Indian Diplomats Research Articles

Promoting Human Rights as a Way of Improving Soft Power: The Case of India’s Caste-Based Discrimination at the United Nations

The ascendance of India as an economic power is well documented. This rising India has also focused on increasing its soft power and influence in international politics, especially through the dissemination of its values of ancient cultural heritage such as Buddhism, yoga and engagement with the diaspora. In the field of human rights as well, as a founding member of the United Nations (UN), India has participated in the framing of the Universal Declaration on the Human Rights and has signed various UN Human Rights Treaties and Conventions over the years. However, in the particular case of addressing caste discrimination, India has shied away from the international recognition of Dalit rights as human rights. Indian diplomats have continually opposed any internationalisation of caste-based discrimination and its linkage to racial discrimination at the global level, especially in the UN. In this scenario, how does the international community view India’s ascendance with respect to this issue? This article argues that India must play a leadership role in defending the rights of discriminated caste groups if it seeks to enhance its soft power credentials of being the largest democracy and demonstrate itself as a responsible power at the global level with respect to human rights issues. Furthermore, the norm that UN has tried to create of categorising caste discrimination as a form of racial discrimination cannot be strengthened without India’s support as India happens to be the most relevant state actor in this case.

The Aphasia Syndrome: The Language of Colonialism in Postcolonial English Writings

This paper is an examination of how colonial language and its (after) effects are represented in postcolonial English literature. Two literary works are examined: the Indian diplomat and novelist Vikas Swarups Slumdog Millionaire and the Haitian-American writer Edwidge Danticats short story Children of the Sea. Through close reading and comparative analysis, the paper concludes that there are three main symptoms of language abuse in the colonial context, which it labels as The Aphasia Syndrome (TAS). Briefly, the TAS includes (1) the imitation (parrot-talk) of the colonizers language as a means of accessing its power and resources; (2) the silencing or suppression of all colonized speech; and (3) the colonys nonsensical ravings, which include the use of indigenous words and expressions without providing translations, as well as the reorganization and reappropriation of signifiers in the privileged language to create indecipherable expressions. By diagnosing TAS and its historical affections on colonized peoples, the paper hopes to excavate the anti-colonial potential inherent in indigenous languages and speech, while advocating a more promising prospect for reconciliation, communication, and healing.

The cosmopolitan standard of civilization: a reflexive sociology of elite belonging among Indian diplomats

The cosmopolitan standard of civilization: a reflexive sociology of elite belonging among Indian diplomats

Worldmaking from the margins: interactions between domestic and international ordering in mid-20th-century India

This article investigates the contribution of decolonising states to the nascent international order emerging after the end of World War II. More precisely, it investigates the Indian contribution to the emerging international human rights regime, focussing on two key contributions: the advocacy for a strong supranational authority endowed with substantial enforcement mechanisms for the realisation of human rights and the equally strong defence of a bifurcation of civil-political and socio-economic rights into two treaties. Both contributions have been largely ignored within International Relations – and where they have been acknowledged, they have been subsumed into either narratives of liberal progress (as in the case of human rights enforcement) or Cold War rivalry (as in the case of a separation of the two Human Rights Covenants). In contrast, this paper seeks to shed light on the agency of Indian diplomats and politicians. It shows how their positions were neither simply replications of pre-existing scripts nor bare executions of superpower preferences. Instead, they were responses to the challenges of becoming a post-colonial state in a still overwhelmingly imperial world. Two challenges stood out: the definition of citizenship in light of internal diversity and a widely dispersed diaspora and the challenge of development against the backdrop of highly unequal global economic relations. In this article, I trace the movement of key protagonists between the Constituent Assembly and the United Nations to show how they were engaged in a project of postcolonial worldmaking, which required the simultaneous transformation of domestic and international order.

Saffronizing diplomacy: the Indian Foreign Service under Hindu nationalist rule

Abstract Very little is known about how Indian diplomats have made sense of the change in political power in New Delhi since 2014, when the election of Hindu nationalist Prime Minister Narendra Modi signalled a radical break from the internationalist credo of the Nehruvian Congress establishment. Attending to this gap in knowledge, this article engages with the ongoing debate about the influence of Hindu nationalism on Indian diplomacy, but departs from the conventional emphasis on foreign-policy analysis or Modi's persona. Instead, it centres on the lived experience of career diplomats in the Indian Foreign Service to whom it falls to conduct everyday diplomacy under Hindu nationalist rule. This focus invites a broader question in the global age of populism: how do contemporary diplomatic services adjust to the arrival of nationalist governments? I suggest that the delays in internalization of nationalist norms and diplomatic practices are only partly a function of ideological misalignment between an internationalist bureaucracy and a nationalist government. What matters is also the extent to which the status of the social class represented by the bureaucrats is invalidated by the government's political project. Building its arguments on the back of 85 elite interviews and archival research in India, the article considers changes to diplomatic discourse, protocol, priorities and training, and details how Indian diplomats have adjusted to and resisted Hindu nationalism. It suggests that we study nationalist critiques of ‘cosmopolitan elites’ both as an ideological denunciation of internationalist commitments and as a social rejection of the elites who hold them.

(2021) Volume 2, Issue 4 Cultural Implications of China Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC Authors: Dr. Unsa Jamshed Amar Jahangir Anbrin Khawaja Abstract: This study is an attempt to highlight the cultural implication of CPEC on Pak-China relations, how it will align two nations culturally, and what steps were taken by the governments of two states to bring the people closer.

(2021) Volume 2, Issue 4 Cultural Implications of China Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC Authors: Dr. Unsa Jamshed Amar Jahangir Anbrin Khawaja Abstract: This study is an attempt to highlight the cultural implication of CPEC on Pak-China relations, how it will align two nations culturally, and what steps were taken by the governments of two states to bring the people closer.

From the Subcontinent with Love

Abstract “Africa weaves a magic spell around even a temporary visitor,” wrote the former Indian high commissioner to East and Central Africa, Apa Pant, in 1987, echoing the allure that the continent had over him and other fellow Indian diplomats. But the diplomatic roles of men like Pant and the history of Indian engagement with Rhodesia has not, until now, been explored. This article argues that the central role of India in the colonial world ensured that London reined in the white settler Rhodesian government from enacting discriminatory legislation against its minority Indian populations. After Indian independence in 1947, the postcolonial government shifted from advocating specifically for the rights of Indians overseas to ideological support for the independence of oppressed peoples across the British colonial world, a mission with which it tasked its diplomatic representatives. But after India left its post in Salisbury in 1965, Indian public rhetorical support for African nationalist movements in Rhodesia was not matched by its private support for British settlement plans that were largely opposed by the leading African political parties in the country, colored by private patronizing attitudes by India's representatives toward African nationalists and the assumption that they were not yet ready to govern themselves.

Editors' Note

We remain in uncertain times. The crisis in Tigray and the vicious bombardment of Gaza create ever-greater horrors. The COVID crisis continues, and in some places it is now taking on a too-familiar form. Countries like India, previously relatively lightly affected, now face catastrophe; many more grimly await a third wave. While many countries in the global North anticipate the end of the crisis as their vaccination programs ramp up and COVID recedes, many countries of the global South still find the vaccines almost inaccessible. The medical crisis is embedded in moral and ethical catastrophe. It is surrounded by fierce debates about access to care, artificial scarcity of vaccines, counting and reporting COVID deaths, and the balance between biosafety and dignity in suffering, loss, and death.At this unpropitious moment, we are grateful for the response we received to our editorial in CSSAAME 40:3 on COVID-19 and the Movement for Black Lives, a first installment of which appears here. The issue opens with a poem by Hasan Mujtaba and a roundtable convened by CSSAAME editorial board member Kavita Sivaramakrishnan with Sunil Amrith, Omar Dewachi, Julie Livingston, and Banu Subramaniam. Their wide-ranging discussion points to the provocative possibility that the current crisis brings into question contemporary states' biopolitical conceits. What refigured forms of state power and political community will emerge? Their conversation is followed by a set of essays: Harris Solomon's story of an Indian hospital, Joelle Abi-Rached on vaccine passports, and Dwaipayan Banerjee on intellectual property.Our next section reflects on how the concept of “minority” and the problem of minority rights was used in novel and often unpredictable ways throughout the twentieth century. “Minority Questions” develops case studies and reflections first explored in a workshop organized by Anupama Rao at Columbia University (2018). Roy Bar Sadeh and Lotte Houwink ten Cate organize and introduce a set of essays by Paul Werth, Laura Robson, Cindy Ewing, On Barak, Amal Ghazal, Aaron Glasserman, SherAli Tareen, Shaunna Rodrigues, Kelvin Ng, Orit Bashkin, and Judith Surkis, which address the enduring reach and relevance of minoritarian thinking for the political present.Finally, our last two sections consider issues around intimacy and estrangement and vernacular politics. In the former, Emma Parks investigates the blurring of corporate and nationalist politics around Safaricom in Kenya, while Beeta Baghoolizadeh considers race, religion, and nationalism in twentieth-century Iran, and Trishula Rachna Patel follows the work of Indian diplomats in twentieth-century southern Rhodesia/Zimbabwe. In “Vernacular Politics,” John Chalcraft explores the possibilities for a theoretical framework to research popular politics in the Middle East using Gramsci's philosophy of praxis as a starting point. Lastly, Sravanthi Kollu traces how debates over how Telugu moved from discourses of it as “vulgar speech” to a vernacular “common speech” in early twentieth-century India.

From South Asia to the world: embracing the challenge of global sustainable nitrogen management

From South Asia to the world: embracing the challenge of global sustainable nitrogen management

Bridging ‘New China’ and postcolonial India: Indian narratives of the Chinese revolution

ABSTRACTThis paper examines the basis of Asianist sympathy for ‘New China’, as the People’s Republic was often styled, in the early 1950s by examining the writings of Indian diplomats, journalists and academics. These elite Indians either visited China as part of a 1951 delegation, making them witnesses to the ongoing New Democracy experiment. Since their experiences of China were definitely not comprehensive and hinged on the Chinese state’s goodwill, the interesting question to ask is not whether these first-hand accounts of ‘New China’ were accurate but in what ways the Chinese revolution was made comprehensible in light of the Indian elite’s own priorities as nation builders and social activists. This paper reconstructs major tropes of the Chinese revolution that appealed to Indian observers – self-sufficiency, empowerment of workers and peasants, a palpable sense of social vitality – and underscored their enthusiasm for Beijing. Most significantly, communism was subsumed in favourable accounts of ‘New China’ as a nation and society-building project. The Chinese revolution, the nature of which was still in flux, was absorbed into and understood through India and Asia’s long struggle against Euro-American domination. In addition, the Chinese revolution was deployed as an example with which Indian observers assessed contemporary developments in their own country. The celebratory reception of ‘New China’ in India suggests that the subsequent rapport between the Chinese and Indian states was a result of not only high-level diplomatic manoeuvres but also pan-Asian epistemological bridging between socialist revolution and decolonization.

“Fire by Night, Cloud by Day”: Exile and Refuge in Postwar London

AbstractSusan Pennybacker's presidential plenary to the 2017 North American Conference on British Studies in Denver, Colorado, explores the lives of four of the subjects of her book (in progress) of the same title. It identifies the kinds of archival and ethnographic sources that allow new treatments of the exile, émigré, and expatriate communities of London after the close of World War II and of those who contributed in various ways to the ethos of metropolitan political culture in the “late empire” and Cold War era. The essay focuses on the South African Ruth First, the Indian diplomat Mrs. Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit, the Indian academician Achin Vanaik, and the South Asian Londoner Suresh Grover, a member of the Monitoring Group, a legal assistance and anti-discrimination organization in the capital. It suggests the importance of scholarship that reckons with known and notable activist persons who led and represented many others in their challenges to global politics from a base in the “mammoth crossroads, the secure and unsafe haven that is London.”

Melian dialogue syndrome in the Indian Ocean: A critical appraisal of Sri Lanka’s “small state dilemma” in the context of Indo-Sino rivalry

Abstract Sri Lanka’s foreign secretary’s statement indicating that Colombo would adopt “ India First” foreign policy appears to be a much-consoling phrase for the Indian diplomats. It is a fact beyond any dispute that New Delhi felt anxious about Sri Lanka’s extensive hobnobbing with China for years that has finally seen massive Chinese presence in the island nation. Given Sri Lanka’s strategic location in the Indian ocean as a crucial hub in the Indian ocean governance, Colombo’s relations with Beijing have always created a tense situation in India. However, the newly elected president of Sri Lanka Gotabaya Rajapaksa and his government’s novel approach to profess their foreign policy as India cantered doctrine raises some perplexity with the realpolitik caught by Sri Lanka. This paper seeks to examine the asymmetrical relationship that existed between Indian and Sri Lanka after the independence of both nations, wherein New Delhi used different means to carve Sri Lanka’s external relations for the best interests of India. Furthermore, this paper analyses the unequal position Sri Lanka has been facing as a small nation located near a ricing global power and how Sri Lanka struggles to balance both India and China in their rivalry in the Indian Ocean. The results emerge from this paper will reveal the impossibility of upholding neutrality for a small state before complex geopolitical power struggles.

The fateful Indian recognition of West Germany, 1949

India’s recognition of West, but not East, Germany was the foundation of an inconsistent policy on Germany from India and many other non-aligned countries. It was the outcome of a lack of professionalism, indecisiveness, the pragmatic considerations of a junior Indian diplomat in Berlin, and the laconic approval of the anti-communist secretary-general of the Ministry of External Affairs, Girja Shankar Bajpai. Neither Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru nor his advisor V.K. Krishnan Menon were involved at all. Officials around Foreign Secretary K.P.S. Menon held that the GDR should also be recognised in due course, but did not exercise sufficient influence. India would stand by its decision for 23 years and thereby set an example for other non-aligned countries.

India and the Policy of No First Use of Nuclear Weapons

ABSTRACTOne of the cornerstones of India’s official nuclear policy is No First Use (NFU) of nuclear weapons, which has a long history in Indian nuclear debates and discussions. The country’s stated doctrine from January 2003 includes a pledge not to use nuclear weapons first but with a significant caveat, that nuclear weapons could be used if Indian forces are attacked with biological or chemical weapons. The NFU policy has often been held up by Indian diplomats, government spokespeople, and various strategists as proof of India’s status as a responsible nuclear power. At the same time, there is also a history of strategists, military leaders, and, more recently, government officials questioning, or calling for the abandonment of, the NFU commitment. Statements by various policy makers and officials suggest that their understanding of how nuclear weapons should be used does not fit the strict interpretation of a NFU policy, and that India might well be the first to initiate a nuclear attack during a military crisis. The development and deployment of nuclear warheads mated to missiles would create the material grounds for first use of nuclear weapons and create risks of accidental or inadvertent nuclear war.

The Making of Indian Diplomacy: A Critique of Eurocentrism by Deep K. Datta-Ray

Reviewed by: The Making of Indian Diplomacy: A Critique of Eurocentrism by Deep K. Datta-Ray Ananta Kumar Giri (bio) The Making of Indian Diplomacy: A Critique of Eurocentrism. By Deep K. Datta-Ray. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015. ISBN 978-0-19-020667-3. In this book, Deep K. Datta-Ray strives to explore some of the deep foundations of Indian diplomacy with and beyond the discourse of modernity, especially its preoccupation with power, control, and violence. [End Page 1020] Datta-Ray argues that modern diplomacy is rooted in a model of violence and control, and Indian diplomacy is striving to move beyond this. Indian diplomacy draws inspiration from the civilizational ethos of and preoccupation of India with dharma, right conduct, and a non-violent way of being with the world. For Datta-Ray, the Indian approach to diplomacy, as it draws from the civilizational steams of the Ramayana and Mahabharata as well as Indo-Mughal experiments in creative diplomacy and Gandhian and Nehruvian approaches, is that "politics may be possible without violence" (p. 3). Datta-Ray shows how Indian diplomacy avoids an either-or approach. He discusses at great length the civil Indo-U.S. nuclear agreement in which India negotiated with the United States in a subtle manner. While negotiating with and acceding to the United States, Indian diplomats and negotiators stuck to India's right to do further tests without violating the terms of agreement. India also did not have to choose between the United States and Iran and creatively negotiated with both. Datta-Ray studies the making of Indian diplomacy by speaking with some of the practicing diplomats as well as some of the key makers of Indian foreign policy such as Shiv Shankar Menon and K. Natwar Singh. Menon argues that we need to "develop our own strategic concepts and vocabulary" (p. 86). Menon emphasizes the need for both credibility and empathy, especially empathizing with the problems and the predicament of one's adversary. For Datta-Ray, this approach is different from the anarchical binarism of modernity. Menon suggests that he draws this from the dharma-centric approach of Mahabharata, Ramayana, and Gandhian experiment with this. Datta-Ray adopts a hermeneutic approach to understanding the making of Indian diplomacy, which "[…] maintains the possibility of Indian diplomacy being not the 'indigenization of modernity', but maintained by a metaphysic external to modernity" (p. 23). Datta-Ray writes the following about Menon: "Menon's virtues were drawn from Mahabharat (Mb)." Mahabharat is an aspect of Indian cultural identity. About Gandhi he writes: "At least three centuries of modern thought from Hobbes onwards—and a much longer intellectual tradition—were short-circuited by Gandhi's innovations within a tradition of dharma." Datta-Ray argues that in offering military resistance to aggression on Kashmir by Pakistan-supported Pathan forces, India did not deviate from the principle of dharma and non-violence. Gandhi also supported this military response. For Datta-Ray by doing so Gandhi did not deviate from the principle of non-violence. As he writes: "Kashmir demonstrated that it was possible for the state to perform Gandhian policy" (p. 223). But Datta-Ray is writing his book in 2015 and he should have looked into the violence in which Indian security forces are involved in Kashmir. Datta-Ray also argues how Nehru continued the Gandhian approach to foreign policy and international diplomacy. The Non-Aligned Movement [End Page 1021] that Nehru co-created with Nasser of Egypt and Tito of former Yugoslavia was a continuation of Gandhian policy. This is synchronized with his friendly policy of Panchasheel with China. But, as Datta-Ray writes, "[… ] the China war sensitized Nehru about the cost of applying principled Gandhism in the international [realm]" (p. 238). Despite this, Nehru did not cross the "laxman rekha in terms of weaponization" (p. 239). Nehru did not want to build nuclear weapons and wanted to use nuclear energy for peaceful purposes. This was an aspect of his commitment to the Gandhian way of being with self and the world. Despite their differences, for Datta-Ray, Nehru followed Gandhian principles in his politics and policy. Datta-Ray strives to understand the making of Indian foreign policy...

‘An act of faith’ or a new ‘Brown Empire’? The dismissal of India’s international anti-Racism, 1945–1961

ABSTRACTAt the inaugural UN session in 1946, an Indian-sponsored resolution was passed with a two-thirds majority against South Africa’s racist treatment of Indians. India continued its activism over racism and apartheid throughout the 1950s, though the issue was increasingly seen as a painful yearly ritual. Still, Indian diplomats persisted in raising the issue every year, despite diminishing results. The British settler-colonies were particularly offended by India’s campaign, as it challenged the discursive justification for their existence. They rejected what they saw as India’s emotional, hypocritical, even imperialist, campaign against racism. By tracing the construction and rejection of anti-racist politics, we examine the dismissal of racism as a ‘legitimate’ international issue.

The “hardy annual”: A history of India’s first UN resolution

ABSTRACTThis article traces the history of India’s first resolution at the United Nations (UN). Introduced in 1946, “Treatment of Indians in the Union of South Africa” became an annual item on the UN agenda until 1962 when it was merged with another India-sponsored item on “apartheid.” For seventeen years, in a fast polarizing world, Indian diplomats used this item to strategically galvanize global opinion against racism. Against all odds, Indian representatives utilized every diplomatic means available to keep the “hardy annual” alive. A thick, archival biography of this item also allows us to interrogate India’s diplomatic practice in the Nehru years.

China's Empire Building Strategy: Belt-Road Initiative, Creating New Financial Institutions, and Aggressive Foreign Policyy

Given their size in terms of vast geographical area, large population, sizeable gross domestic product (estimated in PPP) and a large standing army, both India and China are widely expected to help shape the emerging 21st century world order. While china has already raced ahead in terms of economic growth, India is currently the fastest growing large economy in the world. China has emerged as India’s largest trading partner in recent years. The two neighbours share a vast disputed boundary between them. They have gone to war once in 1962 over the boundary issue. At the same time, as developing societies, they share common concerns pertaining to world economic order and environmental justice. Given the complexity of their relationship, an understanding of the mind-set as well as the extent and nature of engagement of elites/ leading socio-economic groups across the two neighbours and their response to global issues, acquires a critical importance for ensuring global growth and peace. The Department of Business Economics, University of Delhi South Campus, has taken an initiative to bring the Indian Academia, Diplomats, Social Activists and thinkers, industry associations and entrepreneurs, and Policy Makers together for a sustained debate and discussion on China’s rise and its implications for the world as whole. The seminar was entitled ‘Is Belt-Road-Initiative of China a geo-economic strategy aimed at empire building?’ The focus of the debate was to examine some of the following issues: Is BRI a new growth strategy using globalization as an opportunity and old Silk Route as a brand to build Chinese centric 21st century Empire? Are Chinese attempts at building a new International Financial Architecture a step towards creation of Chinese hegemony? How serious and justified are the strategic and security concerns of India and other Asian countries in China's neighbourhood? How threatening and damaging are the Maritime Silk Road and creation of naval bases in the Indian Ocean to India and other littoral countries? How about the business interests of Indian business partners? Are they expecting any economic gains in terms of business opportunities, Investments and jobs for Indians? Are the proposed Asia-Africa Growth Corridor and other maritime initiatives undertaken by India an effective balancing strategy? Will the new form of Atlantis versus Eurasian Geopolitics be of some help to the world in overcoming the problem of poverty, poor infrastructure, energy shortage, degradation of environment, and climate change?

Pakistan: courting the abyss

I would not normally read a book about Pakistan written by a former Indian diplomat for fear of bias. However, I knew Tilak Devasher when he was posted to the Indian High Commission in Islamabad and was aware of his fascination with Pakistan and of his scholarship. Indeed, this is a thoughtful, meticulously researched and well-written work. It is certainly tough on Pakistan's failings and not quick to identify its strengths (like its vigorously free press and its remarkable resilience), but it is full of insights into Pakistan's bumpy journey since independence. Devasher is at his best when analysing the history of the Pakistan movement, why it succeeded and how it coloured the new nation-state. He places much emphasis on British assistance to the Muslim League and tells the remarkable story of how the Muslim community, ‘sullen’ (p. 5) after the defeat of the 1857 Mutiny, gradually recovered, partly due to changing from a Persian to an English educational system. The British helped through the 1871 Minto Resolution on Muslim Education, the 1875 founding of Aligarh University and eventually the establishment of the All India Muslim League in 1906. Yet, in spite of all this assistance, the All-India Muslim League performed poorly in the 1937 elections and, as late as 6 June 1946, Muhammad Jinnah, its leader, was still prepared to accept a united but federal India in place of Pakistan.

Choices: inside the making of India's foreign policy

The collapse of the Soviet Union and India's economic crisis in 1991 led to the opening up of the Indian economy and subsequent changes in India's foreign policy. In Choices, well-known Indian diplomat Shivshankar Menon, who held key positions in the Indian government, including foreign secretary and national security adviser, analyses five key decisions in India's post-Cold War foreign policy. These choices are the decision to sign the 1993 Border Peace and Tranquillity Agreement with China and the Civil Nuclear Treaty with the United States; not using force against Pakistan after the 26/11 Mumbai attack; India's response to the Sri Lankan civil war; and eschewing a first use policy on nuclear weapons. Thus the book is not a diplomatic memoir, as readers might expect, but a keen analysis of Indian foreign policy-making. Chapters are divided in two, where the first part deals with policy choices within a particular crisis setting and the second expands on India's current and future policy options. In the first chapter, Menon discusses India's decision to sign the 1993 Border Peace and Tranquillity Agreement with China. For the author, it seemed impossible to solve the boundary dispute permanently, as right-wing forces on both sides would never have allowed settlement of the dispute. The China–India agreement succeeded in keeping the peace as it opened scope for engagement. Menon has a positive outlook on India–China relations in general and argues that the 1993 agreement has been one of the best examples of cooperation (p. 28).