Source: Oxford University Press

Following the end of the Cold War, the economic reforms in the early 1990s, and ensuing impressive growth rates, India has emerged as a leading voice in global affairs, particularly on international economic issues. Its domestic market is fast-growing and India is becoming increasingly important to global geo-strategic calculations, at a time when it has been outperforming many other growing economies, and is the only Asian country with the heft to counterbalance China. Indeed, so much is India defined internationally by its economic performance (and challenges) that other dimensions of its internal situation, notably relevant to security, and of its foreign policy have been relatively neglected in the existing literature.

This handbook, edited by David M. Malone, C. Raja Mohan, and Srinath Raghavan, presents an innovative, high profile volume, providing an authoritative and accessible examination and critique of Indian foreign policy. The handbook brings together essays from a global team of leading experts in the field to provide a comprehensive study of the various dimensions of Indian foreign policy.

Table of Contents

Section I: Introduction

1. India and the World
David M. Malone, C. Raja Mohan and Srinath Raghavan

2. Five Approaches to the Study of Indian Foreign Policy
Kanti Bajpai

3. Theorising India's Foreign Relations
Siddhartha Mallavarapu

Section II: Evolution of Indian Foreign Policy

4. Foreign Policy of the Raj and its Legacy
Sneh Mahajan

5. Ideas about Foreign Policy Before Independence
Rahul Sagar

6. Establishing the Ministry of External Affairs
Pallavi Raghavan

7. Nehru's Foreign Policy: Idealism and Realism Conjoined?
Andrew Kennedy

8. Indira Gandhi's Foreign Policy: Hard Realism?
Surjit Mansingh

9. At the Cusp of Transformation: The Rajiv Gandhi Years, 1984-89
Srinath Raghavan

10. Foreign Policy After 1990: Transformation Through Incremental Adaptation
C. Raja Mohan

11. India's National Security
Sumit Ganguly

12. Resources
Ligia Norohna

13. India's International Development Program
Rohan Mukherjee

14. India's Soft Power
Rani Mullen

Section III: Institutions and Actors

15. State and Politics
Paul Staniland and Vipin Narang

16. The Parliament
Rudra Chaudhuri

17. Officialdom
Tanvi Madan

18. The Private Sector
Rajiv Kumar

19. The Media in the Making of Foreign Policy
Manoj Joshi

20. Think-Tanks, Universities
Amitabh Mattoo and Rory Medcalf

21. Mother India and Her Children Abroad: The Role of the Diaspora in India's Foreign Policy
Latha Varadarajan

22. Public Opinion
Devesh Kapur

23. Indian Scientists in Defence and Foreign Policy
Jaideep A. Prabhu

24. The Economic Imperatives Shaping India's Foreign Policy

Section IV: Geography

25. India and the Region
Stephen Cohen

26. China
Alka Acharya

27. India's Policy Towards Pakistan
Rajesh Basrur

28. Bangladesh
Krishnan Srinivasan and Sreeradha Dutta

29. India's Nepal Policy
S.D. Muni

30. India-Sri Lanka Equation: Geography as Opportunity
V. Suryanarayan

31. India's Bifurcated Look in Central Eurasia: The Central Asian Republics
Emilian Kavalski

32. The Persian Gulf
Talmiz Ahmad

33. India's 'Look East' Policy
Amitava Acharya

34. The Indian Ocean as India's Ocean: Geopolitics and Geoeconomic Drivers for the 21st Century
David Scott

Section V: Key Partnerships

35. US-India Relations: The Struggle for an Enduring Partnership
Ashley Tellis

36. Western Europe
Christian Wagner

37. The Russian Federation: The Anatomy and Evolution of a Relationship
Rajan Menon

38. Brazil: Fellow Traveller on the Long and Winding Road to Grandeza
Varun Sahni

39. Israel: A Maturing Relationship
P.R. Kumaraswamy

40. India and South Africa
Kudrat Virk

41. Unbreakable Bond: Africa in India's Foreign Policy
Constantino Xavier

Section VI: Multilateral Diplomacy

42. India and Global Governance
Poorvi Chitalkar and David M. Malone

43. India and the United Nations- or Things Fall Apart
Manu Bhagavan

44. India and the International Financial Institutions
Jason Kirk

45. India's Contemporary Pluritalerism
Samir Saran

46. India in the International Trading System
Pradeep S. Mehta and Bipul Chatterjee

47. Multilateralism in India's Nuclear Policy: A Questionable Default Option
Rajesh Rajagopalan

48. Multilateral Diplomacy on Climate Change
Navroz Dubash and Lavanya Rajamani

Section VII: Looking Ahead

49. India's Rise: The Search for Wealth and Power in the 21st Century
Sunil Khilnani

50. Rising or Constrained Power? Why India Will Find It Difficult To Convert Economic Growth and Nuclear Capability into Power
Eswaran Sridharan

Advance Praise

“Indian foreign policy has been a relatively under-researched subject, due, in some measure, to the lack of authentic source material. However, there is a growing interest in the subject and the OUP Handbook does a creditable job of providing a comprehensive survey, spread over 50 chapters, of examining the origins and development of independent Indias engagement with the world ... the three editors have done a commendable job of providing a framework to what could easily have become an unwieldy collection.”
—The Indian Express

“This handbook of Indian foreign policy is a serious and substantial contribution to the debate on India's foreign policy approach and engagements in an era that is witnessing significant changes.”
—Frontline India

“...as a reference book about how India thinks of the world, and how India's engagement with the world has evolved, this is an indispensable volume. It is wide in its scope, diverse in its orientation, rich in its narrative of history and relationships, deep in its analytical insights, and has some of the biggest names working on India as contributors.”
—Hindustan Times