“In the future, borders will increasingly diffuse as they are in Europe Union, but cultural and civilisational differences will remain creating a permanently unstable world,” said Krishnan Srinivasan, former Indian Foreign Service officer and author at a lecture here in the city.
Speaking on ‘Values in Public Policy with Special Reference to Foreign Policy’ at ASCI, Mr. Srinivasan shared his views on how Indian foreign policy has evolved from the time when it was initially shaped by India’s first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru. “Buddhist and Hindu cultural values as well as Mahatma Gandhi’s principles and Asian norms guided the foreign policy of India. Later, these had to be sacrificed to exigencies and only the references remained,” said Mr. Srinivasan.
“Values are rarely spelled out in foreign policy unless there is a push. France and the U.S. are an exception to this as they believe they are the founts of universal values based on the individual. The monarchy before the French Revolution was dominated by the aristocracy and the church. So the French revolution defined itself from the very outset as the rise of man. American identity is defined in terms of Declaration of Independence and the documents of the founding fathers,” said Mr. Srinivasan.
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Earlier, the Chairman of ASCI, K. Padmanabhiah, invoked the directive principles of State policy in the Constitution for shaping the foreign policy. “We have to ask ourselves whether these principles are being followed. We also need to think about the integrity of our institutions like the Election Commission, Lok Pal, the intelligence agencies and the ED,” said Mr. Padmanabhiah.