Indian Foreign Policy

This chapter discusses the relationship between India’s national identity and post-Independence foreign policy. It argues that India’s discourse about civilizational pacifism is central to how India was imagined from the time of emergence of the Indian nationalist consciousness. Before independence, three stages of emergence of this discourse can be traced on which finally Nehru grafted his own idea of India. Within this context, it then explores Nehru’s criticisms of the dominant approach to IR—realism—and looks at his alternative vision for Indian foreign policy as well as the world. It also examines the critiques proffered on Nehru’s foreign policy in the initial years and argues how these criticisms did or did not differ from the broader discourse about India’s civilizational pacifism.