Independent India’s founders were among the leading practitioners of neutrality. This was because of Nehru’s socialism and the British occupation confirming much of the socialist critique. But these views were balanced by strong cultural ties to the English-speaking world. As such, India’s leaders refused to align solely with either the United States or USSR. Because […]
Firmly ensconced in office, Modi’s associates in the BJP have no incentive to take potshots at the United States. More to the point, they are likely to rally behind Modi as he seeks to place the Indo-U.S. relationship on a more secure footing. Furthermore, like Modi, they have little or no use for Nehru’s legacy […]
The Cuban missile crisis of October 1962 brought the world close to a nuclear war between the U.S. and the Soviet Union. But the Kennedy-Khrushchev drama eclipsed another momentous event that occurred at the same time: a border war between the world’s most populous countries, China and India. A new book by Bruce Riedel, JFK’s Forgotten […]
1962 is remembered for the Cuban Missile Crisis, but the U.S. almost got involved in another war. Read Here – The Diplomat
The notion of an Indian arc of influence stretching from Aden to Malacca was, of course, a staple of strategic thinking in the British Raj. Yet, these lines were written not by a mandarin of the Raj, but by the freshly appointed vice-president of the viceroy’s executive council, Jawaharlal Nehru. Read Here – The Hindu […]
…At Bandung 60 years ago, the rhetoric about creating a new Asia-centric world order was a catchphrase of Bandung 2015. However, the difference is that 60 years ago India was at the forefront of efforts to build that world order and now that role is very much being played by China. Nehru’s vision of India […]
Without the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty—virtually synonymous with the party since 1969, when Indira Gandhi led a band of loyalists out of the original Congress that helped India win independence from Britain some two decades earlier—Indian politics will likely become less feudal and more meritocratic. And Asia’s third largest economy may finally junk the last vestiges of […]
For the first time in independent India’s history, a general election has brought a conservative party with a clear-cut parliamentary majority to office. Although scores of analysts have weighed in about what that party — the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) — will do next, three other questions have gone unanswered. First, why has India never […]
According to Perry Anderson’s new book, The Indian Ideology, India’s democracy — routinely celebrated as the world’s largest — is actually a sham. It is fatally compromised by its origins in an anticolonial struggle led by the “monolithically Hindu” Congress party, which Anderson holds largely responsible for the bloodiness of the partition of the British-ruled subcontinent […]
The prime purpose of diplomacy is to explore a congruence of diverse interests. But diplomacy is stultified if there is no acceptance of the reality of an interest other than our own. That has even been the besetting sin of Indian foreign policy from Jawaharlal Nehru to this day. We share the American disdain for […]
looking beyond borders 