Power and Purpose - A Book Review

“We will not be camp followers of any country, however great.” 

~ Jawaharlal Nehru

75 years of glory, toil, struggle, growth, and brotherhood were relived by 150 crore Indians on August 15, 2022, when Prime Minister Narendra Modi from the ramparts of the historic Red Fort reiterated the need for India to regain its former glory while celebrating the 75 years of its independence. 

Illustration by The Geostrata

The Prime Minister further invited the infinite number of people of India to become part of the next 25 years, also known as the Amrit Kaal, and achieve a Viksit Bharat by India’s centenary on August 15, 2047.  

Today, India boasts a robust and growing economy, surpassing even its coloniser, the United Kingdom, last year in GDP terms. The Indian economy will keep on expanding, and its manufacturing and services sectors will redefine the 21st century as we move forward. 

Interestingly, it's not just the Indian economy that has undergone major evolutionary shifts in the past 75 years, be it the planning commissions, LPG reforms, etc. In fact, the evolution of the Indian foreign policy also warrants a retrospection, which might help decode the major changes that the Indian diplomacy went through in the past and might also be able to guide its future steps.

Power and Purpose: Rediscovering Indian Foreign Policy in Amrit Kaal, authored by Harsh V. Pant and Anant Singh Mann, and published by RUPA Publications, is an extremely fruitful attempt at revisiting critical junctures of Indian diplomacy in the aftermath of its independence back in 1947. 

The book interestingly divides the past 75 years of Indian foreign policy in four crucial, yet fluent periods, with each period presented as a wave of change in the Indian foreign policy outlook. 

In the aftermath of World War 2, the world was facing a critical time in human history, decolonisation followed by redrawing of boundaries and rewriting of histories. India, too, gained its independence at such a turbulent time. On the one hand, India and its politicians kept themselves busy with constitutionalism and nation-building efforts to retain and maintain the hard-earned sovereignty and freedom of action in the subcontinent. 

On the other hand, the Indian leaders were entangled with the larger question of, “How do we remain independent in our global outreach?”.  The question was natural, given the global encampment and bandwagoning to the sides of either the USA or the USSR. 

In such a critical time of our history, the Bandung Conference took place in Indonesia in 1955, which resulted in the genesis of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM). The Nehru years have been awarded a separate section in the book, the opening section.

The Nehruvian years, unfortunately for India, culminated in the fateful India-China war of 1962, but not before Nehru was able to put together India’s relations with both the USA and the USSR, which helped fulfil our foreign policy objectives in the subsequent eras.

If India utilised the Nehruvian era toward a constitutional state-building and political outreach, the second wave saw it consolidating its national interests by engaging with regional actors, while following a largely pragmatic foreign policy. India fought two significant wars with Pakistan during this period, and emerged victorious but was mindful of not strong-arming Pakistan due to Versailles-syndrome (The Shimla Agreement, 1972). 

Moreover, India engaged with its neighbours on mutually beneficial lines such as regional development including trade and economic cooperation (Nepal, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Myanmar, and Sri Lanka). 

The last decade of wave 2 was marred with two significant events, first Operation Smiling Buddha, which made India nuclear, foundations of which were laid in the early Nehru years through Tarapur nuclear power station, and second, India’s conquest of the Siachen glacier before Pakistan, which now boasts being the highest battlefield in the world. 

The second wave not only saw some of the significant friction in the Sino-Indian relations via border incursions and clashes, but also witnessed a thaw evident in the re-establishment of Ambassadorial relations between the two. The second wave was an era dominated by the Indira Gandhi years and was witness to her diplomatic clout, be it her visit to the US, the liberation of Bangladesh, and the Indo-Soviet Friendship Treaty. 

Indira Gandhi’s unfortunate assassination sent the Indian foreign policy into oblivion, but almost instantly, it found itself ushering into a new era of modernisation, followed by India opening up to the world. The third wave saw defence procurement and modernisation programs at an unprecedented scale under Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi after he visited the USSR. Most of the weapons systems acquired during those years serve the Indian Armed Forces to date, with major improvements, of course. 

Moreover, it was the Rajiv Gandhi years which laid the foundations for the future “Look East Policy” through his outreach to Southeast Asia. However, his visit to Beijing remains one of the most significant foreign visits made by an Indian leader, as the visit saw India and China detaching border disagreements from their overall bilateral relationship, which provided a huge boost to both economies and trade between the two surged.

A consolidatory program sought by India during the second wave came to fruition with the establishment of SAARC in 1985, which brought together all of India’s neighbours, promising mutual peace and growth, ushering in an era of development and prosperity. 

Fast forward to July 1991, the ground-breaking union budget is presented by Dr. Manmohan Singh, the then finance minister of India, announced the opening of the Indian economy to the world, also known as the LPG reforms.

One of the major consequences of the policy shift was a greater economic integration of the Indian economy with the globalisation efforts worldwide. It provided India with a golden opportunity to make in India and sell it to the world. PM Narasimha Rao initiated the Look East Policy in 1991 indicating an important outward, deeper relations with East and Southeast Asia were key to Indian interests in the Asia-Pacific as a whole and the Indian Ocean Region specifically. Look East Policy was another way India looked forward to rejuvenating its ancient relations with the region, which too were bound by trade. 

Furthermore, the third wave saw India engaging globally and rewiring its entire global outreach program which is evident in both, it establishing full diplomatic relations with Israel and establishing BISTEC (now BIMSTEC), a Bay of Bengal-centric regional initiative which serves the dual purpose of keeping Pakistan away from jeopardising yet another regional grouping (after SAARC) by raising bilateral questions in a multilateral setting, and a region-specific multilateral forum with like-minded nations dependent on the Bay of Bengal for their trade and economies working toward common goals.

Even though India was moving toward growth and development complemented by a similar foreign policy approach, it could not shed off the colonial baggage it inherited in Pakistan as a neighbour. The Pakistani misadventures in Kargil were called out and condemned worldwide, and for the first time, India called out its nuclear bluff (the most recent one being Operation Sindoor in 2025). 

Fourth wave commenced with the turn of century, wherein India strives to lead the world by example. One of the prime examples of the same would be India’s HADR operations during the Indian Ocean tsunami of 2004, which showcased that India and the Indian Ocean Region is self-sufficient in its own affairs.

Another example would be the Vaccine Maitri initiative undertaken under the ancient India ethos of ‘vasudhaiva kutumbakam’ during the distressful period of Covid-19. 

One of the breakthrough moments for India-US relations came with the signing of the 123 Agreement of the Indo-US Civil Nuclear Agreement in 2008, which paved the way for stronger relations with the US and West, especially in the aftermath of Pokhran II which made India capable of nuclear weapons production and deployment.

In 2014, Prime Minister rebranded the erstwhile Look East Policy into an Act East Policy, which focussed on laying greater emphasis on Southeast and East Asian partnerships, especially with ASEAN, which resulted in India and ASEAN signing an FTA.

Act East is not over yet, it has been strengthened multifold, if anything. We now see greater participation and interest from major partners in the region  on regional connectivity and expansion of supply chains. Some of the major examples would include the Kaladan Multi-Modal Transit Transport Project, and the India-Myanmar-Thailand Trilateral Highway. 

In the 21st century, India’s ambitions and objectives of a global leadership some or the other way coincide with the Chinese global ambitions, which has caused some significant friction between the two powers along their border. Major ones being the clashes in Depsang plains (2013), Doklam standoff (2017), and the Galwan Valley clash (2020).

Notwithstanding the aforementioned, the Indian defence reorganisation plans are enough to tackle the Chinese threats along its northern border, but the relations will need some breathing space and both nations will have to step up to strategic cooperation down from strategic competition. 

The biggest challenge for India’s quest toward a global leadership came with its presidency of the G20 in 2023, that too at a crucial time in global history where two important regions were going through war, and burgeoning trade and economic uncertainty amidst a recovery period post-Covid 19. 

For an entire year, different working groups under the G20 held more than 200 meetings in 60 Indian cities, scrambling their agendas, reaching consensus, bridging gaps between the developing and the developed world. The final test of Indian Diplomacy came with the need for a successful adoption of a communique amidst push from the West to call out and condemn the Russians for their war in Ukraine.

However, showcasing great tact, India was able to put forward a Delhi Consensus, agreed to and ratified by all the members of the G20. Furthermore, India was able to put together two crucial plans aimed at global trade expansion and climate change in the form of the India-Middle East-Europe Economic Corridor and the Global Biofuels Alliance, respectively. 

The next 25 years of Indian Diplomacy, on the road to a Viksit Bharat in 2047, hold extreme importance, especially in a world that is more connected, overlapped with strategic and economic needs, and mutual convergence. It will move forward with a multi-alignment approach complemented by national interest. India’s objective to become a global superpower needs three critical elements: a strong political will, a robust economic base, and an exceptional diplomatic force worldwide.

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BY DIGVIJAY SINGH

TEAM GEOSTRATA

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