Table Of ContentRising India
While India’s prospects as a rising power and its material position in
theinternationalsystemhavereceivedsignificantattention,littlescholarly
work exists on India’s status in contemporary world politics. This
Routledge Focus book charts the ways in which India’s international
strategies of status seeking have evolved from Independence up to the
present day.
The authors focus on the social dimensions of status, seeking to
build on recent conceptual scholarship on status in world politics. The
book shows how India has made a partial, though incomplete, shift
from seeking status by rejecting material power and proximity to major
powers, to seeking status by embracing both material power and major
powerrelationships.However,italsochallengestraditionalunderstandings
of the linear relationship between material power and status. Seven
decades of Indian status seeking reveal that the enhancement of mate-
rial power is one of only several routes Indian leaders have envisaged
to lead to higher status.
Byarguingthatastaterequiresmorethanmaterialpowertoachieve
status, this book reshapes understandings of both status seeking and
Indianforeignpolicy.Itwillbeofinteresttoacademicsandpolicymakers
inthefieldsofinternationalrelations,foreignpolicy,andIndianstudies.
Rajesh Basrur is Professor of International Relations and Coordinator
of the South Asia Programme at RSIS at NTU, Singapore.
Kate Sullivan de Estrada is Lecturer in Modern Indian Studies at the
University of Oxford, UK.
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Rising India
Status and Power
Rajesh Basrur and Kate Sullivan de
Estrada
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mi Economic
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Firstpublished2017
byRoutledge
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Contents
Preface vi
1 Strategies of status seeking in world politics: the case of
India 1
2 Status without power in the Nehru era (1947–1964) 24
3 Incipient power, limited status in the post-Nehru era
(1964–1991) 54
4 Status and power in the post-Cold War era (1991–2016) 82
5 Conclusion 112
Bibliography 117
Index 135
Preface
This book has its origins in a 2012 conversation between the authors
on the sidelines of a talk at the Department of Political Science and
International Studies, University of Birmingham, hosted by Professor
Nick Wheeler. Our shared sense at the time was that there was an
interesting story to be told about India’s longstanding quest for inter-
national status; a story that did not quite mesh with the power-centric
analyses which we felt near-dominated the field. Fortuitously, our
decision to collaborate on such an account was well timed with the
emergence in the discipline of International Relations (IR) of a small
but ground-breaking literature on status. In particular, the 2014 edited
volumebyT.V.Paul,DeborahWelchLarsonandWilliamC.Wohlforth,
Status in World Politics, has been a major source of conceptual
inspiration andwe owe much to its editors and contributors.
Ourown contribution to the emerging scholarship on status through
this book fulfils our original aim of narrating one story of India’s
aspirations to high status in world politics. However, it also offers a
conceptual engagement with status-seeking that has application
beyond the case of India and that is relevant to the study of other
rising powers. While our own thoughts and findings on the subject
continue to evolve and far exceed the confines of this slim volume, our
aim in writing for the fast-publishing Routledge Focus series is three-
fold:tomakeanearlystatementontherelationshipthatIndiahasheld
with status in world politics; to contribute in a timely manner to the
conceptual framing of status in the discipline of IR; and to kindle new
and fairly immediate conversations with our colleagues.
We would like to acknowledge the contributions of a number of
individuals and institutions in the making of this book. Early papers by
thetwoauthorslaiditsfoundationinasmallOxfordworkshopinMarch
2015, generously funded by the South Asia Programme, S. Rajaratnam
School of International Studies, Nanyang Technological University
Preface vii
and hosted by the Contemporary South Asian Studies Programme,
AreaStudiesandtheSouthAsiaResearchCluster,WolfsonCollege,both
of the University of Oxford. We would like to thank Professor Yuen
FoongKhongandProfessorToddHallforservingasdiscussantsonthe
papers, Professor Matthew McCartney for chairing the workshop,
Dr George Kunnath for his insightful comments, and Sarah Dewick
and Louise Gordon for coordinating the event. In July 2016, an award
through the Returning Carer’s Fund, Vice-Chancellor’s Diversity
Fund, University of Oxford, which, among other things, supports
careerdevelopment following maternity leave, permitted the authors to
convene once more in Oxford. We thank Stephen Minay for his logis-
tical support in setting up this visit. Perhaps the greatest beneficiaries
of both meetings in Oxford were one author’s air miles and the other
author’s two small children, who have learnt to expect the delivery of
chocolate from Singapore.
We would like to thank Professor Roy Allison and Dr Gilberto
Estrada Harris for their feedback on the introduction, and Padmini
Gopal for providing timely assistance with the referencing and biblio-
graphy. Finally, wearegrateful to Professor Nick Wheeler, both for his
perceptive feedback on key parts of the book, and for originally
bringing the authors together to learn from one another throughout
this exciting project.
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1 Strategies of status seeking in
world politics
The case of India
Introduction
WhileIndia’sprospectsasarisingpoweranditsmaterialpositioninthe
international system have received significant attention,1 little scholarly
workexists on India’s status in contemporary world politics.2 Given the
broad scholarly consensus that ‘India’s evolution into a modern nation
state has been marked by an inordinate quest for international recogni-
tion of its status’, it is surprising how little theorising and empirical
analysis of India’s status seeking has taken place.3 Since Independence,
India’s leaders have consistently sought high international status for the
Indian state, even if the strategies they have adopted have shifted over
time. Independent India’s first prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, firmly
believed thatIndiawasa ‘potential GreatPower’.4Half a centuryafter
his passing, there is a widespread sense that this potential is close to
being realised. The combination of economic growth, rising military
power and revived recognition as the ‘world’s greatest democracy’ has
fostered a returning consciousness among Indian elites of their coun-
try’s past greatness and future destiny as a major power.5 As Prime
MinisterNarendraModitoldanewschannelinSeptember2014,‘This
is a country that once upon a time was called “the golden bird”. We
have fallen from where we were before.Butnowwe have the chanceto
rise again’.6 The ubiquitous sense of national pride visible today has an
old lineage. The eleventh-century traveller and diarist Alberuni had
observed: ‘the Indians believe that there is no country but theirs, no
king like theirs, no religion like theirs, no science like theirs’.7
The purpose of this volume is to offer a fresh interpretation of
India’s now seven decades-old search for higher status. In order to do
so, it draws on – and advances – recent International Relations (IR)
scholarship on status seeking that underscores not simply the material
but also the social dimensions of status in world politics.
