplomatic present 39
Status anxiety 42
‘How on earth did you get out?’ 50
The jugar of negotiating the cosmos 60
Mobility’s aim: progress 74
Unspectacular suffering 87
‘Nothing makes sense in this country’ 101
Conclusions 106
3. Theorizing the Uncontainable 109
Today’s kit: the Mahabharata 110
Managing the text 116
Application: the Mahabharata’s dharma 119
The practice of diplomacy in the Mahabharata 130
Conclusions 134
v
CONTENTS
4. Inverted ‘History’ 137
The rationale for diplomacy in the Indo-Mughal Empire 139
The coming of authentic, modern, European diplomacy 148
Conclusions 162
5. Death of Diplomacy 165
Diplomacy-as-battle 166
Battle practices 175
The victory of battle-diplomacy 185
Conclusions 191
6. Diplomacy Reborn 193
Gandhi’s engagement with dharma 195
Gandhi’s art-of-politics 200
Nehru: The principled Gandhian 207
The diplomatic apparatus 214
Satyagraha in practice: Pakistan and China 219
Conclusions 228
7. Violence of Ignorance 231
Analytical violence 232
Enclosing the atom: satyagraha 236
The status of status 244
The friability of art 249
Conclusions 256
Conclusions: In the Shadow of Power Politics 259
Intellectualizing the Ramarajya 265
Notes 271
Bibliography 329
Index 363
vi
A NOTE ON TRANSLITERATION, TENSE
AND USAGE
The method for transliteration adopted in a work spanning Hindi, San-
skrit, Arabic, Persian and Urdu produces its own complexities. It is to
avoid cluttering the text that the full set of diacritical marks has been
omitted and considerable liberty has been taken with apostrophes. Spell-
ings have not however been altered, hence Abu al-Fazl Allami rather
ṛṣṇ
than Abū al-Fazl ‘Allāmī and Krsna rather than K a. Exceptions occur
when contemporary authors are quoted, in which case the original spell-
ing has been left intact, as it has been with article and book titles. Sim-
ilarly, the punctuation and spelling in quotations from English texts—be
they translations or originals in antiquated English—have not been tam-
pered with, except for the replacement of ‘law’ with ‘dharma’. It is to build
on the sense of time that comes with such sources that I use the historic
present for those authors I engage in discussion with. Thus ‘David Hume
and Gayatri Chakravarty Spivak write’, but ‘Mohandas K Gandhi wrote’.
The historic present is however not used for oral data or archival records—
including those not in the public domain which I encountered or sought
out during the research—since those discussions and documents are pre-
sented as evidence. Intended for the benefit of general readers, it is
expected that these conventions will not dissuade Indologists. As for
usage, it is in keeping with the times and attitudes recorded in this text,
and to avoid unnecessary semantic contortions, that terms like ‘white’
and ‘natives’—artificial and derogatory though they are—will be found
occasionally in the text. Finally, on occasion I have relied on my family
and its archive, and in such cases there is full disclosure.
vii
GLOSSARY OF INDIAN WORDS
-ji an honorific added at the end of a name
acara expected conduct (Sanskrit)
adharma the opposite of dharma (Sanskrit)
ahimsa non-violence (Sanskrit)
akhbarat Indo-Mughal reports (Arabic)
akhbar nawis Indo-Mughal intelligence gathering organization
(Persian)
Allah-o-Akbar God is Great or Akbar is God (Arabic)
anrasamsya non-cruelty (Sanskrit)
antahkarana individual truth (Sanskrit)
anustubh a Sanskrit meter for composing epics
asakta karman non-attached action (Sanskrit)
Asuras Mythological beings opposed to the Gods
Ayurvedic a native medicinal tradition
babudom officialdom
bakshi Indo-Mughal Paymaster General (Persian)
caste Hereditary class system not limited to Hindus
casteism judging on the basis of caste
chaprasi orderly (Hindi)
crore 10,000,000 (Sanskrit)
dak post (Hindi)
darogha manager of an Indo-Mughal department (Mongol)
dastur-ul-amal Indo-Mughal manuals of governance (Persian)
dharma most succinctly translated as ‘law’ (Sanskrit)
Diwan/Duanny Minister of Finance (Persian)
Diwani right to tax directly (Persian)
diwan-i-khailisah/ Minister of the Exchequer (Persian)
Duan colsa
ix
