Democratic societies progress in an evolutionary manner by character. However, leaders promising revolutionary changes are increasingly winning popular approval in many democratic countries in the recent past. India is certainly one among them, and Prime Minister Narendra Modi is one such leader. Mr. Modi revels in his image of being a disrupter; the emphasis is always on the new, the change, than on continuity.
Aparna Pande’s sleek offer in less than 200-pages, From Chanakya to Modi: The Evolution of India’s Foreign Policy , is an overview of an Indian view of the world over two millennia, in which the emphasis is on continuity. Not that she is unmindful or dismissive of the changes that are taking place in India’s strategic posture under Modi, but her focus is on the underlying principles that guide them all — from Chanakya to Modi, as the ambitious title suggests.
What are those principles? Here, the book is more narrowly, and appropriately, focussed on individuals and ideas that shaped the strategic culture of independent India, with a healthy dose of historical background that shaped the thinking of Indian leaders through the struggle against colonialism. Two ideas appear to provide the core of continuity that runs through these decades and personalities — first, a self perception of Indian exceptionalism that is rooted in the civilisational pride of society; second, a consequent behaviour of strategic autonomy, which means a resistance to binding international alliances and an eagerness to cultivate simultaneous relationships with competing powers of the world. Leaders from Nehru to Modi sought to “restore India to its eminence,” she notes.
It is not perhaps in the ambit of a strategic expert to delineate the multiple strands of Indian exceptionalism and ideas of civilisation that have been competing for political authority in India. Ms. Pande, however, notes in passing, indicators of such a debate within Indian strategic thoughts. For instance, she quotes former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh that “India’s experiment of pursuing economic development within the framework of a plural, secular and liberal democracy has inspired people around the world.” The exceptionalism that Mr. Modi aspires for India may come out to be of a different nature if one were to go down analysing that, but that is beyond the scope of this attempt.
Ms. Pande is by no means either dismissive or laudatory in her narrative of the civilisational underpinnings of Indian strategic thinking, but she is concerned that the baggage of history may be debilitating the thinking of Indian bureaucracy and consequently, its institutions. Now, the preference for individuals over institutions is a typical Indian trait, a former policy maker tells the author. Those who are impatient for change, and those who fear change may both benefit from Ms. Pande’s perspective.
From Chanakya to Modi: The Evolution of India’s Foreign Policy ; Aparna Pande, HarperCollins India, ₹599.
