No Indian comes close to Shashi Tharoor in the contest for the title of “Mr International”. A former senior United Nations diplomat and minister of state for external affairs, Tharoor is the quintessential global public intellectual who packs strong ideational power and elegance in prose with a gift of the gab. This new, lengthy, non-fiction work cements his place as a cut above the rest among Indians writing on international affairs.
Pax Indica — India and the World of the 21st Century is motored by Tharoor’s passion to take foreign policy thinking to the masses instead of leaving it to bureaucrats or strategic elites. Phenomena that occur in the furthest reaches of the planet have a tangible effect on local issues today, compelling Indians across the board to follow foreign affairs and hold informed opinions on them. Tharoor styles his book as an offering to help orient young Indians to their “global inheritance”. It is a clarion call to all Indians to realise that they have a vital stake in the state of the world and to become globally conscious citizens.
The central argument of the book is that India must assume a larger role in shaping the global order by writing rules and defining norms for a “peace system”. During a period of rapid power transition from West to East and North to South, India must work for a cooperative international architecture and become a global institution-builder. Our country must address what Tharoor terms “a growing demand for multilateral cooperation” caused by instability inherent in power shifts.
Half of the book covers contemporary problems of Indian foreign policy vis-à-vis specific countries and regions. The narrative retains an eye for what is lacking or misplaced in India’s current stances and how these gaps can be filled. To rein in cross-border terrorism from Pakistan, Tharoor advocates mobilising more international pressure on Islamabad. But he falls into a dichotomous straitjacket by assuming that there is no middle way between all-out war and multilateral diplomacy to control Pakistan’s sponsorship of terror. Beefing up India’s covert action capabilities aimed at individual terrorist masterminds in Pakistan is a realpolitik tactic which Tharoor elides. Statecraft should have a comprehensive toolbox on hand that caters differentially as per the levels of civility entailing each foreign challenge. On other South Asian relationships, Tharoor admits that “India is not blameless in its own conduct” and throws down the gauntlet for New Delhi to “evolve a new paradigm with no hint of hegemonism but still capable of exercising leverage”.
To stabilise Afghanistan, Tharoor banks on American military presence and pressure. But he does not ruminate on how India could aspire to be a great power if it outsources its core international security functions to the United States. Tharoor displays rare big picture analysis in this book on many facets of India’s power, but does not dwell upon building our strategic capacities to reduce dependence on extra-regional interveners.
There are touches of Machiavelli as well in parts of this book. For India’s self-interest and in order to pay back China in its own coin, the author ingeniously proposes closer Indian engagement with Taiwan, particularly by our state governments. He also ventures into urging more proactive Indian mediation in the conflicts of West Asia between Israel and the Palestinians and between Iran and the West. Raising the political quotient of India’s presence in West Asia is indeed an outstanding task that necessitates unorthodox vision.
Portions of this book zero in on Indian diplomatic indifference towards countries like Timor-Leste and regional institutions in the Indian Ocean. By doing so, Tharoor opens up a debate on what New Delhi’s priorities ought to be, a domain which Indian diplomats arrogate to themselves as their exclusive prerogative.
True to his global outlook, Tharoor devotes attention in the book to how India can work with major powers like China and the United States for constructing international structures to cope with 21st-century problems of global governance. His focus on “broad international questions” and “global public goods” is a refreshing departure from the hackneyed fare dished out by most Indian writers on foreign policy who limit themselves to issues of military and strategic manoeuvring.
This book must be credited with highlighting the value of Africa and Latin America as central to India’s expanding global engagement. But what Tharoor misses is that these two hitherto neglected continents also continue to be laboratories for Western “humanitarian interventions” and hegemonic designs. In his benignly liberal Weltanschauung, anti-colonialism is a dead horse, but how is India positioned on these regions’ bid to be free of superpower hegemony? Tharoor pans “rhetorical genuflections to socialism in India”, but then falls short on situating India’s engagement with Latin America in the larger context of the anti-American socialist alliance that is marching there under Venezuela’s guidance.
India’s foreign policy institutions come in for deservedly major flak in this candid book. Tharoor bewails the lack of specialised knowledge, interest and time for global affairs on the part of most Indian ministers of external affairs. He himself was an honourable exception, although his stint (2009 to 2010) was sadly too short.
The author highlights the woeful understaffing of the Indian Foreign Service (IFS) cadre, but also spears the “hierarchy-minded IFS bureaucracy” for resisting an influx of external professional talent through lateral entry. A muddled culture of egotism and ad hoc decision-making in the ministry of external affairs (MEA), says Tharoor, has left us with no “unified strategy for India’s role in the world”. He stumps for major reforms but is not sanguine about the stodgy system changing much. That Indian foreign policy has often hidden behind the curtain of “ad hocism” and flexibility without developing doctrines that behoove of an aspiring great power is indeed a tragedy. Unless there is greater planning for medium and long-term scenarios, we will be left behind as mere bystanders watching the show that other big players are directing.
One of the most fascinating insights of this book relate to India’s position in multilateral forums towards democracy and human rights. Tharoor predicts that India will eventually “arrive at a new default stance in favour of liberal democracy.” If this oracle bears out, how would it affect the global distribution of power? Tharoor does not reflect on the consequences of India switching away from defending state sovereignty for multipolarity, which is premised on both democratic and authoritarian countries acquiring power more evenly. Is democracy only in reference to domestic affairs, i.e. the relationship between a state and its people, or is it broader, encompassing inter-state and inter-societal relations as well? How is one to reconcile these seemingly contradictory objectives of democratisation at different levels? Tharoor does not delve into such quandaries in an otherwise educative and imaginative work.
That said, by the very act of revisiting the fundamentals of India’s grand strategy (or the lack thereof), this book is a critical classic of high heuristic value that will open up channels of inquisitiveness in the reader’s mind. An inspiring volume that deftly weaves cosmopolitanism with Indian patriotism, Pax Indica is Tharoor at his vintage best as a non-fiction writer, with wit and acerb thrown in. If you love India and worry constantly about its
international standing, this is the ineluctable source to go to.
Sreeram Chaulia is the dean at the Jindal School of International Affairs.
This article was originally published by The Asian Age, here, and is republished with permission from the editor.
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