Our inaugural column briefly touched upon the practice of theorising. To theorise is to examine something systematically.
In this piece, we will theorise India’s South Asia policy. A simple way to do this is to bunch the available evidence into existing International Relations (IR) concepts and juxtaposing them.
If one surveys India’s words and actions vis-à-vis its periphery since independence, one will see that Delhi—including the government, dilliwallahs, and the Indian street—has approached South Asia in five distinct ways: as a neighbourhood, a region, a coterminous with India, a backyard, and an arena of great power competition.
South Asia as a neighbourhood
A neighbourhood is a place of community, cooperation, good faith and trust. Cultural and ethnic linkages across the subcontinent and around India’s boundaries are classic preconditions for a neighbourly neighbourhood, which Delhi has not often enjoyed.
‘Friends can be changed but not neighbours.’ Indian Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee’s remark from 2003 reflects an approach that has informed Indian policy, which has been marked—not always—by restraint, responsibility and generosity.
Restraint has been seen in India’s dealings with Pakistan. During the Bangladesh liberation war, it didn’t press its overall military advantage to coerce Islamabad to settle Kashmir. It has behaved with moderation on the Line of Control. And it chose international diplomacy rather than military force after the 2008 Mumbai terror. This trend has largely held even in the past decade, even though the current Indian leadership has radically differed from its predecessors. The Balakot strikes were less aggressive than how they were projected within India. The rhetoric around “Ghar mein ghus ke maareinge” is meant more to arouse domestic passions than signal a radically new policy.
