SANJAY CHATURVEDI 239

dimension of Indian geopolitics can be an extension of the

EIGHT predominant geopolitical concerns and preoccupations at :8130462424,
'home'.
The essay in divided into five parts. Part one offers a brief
overview of the geopolitical impulses
Indian Geopolitics: Nation-State' and andcharaçteristics of
ancient and medieval India from a geo-historical
part two, various facets of the 'geopolitics ofperspective. In
the Colonial Legacy analysed, with special reference to the manner in the Raj' are
was imagined, constructed and represented by thewhich India'
DL
part three, we begin by examining some of the British. In
cOLLEGE major MOBILE
institutional and ideological legacies of British rule, especially
*8130A62424 SANJAY CHATÚRVBD those inherited by the dominant geopolitical
practices of the post-colonial state in India. This discourse and
is followed by COLLEGE

If
RANIS.
geopolitics can be critically conceptualised as a 'way ofeeing
a'critical examination of the most
ndian geopolitics. The key question enduring themes (myths!) in
to be
what are the key geopolitical idioms, myths andaddresed here is:
representational K.M.C.
whereby groups and individuals, practices used by the post-colonial, 'not-yet-nation'
political elites, andt inscribe something called India and endow that entirystate
the to
institutions and intellectuals of statecraft attempt to spatialise with a
politics by implanting maps of meaning, relevance and 'order content, history, meaning and trajectoty? Part four critically &
onto the highly complex and dynamic examins the nature and implications of an increasingly COLLEGE
inhabit, observe, attempt to understand,political universe they
and sometimes.
desire to dominate, then, undoubtedly there is a long even
lineage
geopolitical though, theorising and practices on the Indianof
subcontinent. For some scholars, geopolitics has also been
Vinfluential geopolitics of Hindutva' or "Hindu nationalism' and
Satgempts to deconstruct the geopolitical reasoning
a indu nationalists to carve out a employed by
homogeneous and
mpñplikhfcHindu' identity out of a remarkably diverse and
CENTERH
considered intimately bound up with the nation-state and its eclectic cia<tgak,tradition on the sub-continent. The question
capacity to produce, regulate and survey. political space' (Dodds raised abBove,isenoNgrecast in accordance with che tone and tenor
1998, 25). The primary impulse of this essay is of Hindu nàuÕna«seliscourse: what are the, key
normative, and its scope restricted to a critical exploratory, not idioms, myths andrRreSntational practices employed geopolitical
examination of Hindu nationalists tonscribe something called India and endow by the
some of, the more salient and enduring themes in Indian XEROX
geopolitics. It avoids discusing Indian geopolitics in terms of that entity, with 'a Hinau content, a Hindu history, a
che rigid oppositions of domestic' and 'foreign' since the mcaning and a Hindu trajectory? The focus in part fiveHinduis on
intention is a) to contest at a general methodological the geopolitical fallout of the five nuclear tests PRADEEP
level the conducted by
artificialicy of such distinctions and, b) to empirically India in May 1998; especially the manner in which legitimacy'
demonstrate that the dominant geopolitical discourse in India is being sought by the government for its decision through
opcrates.both ways, and in some cases, despite the existence of formal, practical and popular forms of geopolitical reasoning.
The analytical approach to this essay is
a formal foreign policy establishment, the so-called
'foreign' fast expanding and impacting literature onlargely inspired by the
what h£s comc to be
 240
INTERNATIONAL, RELATIONS IN INDIA: THE REGION AND NATION
SANJAY CHATURVEDI
known as 'Critical Geopolitics' (OTuathail 1996; Agnew and 241
Corbridge 1995), which is centred on the Foucauldian premise naming ritual, but also to enframing it in
geography', 'authentic politics' and the typeterms
that the concepts of power, knowledge and geopolitics ofits 'sacred
are bound of :8130462424,97
together in an intricate and intimate manner (O'Tuachail that its nature' demands. Geopolitical discoursesforeign policy
The effort on the part of critical writers to 'deconstruct'1998). che
are rendered
meaningful and 'legitimate' largely through practical geopolitical
repre_entational practices of conservarive political elites, to reveal rcasoning, which relies more on common-scnse narratives and
how they 'spatialise' politics at various levels (Dodds and distinctions than on formal geopolitical models.
Sidaway 1994, 518) has indeed opened up new intellectual Modern geopolitical discourses generally revolve around
spaces for geopolitical analysis. To begin with, geography binary oppositions, defining areas as modern or backward,
understood to be a matter of socalscgrstruction, and the manneris western or
non-western, aligned or non-aligned, and are
in which the lands and che sea sustained in numerous ways by academics (disciplinary or formal MOBILE
chÁmÁuntains and the rivers,
Collera geopolitics),
assume relevance for politics dÁpds Cssentially
è on how 130462424,
9711491324 practitioners of statecraft (practical geopolitics) or
geography is perceived and constructèdom ime to time. Stationery media persons involved in the representations in popular culture
Criticai gecpolitical writers also underlin th Mal (popular geopolitics). Furthermore, geopolitical reasoning COLLEGE
exploring how geopolitical reasoning is integratéd importance
of
discourse to ingQpolitical
sustain, augment and justify social ánd pomtical Kirori operates chrough the actrive simplification of che complex reality
of places in favour of controllable geopoliticl
practices of dominance in national as well as intérmajonal abstractions. This
andahd is how places and their inhabitants can become security K.M.C.
politics: (Dalby 1990, 1991). Xerax commodities, readily subject to invasion, control or bombing'
In a general sense, a discourse is a meaning-making work. It uCollege (ibid.). inally, not all political elites haye equal influence over
constitures the limits within which a set of ideas and practices how political-economic space is to be constrúcted and &
COLLEGE
considered to be 'natural': that is, it determines what questions Pradeep represented at 'national', 'regional' and 'global' levels, and there
are considered relevant or even intelligible (Barnes and Ducan Hind Càn beopposition(s) to the dominant geopolitical discourse. And
1992, 8), Discourses, therefore, are practices of significance, Anmo_t cases, even challenges to the dominant discourse must
providing a sét of rules or perspectives for the acquisition and åso Eonform to che 'rules of the game laid down by the HINDU
organisation of knowledge, with its own dominant metaphors dorfinan discourse in order to be intelligible readily
that facilirate further knowledge and insights, but simultaneously understQgd CENTER
limit it. The dominant discourse not only provides the
interpretative context within which facts' are assigned
significance but also determines which facts are to be interpreted, ,The Geopolitical mpulses of Ancient and Medieval India:
An Overview XEROX
and thereby help to sustain and legitimate certain perspectives
and interpretations. The historicity of the state in India is much older than the actual
A geopolitical discourse, according to OTuathail and Agnew state it self. Though the Republic of India was 'born' only in PRADEEP
(1992, 195), signifies much more than the identification of 1950, the Arthashastra, written at least chree centuries before the
specific geographical influences upon a particular forcign policy birth of Chçist, suggests a much older state tradition (Eisenstadt
situation, to identify and name a plaçe is to trigger a series of andHartnman 1997: Kulke 1995; Mitra 1990, 73). Even the idea
narracives, subjects and understandings'. For example, to of building up one empire on the Indian subcontinent is more
designate an arca as Hindu' or Islamic' amounts to not only a chan 2,500 years old and appears to be ´the product of India's
 242 INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS IN INDIA: THE REGION AND NATION 243
SANJAY CHATURVEDI
RADEEP physical and political
geographical and racialgeography'
diversities,
(Sen 1975, 250). Owing to
ancient India found itself
showed not more than six large kingdoms in the Gangetic plain,
various republics in the predominantly hilly areas in the west
divided into a large number of
XEROX there arose the need for awarring states and races. Hence
political unification of the
and che north and a number of smaller kingdoms whose relative
sub-continent under one empire independence might have varied with the power of the large
(ibid). This is seen in the birth ofwithin
certain
its geographical limits' neighbour.
like the concept of Chakravartin, a ruter the geopolitical concepts Most of what Kautilya is concerned with in the Arthashastra
CENTER wheels of whose is not the reality that prevailed during his times, but rather a
chariot roll everywhere without obstucçog. As Inden (1990, future reality, which ought to be realised or, alternatively
229-30) puts lit: prevented. As pointed out by L.N. Rangarajan (1992), 'He
HINDU The agent that remade all of India, the entng [Kautilya] does not deal with a particular state in a historical
imperial formation was the kings who, togethrwith arth', as an time, but with the state as a
hi court,
succeeded in the eyes of those who constituted the politis concept'. Ahypothetical Kautilyan
cOuntry was a compact unit ruled by a king, or, in some cases,
GE&K of an oligarchy of chiefs. It is interesting to note the
an
imperial formation, in exercising his supremacy over ötheg 81304 Pradeen
Hindu Cer importancc
would be claimants. He was the king called a that Kautilya gives to his imaginary state. He envisages a number
a universal monarch' or 'lord of the Chakravartiñ, aeep of natural
of the Chakravartin, of a universal
entire earth'. The idea features-mountains, valleys, plains, deserts,
lakes and riversthough all these may not be found injungles,
monarch, and with 9711491324 HegeandkeroX
62424,
it the reality
idea that 'sovercignty' or, rather, overlordship over the earth, in every country. The frontier regions were cither
MC
was a whole to be embodied in one polity (and 9r jungles inhabited by tribes which were not mountainous
not a 2nd completely under
the control of the king. The frontier was protected
LEGE particular to be instantiated in independent sovereign Kirori by forts,
nation-_tates) appeared before the time of the Mauryas...itStationery cspeciatly on trade routes to other countries. References to ships
becomes evident that the notion of universal kingship was Mal aYd trade By sea show that some countries had a sea coast. The
well lai oua atd fortified main city, situated in the central part
OBILE
embedded in the day-to-day practices of the Indian polities. College of the cöuný, w¡s also located near a
After the sixth century BG, with the rise of the kingdomn of Store perennial water source.
The janapaas, of couryside consisted of villages with clearly
Magadha, (which included approximately cighty thousand marked boundaYie_, gñd roads of different widths, depending on
1524 villages) the Indian geopolitical situation entered a new phase of the nature of traffic, connecte not only the towns and villages
development. Magadha under king Bimbisara started the process but also the country
withitaeighagurs.
of empire building reaching its peak under the King Emperor Since, in the Kautilyan viçw, the king cncapsulates all the
Chandra Gupta Maurya. It was during this period that the most constituents of a state, he expouided thc theory in terms of the
comprehensive treatise of statecraft of classical times in India king-any king. In other words, what Kautilya calls the 'interest
appeared. Kautilya, also knows as Chanakya and of the king' would nowadays be termed 'national interest'.
wrote the Arthashastra. During the period when theVishnugupta,
Arthashastra
In
che geographical imagination of Kautilya and his construction of
would possibly have been written, i.e. between-the 4th century a Kautilyan State, the king is designared as
BC and AD 150, there were only two empires, the Nanda and who wants to win or the 'would be conqueror. vijigish-the king
the Mauryan. In fact Chandragupta Maurya was the first A neighbouring
king is chen designated as 'the enemy', and other
conqueror to join together the Indus Valley and the Gangetic as allies, a Middle King or a Neutral King. Two kings nearby
plain in one vast empire. The political map of the subcontinent be emphasised here. First, the things need to
terminology employed by
 244 INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS IN INDIA: THE REGION AND NATION
SANJAY CHATURVEDI 245
Kautilaya defines only a set of relationships and therefore the
conqueror, need not necessarily be a good king' and, firmly rooted concept of India's geographical extent'.
why the main preoccupations of European That is
correspondingly, the enemy a 'bad king'. The advice given to geopolitics, including
matters such as lebenstraum, had little significance
the conqueror can equally be applied by the enemy. Second, the for India.
Archashastra is concerned with the security and forcign policy Also, there is no equivalent of Mackinder's
'Heartland' chesis,
with its power-political understandings of location,
needs of a small state, in an environment with numerous other size and
small states. Consequently, the scope for enlargement of this resources, in Indian geopolitical thinking. However, what we do
small state was limited to the Indian sub-continent. To Kautilya, find on the Indian subcontinent or 'South Asia' is a
historiccore
the area extending from the Hifnalayas to the north to region, which, to quote Geoffrey Parker (1998, 89).!
in the south and a thousand yoagaswide from east to the sea Store
College ...lies at thecentre of the gigantic
west is 9711491324 across the Indo-Gangetic plain, which
the arca of operation of the KingEiperor (cited in ibid., 543).
ln orher
words, whatever notion is to be found
Stationery extends north of the subcontinent. The watershed
region between them included the Punjab (meaning 'five
Mal
in the
oinent
Arthashastra, territories beyond the. are not
included, probably for the reason that the Õnquéror y,expected
to establish in the conquered
813046Kirori
rivers') and the upper course of Ganga and Jamuna. Together
these make up the Madbya-desa, the middle land around
territories sociaf orde
a which the first Indian state (Bharat) was formed. The
the Arya's dharma (duty, right and justice), varna (fou based and
Ganga-Jamuna region has remained the major centre of power
classes described in Manu's code; che more modern wÝrd principal since the earliest
caste) and ashram (four stages in the life of a Brahmans being PradeepXro
Hindí
Goligs times. Itwas here thac the principal core
regions of the Indian states have been located and where che
(a) student of the Veda; (b) householder; (c) anchorite; and salient characteristics of Indian (Hindu) culture became
(d) abandoner of all worldly concerns), And Kautilya evident. The mountains which ring the subcontinent to the
perhaps
chought that the establishment of such a social order outside the north together with the Deccan plateau to the south have
limits of India was neither practical nor desirable. Moreover, been a part of the dominant state during the period of its
plenty of land was available for settlement, indicating a fairly low
density of population and many uninhabited tracts. imumthe
territorial
latter
extent, although the far north and the
including the island of Sri Lanka, have
We may note in passing that, by and large, 'the builders of ontý ratelýbeen incorporated into it. The major axis of
empire on the Indian subcontinent never made an attempt to commqniçatifi the 'Grand Trunk Road', extends from
go beyond the geographic limits of the subcontinent. The cwo northwest te So°theast following the line of the river system,
exceptions to this were Muhammad bin Tughlaq and Shah and the majöcepes of political power have almost always
Jahan, and both were unsuccessful. In R.D. Dikshit's view been located on
orfngata tg° it.
(1978, 199), 'her large size of subcontinental proportion, her Not until the Mughal period, which is only about four to five
diversified natural resource base, her favourable location with hundered years agó, did the 'Indian state radically intensify its
reference to oceans and masses made the country in a great direct impingement on the life of the common people. Even
measure self sufficient', As a resulr of this, he contends, there then, it was like a matted lattice work, or a canopy,
were no compulsions for territorial expansion. The country's sides, suspended, over the affairs of rural or inner-cityopen on all
quotidian
geography ordained chat any policy of territörial expansion life. (De 1997, 18). Once the colonial power began
outside its ocean and land frontiers was unnatural...Himachal a seriesof changes into the kaleidoscopic pattern of introducing
Setu-Paryantam -from the Himalayas to Rameswaram--was che 'autonomous
spaces' of the Indian society, or intowhat Sudipta Kaviraj (1991,
 246 INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS IN INDIA: THE REGION AND NATION SANJAY CIHATURVEDI 247

EP 77) describes as 'a circle of circles, but cach circle relatively process had as its outcome the creation of an array of polarities
unenumerated and incapable of acting as a collective group', the that shaped much of the geopolitical ideology of the Raj.
hitherto unbounded geopolitical impulses of Indian civilisarion Once the British startedconstructing 'their India' during the
would be subjected to spatialisation by the intellectuals and late nineteenth century, chey always had to negotiate the
OX instirutions of colonial statecraft.
geopolitical disjuncture: between an acknowledgementof
similarity and an insistence upon difference (Metcalf 1995).The
ER Constructing India' in the Geopgitical Imaginations task was inherently cumbersome. In order to demonstrate a set
of the Raj of fundamental differences berween India and England, the
British, together with the construction of a distinctive history
The century from 1757 to 1857 witnessed theEnglish East India that sustained them, also employed ideas of gender and race. In
HIND the imperial geopolitical imaginations of the British, Metcalf
Company serially annexing, or else extending it indirçct rule
over, cach of the Indian states. Capitalising fuily tpolitiçal, points out (ibid., 110-11).
commercial and military prowess, the English Compainy annexede
S711491324 Pradeep
oME
Hindu There existed a 'changeless' India inhabiting a past that
linto its direct rule some 2.5 million square kilometres -81304S2424,
o one endured in the present; an India of racial decline' marked by
million square miles-over sixty per cent of the territory of he the triumph of Dravidianism and the anarchy of the
sub-continent containing over three-quarters of its people (Fisher Xerox.and eighteenth century, and an India of a gendered 'effeminacy'
1993, 1). In the wake of the brutal suppression of a widespread and
which made its women and men alike dependent, on a
military and civil revolt which had spread through much of benevolent British 'masculinity'. Each of these descriptions of
northern India in 1857 and 1858, the British, whÍ had started Ffdja's difference had its own theoretical, even 'scientific'
Kirori |
cheir rule as 'outsiders', became 'insiders' by vesting in thcir Stationery ratiögale; each to0 was rent with deep contradictions both
monarch, sovereignty through the Government of India Act of in itel£ and in relation to the others. Above all, race and
2 August 1858. Once the British crown took over che government CollegeMal gendesptóvided explanations of very different sorts for India's
of India from the Company, it reversed the annextionist policies Store plight. he theoryaof racial decline announced a process of
in favour of a policy of indirect rule. Bó then, hpwevet, a state irreversible physicaldeterioration brought about by che
formally annexed into direct British rule had already undergone mixing of bloodwhil thedegeneracy defined by effeminacy
a fundamental sociàl, cconomic and political transformation. was one of characttsandngtas.
However, the British were aware that their efforts at social As an integral part of the
engineering were far from adequate to legitimise their rule in lagerEnlightenmènt project, which
through observation, study, counting and classification
India. The territorial annexation of India had to pe, attempted to understand the world outside Europe, the British
supplemented by the annexation of India' in imperial setout to order .the people who inhabited their new. Indian
knowledge systems (Cohn 1997). The mega-diversity of the dominion. It was crucial that India came to be known in such
subcontinent had to be reduced to the status of 'familiar' and a manner that would sustain a system of colonial authority, and
'intelligible', and established at che same time as 'inferiot', in the through categories that made it 'look'
British vision of India. As Cohn (1996, 182) puts it, 'the period fundamentally different.
In other words, the categories to be' avoided
of 1860-1870 saw a rapid expansion of what might be thought were those which
might announce India's similarity to Britain and threaten the
of as the definition and expropriation of Indian civilisation'. This colonial order. Accordingly, categories such as caste,
community
 248 INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS IN INDIA: THE REGION AND NATION
SANJAY CHATURVEDI 249
and tribe were placed at the heart of the Indian so cial system.
Whereas class, which Vicorian Englishmen considered as the outside India' (Sen 1998b, 471). Even when the term
was used as a marker to Hindu'
most divisive factor in their own society, was conspicuous by its distinguish those adhering to a
absence in British accounts of Indian peoples. non-Islamic faith, the perception each group had of the other
Despite its inconsistencies and subordination to the needs of StoreMälCollegewas not in terms of a monolithic religion, but more in
8130462424,
9711491324
distinct and disparate castes and sects along a social terms of
colonial rule, the British ethnographic enterprise had far Stationery continuum
reaching consequences. For, these very categories--of caste and (Thapar 1989). From the point of view of the Indian, or Hindu,
the Central Asian invaders were
community, of race and sect-informed the ways in which the demonised as incarnations of
British, and in time the Indianshemselves, conceived of the Kirori the evil Ravana, or as Turks, not as
Muslims.
basic structure of their society.(Mefcal1995, 114). It was only Yet anothêr dimension of the geopolitical
with the coming of British rule, rÓg theate cighteenth century
andand under the Raj was the manner in which the 'ordering'
'British
of India
Authority'
on, that the idea of two opposed Xerox
College came to be constructed, represented and exercised after 1858.
of Hindus' and the 'Muslim' inand'salfcantancd communities
India taok defirite shape (see Cohn (1983) has examined at length the Imperial
Pandey 1990, 23-65). The two religious cogmuntics were Pradeep of 1877 and the Imperial Darbars of 1903 andAssemblage1911, all
defined, demarcated and demonised in terms. f cgtgit&basic Hiñdu organised at Delhi--which is the 'political ritual cenre' of Iudia
differences: Muslims were violent, despotic, mascullne in order to deconstruct British authority and its representations
whercas
Hindus were indoleat, passive, effeminate. Religious identifcarion in India. The so-called Durbars-meetings with large numbcr of
Indian princes, notables and Indians and British officials-at
was accordingly taken as more than a matter of belief
determined membership more generally in a larger which honours and rewards were presented to Indians who had
community
and also offered valid explanations for the way Indians demonstrated loyalty to their foreign rulers during what the
acted. In British had condemned as,the 'Mutiny' (1857-58), conveyed
short, it was the centrality of réligious community, along with
chat of caste, which for the British marked out India's distinctive th-t, subordination to the colonial authority alone established
status as a
fundamentally different land. riýileees'and ensured wealth and status.
The British 'construction of communalism' had willfully Qhe, major geopolitical myth created by the 'Imperial
glossed over the fact that the term 'Hindu' was traditionally used Assemblage' as that India was diversity, 'ancient country of
not in any sense of a homogencous-monolothic religious belief m¡ny nations l«cing in coherent communality except that given
by British rít un§gr he integrating system of the imperial crown.
but mainly as a signifier of location and country. The term has The enduring idel×gy ththad sustained the Raj for so long was
Persian-Arabic origin and derives from the river Indus. or elaborated by Churchill, whsn e told che House of Commons in
'Sindhu' (che cradle of the Indus Valley Civilisation that the debates on the 1935 Aat, hat chere was 'no real practical unity
flourished from around 3,000 BC), and the name of that river is in India apart from British rule'. Hence liberty for India only
also the source' of che word India itself. The Persians and the means liberty for one set of Indians to exploit another', The British
Greeks saw India as the land around and beyond the Indus, and may have been only the latest of many conquerors', but they alone
the Hindus were the native people of that land. Muslims from had 'made the well-being of the Indian masses cheir supreme
India were at one stage called "Hindvi Muslims, in Persian as satisfaction'. As they had taken upon themselves this 'mission in
well as Arabic, and there are plenty of references in carly British che East', the Brirish could not simply 'abdicate' it, and so
documents to "Hindoo Muslims" and "Hindu Christians" to 'withdraw our guardianship from this teeming myriad population
distinguish them respectively from Muslims and Christians from of Indian toilers' (Metcalf 1995, 231).
 250 INTERNATIONAL, RELATIONS IN INDIA: THE REGION AND NATION SANJAY CHATURVEDI 251

PRADEEP The Post-Colonial Nation-State' in India and the Myth of legacies of British rule in post-colonial India happens to be a
Geopolitical Unity uniqucly colonial construct of the centralised state with an
administrative bureaucracy and a standing army in particular,
XEROX
When the political elite of an independent India came to develop and the attendant ideological trappings of 'ordered unity',
a public political idiom of their own, through their own 'indivisible sovereignty' and the like. The westernised political
organisations, what idioms did they choose for the construction elite of independent India, deeply influenced by the emergence
CENTER of their authority and its representatioas? Cohn (1983, 208) has of the liberal state in Europe in the late cighteenth century, did
argued that 'in effect they used the am idiom that the British not seek to dismantle the colonial state. Instead this elite
rulers enmployed...the British idiom was cfcstive in that it set attempted to conjure into existence a discourse which would
HINDU che terms of the discourse of the natioist gmoyement in its democratise the colonial state. Indeed according to them, the
beginning phases. In cffect, the carly hationalitg wet, claiming democratic empowerment of a transformed colonial system was
that they were more royal to the true goals of the prrish Empire che most appropriate means of building a nation-state based on
LLBGE than were their English rulers'. The credit for iñeoducig an "social and moral concern" for the citizens of a creative and
alternate, radical idiom in the form of non-cooperation ad independent polity' (Kumar 1997, 404).
passive resistance, which was cqually symbolic of Pradeep
and widespread rejection of British authority, goestherfull-fledgg¥
Hin
Extreme political instability after independence was yet
to Mha_aYm adeen another fact that compelled the Indian state to place immediate
R'r Gandhi. His appeal to Indians to return all honouis and
9711491324
emblems to the imperial government, was a powerful attack 0402424, emphasis on the state's coercive apparatuses, and to ensure,
not
M on the institutions of government, but the capacity of the keroyand against the rhetoric of the national movement, that crucial parts
LLEGE Kirori.Mal.Collegeand e ofthe apparatus, of the colonial state did not crumble. The
government to make meaningful and binding its 'adthority by Zkirnish with Pakistan over Kashmir, the use of military force
instituting the honours. Despite the efforts of Gandhi, the fodnegrae several recalcitrant princely states like Hyderabad
British idiom did not die casily or quickly, and it may still be Stationery into the ngan Union, the threat of communist insurgency in
alive in various forms' (ibid., 209). Even after fifty years of
MOBILE
India'sindependence, the public meetings of the Prime Minister, Telangan all ¿quired a major resource to the strucrures of
and even those organised by the Deputy Commissioners at the army and Baraucralthat thecolonial administration had left
district level, are called 'Darbars'. Store behind. As Kavita (1997333), points out,
91324
Mahatma Gandhi paid the British a handsome cribute in the ...the new state imnácdiaeýrentered a life of contradictions.
early 1930s when he conceded that the Indian nation was a The national state was" agnhritor of two distinct, and in
creation of the empire-builders. Independent India inherited the some ways, incompatible egacies. It inherited the colonial
colonial nation' (Sen Gupta 1997, 299). As pointed out carlier state's systems of internal command and control, its
in the paper, the colonial state was based on bureaucratic administrative ethos, its laus and rules, and its three
institutions and political values, which were not reflected in the predominant characteristics to the popular mind: its marginality,
historical experience of India. The amorphous structure of its exteriority, and its persistent repressiveness against the lower
Indian çivilisation had shown the capacity to accommodate a strata of thepeople, who, at least in constitutional formality, were
multipliciy, of social and linguistic identities, sometimes in a made the repository of sovereignty. At the same time, it was
cluster of regional polities, and on other occasions, in a successor to a triumphant national movement whose principle
somewhat fragile pan-Indian polity; whereas one of the major objective was to contest the culture of that state. Some of the
 252
INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS IN INDIA: THE REGION AND NATION
SANJAY CHATURVEDI 253
ambiguities which had provided strength to the
national
movement, because it made it possible to draw on support geopolitical entity, characterised by an
organic unity (Parker
from opposing social groups, now/came to be the issues of 1988).
contention. The bistorical cirumstances of As Amartya Sen (1998a, 20) puts it, 'the concept of the Indian
insurgency and war, made it inevitable that partition,
the
dissidence,
apparatuses
subcontinent as an integrated unit is no at all new, and has been
behind by the colonial state iwould not be dismantled, but left implicitly invoked in many contexts over the millennia. The idea
actually has not only influchced the conception of the natural boundaries
reinforced (emphasis given). over which an emperor (such as Chandragupta Maurya, or
Much in tle Bricish ideology difference' also survived and Ashoka, or Akbar) would seek to establish command, but has
flourished in an independent also shaped the nature and domain of various economic, cultural
its mark above all in the .hdiagithin the country, it left and social movements'. On the other hand, 'according to
coñc¿pion bf India as a society
informed by a passionate commitmiao, conmunity, and of Debabrata Sen (1975, 251) the lineage of geopolitical thought
StoreCollege has
the public arena as a site where
comauntiesontested for 9711491324 been inextricably bound up with the development of the
8130462424
pOwer. No doubt, after Stationery sense of one Hindu civilisation.
independence
abolished and caste outlawed, and separate
the 1950
were
Mal However, it was modern Indian nationalism which produced
enshrined the values of secular democracy. Yet, the unity of the country in a way which had not always by any
rhetoric of the Nehru era, the structures craftedbehind he lißerat, Kirori means been a part of India's historical experience. There has also
by the Raj, and àndCollegeand been a deliberate and systematic attempt in the so-called
affirmed during the course of the nationalist struggle, remaifed
compelling. By far the most powerful were those of Xerox 'nationalist interpretations' of Indian history to focus on unity,
identityas Hindu, Muslim and Sikh. As time went religious on, and
rather than differences and discord within India (Sen 1998a). To
a large extent thís was a reaction to thc colonial thesis that India
the central 'governm¢nt itself, together with the leaders of Pradeep
Hindu v¡s diversity and it had no coherent communality cxcept that
religiously based organisations, began openly to
communal loyalties for partisan advantage, such manipulate these givgh by British rule under the integrating system of the imperial
ties became ever BcgBwnThe nationalist counter-argument was that despite the
more deeply embedded in Indian society (Metcalf 1995, 233; divegity, shee was an essential unity--and that this unity was
Pande 1990; Alam 1995; Jalal 1997). We shall'return to this not accid¿ara, but some reflection of the unifying tendency in
theme later in the essay. Indian alsar¿ ard,civilisation as the ultimate foundation of
Once che political elite of post-colonial. India began nationalism. And thensas Sumit Sarkar (1996, 275) puts it, 'it
constructing. its India as a 'nation-state', it too was also becomes difficulrven for, a Nehru, writing his Discovery of
India-to resist the fartier slide toward assuming hat, unity,
compelled. to negotiate the geopolitical disjuncture berween an after all, has been primaftly Hindu (and upper-caste, often norch
acknowledgement of difference (diversity) and an insistence Indian Hindu at that). The slide was made easier by the
upon similarity (unity). As pointed out carlier in the paper, the undeniable fact that the bulk of che leading cadres of the
colonial state had faced more or less a similar dilemma while nationalists and leftist movements have come fromn Hindu
negotiating the disjuncture between an acknowledgement of upper-caste backgrounds'.
similarity and an insistence upon diference berween the 'Bricish According to Austin (1994, 17) India's founding fathers were
and the Indians', The Indian státe, however, chose to tackle the also forced by various pragmatic considerarions to adopt the view
problem, by constructing the 'consciousness' of India as a single that of all the characteristics of a 'nation', unity is the most
 254 255
INTERNAT0ONAL RELATIONS IN INDA: THE REGION AND NATION SANJAY CHATURVEDI

and
ADEBP essential: no unity, no nation. Traumatised by the partition of Mother in a social set up which otherwise remains, by
India into two sovereign the
and patriarchal(Mahanta 1977;
of British
states, which had been outside the circle large, highly hierarchical shown by Sugata Bose (1998), this
administration. No less compelling in their viay'was
the need to secure their new nation's T. Sarkar 1996, 162). As of the nation was the literary and
frontiers as the successors narration and representation
XEROX 1905 as they strongly
to those of the British empire in the
subcontinent. And they cultural patent of the Bengal generationofofCurzon's partition of
were faced with the task of designing a sought to 'unsettle' the 'settled fact'
administrative system to make an effeçtive nationcon_titutional
from India's the first modern glimpse
Bengal. The credit for having caughtspectacle of 'Mother India'
ENTER diverse identities. Compulsions such agthese drove them to of this grand mystical vision of the Chattopadhyay, that too as
establish a strong central governmént,í tght federal system actually goes to Bankim Chandra
capable of becoming 'unitary in nationabcme carly as 1875. The image foundnovelits far more compelling and
of this they had inherited in the 1935 emgncies'. Much Anandmath in 1882, and
HINDU vivid manifestation in Bankim's
"The lavour was Mughal as well. DelhiGove~ngnÁatoflndia Act.
had bÁesine hamituated, public for the first timne by
was set to music and sung inCalcutta session of the Indian
to viewing the rest of the country through imperial NoYth Indian Rabindranath Tagore at the
MC cyes-despite the notable figures who had come (and comtiye National Congress in 1896.
came in 1905, with
to come) to Delhi from clsewhere in India' (ibid.). . An early visual evocation of Mother India serene,
Along with the myth of a civilisational unity one also finds iñ. Abanindranath Tagore's painting 'Bharatmata'. As a carrying
Indian geopolitical thinking what Barun De (1997, 16-17) calls saffron-clad ascetic woman, the Mother'was visualised as
the 'myth of permanence' in South Asian empires. According to and spiritual salvation in
the boons of food, clothing, learningbegin with, was that of
De, her four hands. This image, to serving the larger
LEGE
the Ashoka Empire was obviously the Indian government's Bangamata but later, with the intention of Bharatmata. In the
cause8 Indian nationalism, was titled
beau ideal for the Indian state form. Adopting the symbols of natpnaltdiscourse, the secularised concept of Bharatmata' or
the Asoka'Chakra or the Asokan Lion capital, the Nehruvian India, and
Pradeep Mothe hdia,gepresenting the toiling masses of rural
OBILE 9711491324kindu
Indian State harked back to the Asokan ideas of satyameva
8130462424, bound inch¥Éns served as the powerful tool for arousing the
jayate and dhammavijaya as examples of syncretism and nationalist aertingantBharatmata Ki JaiVictory to Mother
nonaligned diplomacy. Yet, historical data tells us that the ColleaeXerox India--became the Yosstig battle cry which appealed as much
Mauryan empire hardly lasted more than a hundred years and 54) points out,
1324 to men as to wome, ASgata Bose (1998, Jawaharlal Nehru
the Mughal Empire, as a politically stable entity, is supposed and and 'thoroughly "Westernised nationalists like aggression and rape in
even by its greatest contemporary scholars to have lasted not relied heavily on the metaphor of sexual
more than a hundred and fifty years--from Akbar to Kirey
Stationery their critiques of violence perpetuated by the.colonial masters'.
continues to
Aurangzeb. Obscured by the Leviathian imperial tradition mother
Even now the concept of the country as sub-nationalist
or
which in the Asokan, Gupta, Mughal and British cases, rose serve as a potent rallying cry for nationalist
(1979-1985) when the
from or collapsed into smaller principalities or state structures, sentiment, as in the Assam movement
Mother Assam
there are at least two thousand years of political history of tore battle cry was Joi Ai Asom', Victory to with
Small principalities. (Mahanta 1997, 93). However, the equation of nation
In Indian geopolitica! thinking one also finds a strange Mother Goddess, as attempted by many Hindu nationalists,
idealisation of 'our' land, which has given birth to the cult of leaves many Muslims cold; leaving no space whatsoever for the
 256 INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS IN INDIA: THE REGION AND NATION
SANJAY CHATURVEDI 257
accommodation and expression of religious diversity in India call their own (Pattanaik 1998, 43-50).
(Kaviraj 1997b). Savarkar (1969, 100), che ideological According
to V.D.
According to Ashutosh Varshney (1993) one could father of Hindu
calk of two principal geopolitical imaginations about possibly nationalism, 'A Hindu is he who feels attached to the land that MOBILE:8
India's
national unity and national identiy: the 'secular nationalist A extends from Sindhu tc Sindhu as the land of his forefathers-as
combining territory and cultureand the 'Hindu nationalist' his Fachcrland; who il.nerits the blood of the great race whose
combining religion and territory. The defining principle of first and discernible source could be traced from the Himalayan
national identity for both, however, is territory. In che secular altitudes of the Vedic Saptasindhus and which enabling all that
was assimilated has grown into and come to be known as the
imagination, the territorial nÍion of India, emphasised for
twenty-five hundred years sitce n tÉmes of the Mbabharata, Hindu people'. What unites the Indian landscape is the sacred
is of a land stretching from the Mimalayas tn che north to Kanya geography . of Hindu holy places (Benaras, Tirupati,
Kumari (Cape Comrin) in the south he, Arabian Sea in
Collega..
Store Rameswaram, Puri, Haridwar, Badrinath, Kedarnach, and now
the west to the Bay of Bengal in the cas fndia asnot only the Ayodhya) and the holy rivers (Kaveri, Ganga, Yamuna, and the
9711491324
birthplace of several religions Stationery confluçnce of the last two in Prayag). COLLEGE
and Sikhism), but during he (Hinduism, Buddhisg, Jainism,
coure of its histo h¯s also Mal It is important to note that the boundaries of India as
received, accommodated and absorbed 'outsiders' (Parsis& JeW's 8130462AOri
suggested by the secular-nationalist are coterminous with the
and 'Syrian' Christiansfollowers of St. Thomas, 'sacred geography' of the Hindu nationalist whose hallowed
carly as the
arriving a nd K.M.C.
second century, thus reaching India much before Hindu
Collegeae pilgrimage sites mark off essentially the same boundaries of the
they reached Europe). What makes Indian civilisation unique, Xerox country, although the Hindu nationalist, would go much further
therefore, arè the virtues of syncrecism, pluralism and tolerance into mythic histöry than two and a half millennia to date the &
COLLEGE
reflected in the cultural cxpression: Sarva Dharma Sambhava Pradeep origin of these sites. As Varshney (1993, 238) remarks:
(equal respect for all religions). One good example of the secular
nationalist construction of India's national identity is Jawaharlal Singe the territorial principle is drawn from abelief in ancient HINDU
Nehru's The Discovery of lndia (1946). In Nehru's construction ieritage, encapsulated in the notion of 'sacred geography', and
of India, syncretism, pluralism and tolerance are the main ft al_o fgpresin both imaginarions (secularist and nationalists]
themes. For Nehru, 'some kind of a dream of unity has occupied it h§scqired political hegemony over time. It is the only CENTER
the mind of India since the dawn of civilisation'. He 'discovers' ching camnon berween che two competing nationalist
India's unity as lying in culture and not religion-hence there imaginationserefore, just as America's most passionate
is no notion of a 'holyland in his mental map of the country. political momen oriefns freedom and equality. India's most XEROX
For him the herocs of India's history--Ashoka, Kabir, Guru explosive momentssoncern its 'sacred geography', he 1947
Nanak, Amir Khusro, Alkbar and Gandhi--subscribe to a variety partition being the most obvious example. Whenever the
of Indian faiths and it is Aurangzeb, the intolerant Moghul, who threat of another break-up, another 'partition' looms large, che PRADEEP
'pucs the clock back'. India's geography was sacred to Nehru not moment unleashes remarkable passions in politics. Politics
literally but metaphoically (Varshney 1993, 236). based on this imagination is quite different from what was
Nehru's secular nationalist construction of India stands in seen when Malaysia and Singapore split from each other, or
sharp contrast to the religious notion of India as originally the when he Czech or Slovak republics separated. Territory not
land of Hindus, and it is the only land which the Hindus can being such an inalienable part of their national identity, these
 258 INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS IN INDIA: THE REGION AND NATION SANJAY CIHATURVEDI 259

territorial divorces were not desecrations. In India, they

RADEEP
become desecrations of the sacred geography. of the nation; tracing the country's downfall to porous frontiers
by which a
and, more importantly, to an unfortunate timingsuccumbed
As a result, both the secular-nationalists and the Hindu disunited and fragmenting India encountered and to
XEROX nationalists share in common what Sankaran Krishna (1994, the cresting and, united civilisation of the British, Nchru's
508) has termed 'cartographic anxiety'; the anxiety surrounding recollecion of the partition of India (1956, 247) also reflects his
questions of national identity and survival. According to anxieties over breakdowns of all kinds, 'But above all, what was
CENTER Krishna, the term 'cartography' implicgraore than the technical broken up which was also of the highest impottance was
and scientiñc mapping of theeounty; it refers to something very vital and that was the body of India'. (ibid.). As
'representational practices that in various w£ys have attempted Dijkink (1996, 129) puts it succinctly, 'whar Nehru, sought to
HIND to inscribe something called India and endow tha, Ántity with a overcome in his historical perspective spanning 2,500 years or
content, history, a meaning and a trajectory'. KÄshäa arghes that Imore, was 200 years of British rule. His idea of unity was
cartographic anxiety is a facet of a larger postcolopia anxiety nonetheless conditioned by the era he wanted ro wipe out.
syndrome manifested by a society that perceives itselfas Early on, the actual foreign policy of an independent India
suspended forever in the spacc between the 'former colon and was shaped by Nehru himsclf and his chief foreign policy adviser,
'not-yet-nation'. "This suspended state can be seen in the Krishna Menon (see Brecher, 1968). Their distinctive
discursive production of India as a bounded sovereign entity and world-view had emerged out of the long struggle with the British
the deployment of this in everyday politics and in the country's and out of the wider process of decolonisation then taking place.
violent borders'. The critical question then becomes: Is there A fairly illustrative account of Jawaharlal Nehru's geopolitical
anything post about the postcolonial at all? According to Krishna yiÑion, can be found in his book The Discovery of India (1946)
(ibid.), 'If we examine the degree of anxiety revealed by the state éspeciallyin che chapter entitled, 'Realism and Geopolitics,
over matters of cartographic representation, che inordinate Pradeep
Hindu
w8A¿ Conquest or World Association: The U.S.A, and the
U.S.SPeihat appcars as most striking in Nehru's geopolitical
attention devoted to notions of security and purity, the
8130462424,
9711491324
disciplinary practices that define Indian and non-Indian, patriot chinking i[che urioys mix of 'idealism' and 'realism', internal'
and traitor, insider and outsider, mainstream and marginal, and Colieg and 'external'n which he relies to construct his vision of che
Xerox post-war world nd Iga1a's role in it. Nehru is critically
the physical and epistemic violence that produces the border--the
answer to this question is negative'. and dismissive of the geopotiyicaheories of Mackinder and
Jawaharlal Nehru too had his moments of cartographic and Spykman, which, according fonbim, are the pseudo-scientific
2424,971
1491324 Kirori justifications for the power quçse', 'power politics' and 'world
anxiery. Nehru, despite his firm belief in the timeless existence Stationery
of aspiritual and civilisational entity called India, begins his domination'. To quote Nehru (1946, 539).
modern reconstruction of India's past in Discovery of India Mal Geopolitics has now become the anchor of the realist and its
(1946) with a graphic descripioD of the country's 'natural' Col! jargon of 'heartland' and 'rimland' is supposed to throw light
frontiers 'Nehru's imaginative geography depicted impassable Store
ege
mountain ranges, vast deserts, and deep oceans that produced a
on the mystery of national growth and decay. Originating in
nacural "cradle" for what became India' (Krishna 1994, 509). England (or was it Scotland?), it became the guiding lightof
the Nazis, fed their dreams and ambitions of world
And in Nehru's Autobiography (1936) also, one finds occasional domination, and led them to disaster... And now even the
evidence of his anxiery over safeguarding the physical boundaries United States of America are told by Professor Spykman, in
 260 INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS IN INDIA: THE REGION AND NATION
SANJAY CHATÜRVEDI 261
his last testament, that they are in danger of encirclement, that policy elite, according to Jean Houbert (1989, 202), opted
chey should ally themselves with a 'rimland' nation, that in for
non-alignment also because it enhanced the ability of the Indian
any event they should not prevent the 'heartland (which state in 'containing' communism in its internal 1491324
means now the USSR) from uniting with the rimland. that the communist movement in India was politics. Given
Behind Nehru's world-view and underlying his reflections on nor united as one well-organised party, any neither homogenous :8130462424
che desirability and feasibility of a just and peaceful post-war could be tackled by the Congress withoutchallenge on its left
che Soviet Union
world order, one finds a much larger and deeper geopolitical intervening. On.the contrary, there was every probability that
concern with India's internal-domestic situation, and with the Moscow would use its considerable influence with pro-Soviet
need for a foreign policy thatail safeguard a 'dream of unity' parties to get them to support the regirne in
that according to Nehru hadeccußiçdighe mind of India since Non-alignment also provided India the meansnonalignment.
to save on MOBILE
the dawn of civilisation. He is thÑcoughly convinced about the Stationery
Store
Cirort
MatCollege military spending and put a priority on social and economic
uniy of India-within its British ImperfsbÕrders. To quote 8130462424,
9711491324
development, 'thus winning the allegiances of the electorate and
Nehru (1981, 533), thus, we arrive a thefinoyËtable and cutting the grass from under the feet of the communists' (ibid.). COLLEGE
ineluctable conclusion that, whether Pakistancomes pnot, a External as well as internal security considerations too were likely
to be better served by non-alignment than by joining the
number of important and basic functions of the saße mist be oege-snd
Hindu
Kiro Western military alliances. But there was more than security and
exercised on an all-India' basis if India has to surviveasa fre, ideology to India's support for non-alignment: it 'would also K.M.C.
state and progress. The alternative is stagnation, decaý an enhance the power of India...by harnesing che moral dimension
disintegration, leading to the loss of political . and economic Pradeep
Xero
freedorn, both for India as a whole and its various separated of international politics non-alignment provides India with more &
power in, its weakness than alignment would do..thus the COLLEGE
parts'. Views about a future division of Jndia are subjected to jdeològy of peace was bound together with India's securicy.
the same criticism that Nehru levels at traditional realist power iteçests and power considerations in the non-aligned policy'
politics: the small-nation state a phenomenon of the past and bd.). CENTERH
the territorial division of India would soon reveal how dependent Yef another example of how the sense of commitment to
both new.units are on each other and will immediately raise the 'national, niÝ and'national identity of post-colonial India
need for a federal association. Besides, any acceptable territorial dominatéd hepriorities and policies of its political elite is Sardar
division would leave the Muslims with a territory chatwas both Vallabhbhai Patel, mdopendent India's first Home Minister,
smaller and economically less viable. The prospect for the Indian haifed'by many ashe Iron Man of India, who is said to have
sub-continent was, ' according to Nehru (1981, 533) either even outdone Bism«rk che words of K.P.S. Menon, the XEROX
union plus independence or dis1union plus dependence'. The former Foreign SecretaYf India, when the British left India
cragic events of the separation of India and Pakistan, as Dijkink che unity of even divided India was in danger. Some 560
PRADEEP
(1996, 121)points out, 'suggest that Nehru was actually engaged Princely States had been left in the air. It was open to them to
in "constructing" rather than 'discovering' India'. adhere to India, to accedeto Pakistan, or to remain
To Krishna Menon, 'external affairs' were 'only a projection independent...It almost looked as if India was going to be
of internal or national policy in the field of International balkanized. But this danger was averted by the firm handling of
Relations' (Brecher 1968, 4). And to a large extent, this was the Princes bya man of iron, Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel' (cited in
Krishna 1995, 433). To Sardar Patel, as Krishna (1995, 398)
reflected in India's policy of non-alignment. The Indian foreign
 262 INTERNATIONAI. RElATIONS IN INDIA: THE REGION AND NATION 263
SANJAY CHATURVEDI

points out, Hyderabad seemed to have mattered much more state relates itself to its immediate neighbours on the
than Kashmir situated as it was in India's belly, he
naturally
asked: "How can the belly breathe if it is cut off from the subcontinent, especially Pakistan. According to Ayesha Jalal
main (1995, 5), in the dominant geopolitical discourse of India the
body?" That would have sounded che death-knell of Parel's country's geographical size and an ideal of its unity, albeit largely
dream of One India, and the cancer of disunity and divisivencss mythical and symbolic, are often cited as key differences berween
would have spread to totally balkanize the country." India and Pakistan. Going by the stereotypes of the dangerous
Even a casual observer of contemporary India cannot fail to 'other' which vested interests promote through the press and
notice an incrcasing obsession with chreats-real and/or televisual media in both the countries, Pakistan is represented by
imaginaryemanating from across ne Border to the 'unity and the dominant political discourse in India as arn inherently hostile,
integrity' of India, the 'alien' infiltratiorWEth shadowy 'foreign monolithic, identity-crisis ridden society populated and run by
hand' is out to destabilise and destroy the bdý¡a wel! as soul fanatics, who would like to 'crush' India, and who would not
of the nation. "The Indian state has inherited its disgo,sÃas well mind risking yet another war (even nuclear war) over Jammu
as practices on borders or borderlands from the imper¯l powers, and Kashmir to complete the 'unfinished task of partition'.
We may remind ourselves in passing that the geo-historiesofthé g Today, just about every other act of subversion in India is
borders of what would come to be known later as "South A[ia blamed on the elusive but omnipresent Pakistani ISI (Gill 1998).
were being written by those who were "creating or On the other hand, India (Bharat') is portrayed by the
"constructing them in the first place for their OWn Padecp
Xerox dominant geopolitical discourse in Pakistan as (mis)governed by
power-political purposes. As a result, the maps that were drawn Hndu ga Brahmin-dominated elite in New Delhi, permanently hostile
8130462424,
9711491324
by the imperial power were both too static and too simple to nofonly to the existence of the polity and people of Pakistan
capture the diversity and the dynamism of the borderlands, and College b¯t alßo to its Muslim 'minority'.
as Paula Banerjee (1998, 11) points out, 'based on these maps Thecartographic anxiety of the Indian state is at its best-or
and with an admixture of territorialism, cartographic perhas atsvorst-in Jammu and Kashmir, the northern-most
and
absoluteness and frontierism the South Asian nation-states came and state of th¿ Indán Union. This major bonè of contention
into being. or to use a more current phraseology, were Kirori between India nd Pâkistan is a good example of how peoples
constructed'. Ir is largely to Curzon that the credit for coupling Stationery
Store and places with isincuye hi_tories,cultures and ethno-linguistic
the strategic and geographic senses and setting the stage for the Mal identities can be reycc to th¹ status of mere issues in the
.
'monopolisation' of borders by government agents, militaryCollege threat perceptions of hielctuals and institutions of
personnel and secret service agents goes. The remarkable statecraft. At the heart of the ominant Indian discourse on
influence of Curzon's legacy on the Indian state can be gauged Kashmir lies the polemical two-nätion theory. While India is said
from the fact that it is still unable to get out of the mind set to have somehow reconciled to the theory as an
that it has inherited, so much so that it continues to deny its
inevitability'
(Dixit 1995, 199), Pakistan's rigid position is believed to be
'the partition of the subcontinent will remain incomplete tillthat
own citizens access to maps of the border regions, even dutdated all
Ones. Muslimn-majority areas of India cither become part of it or are
The persistent concern, occasionally verging on obsession, of independent Muslim political entities' (ibid.). India's
the Indian statewith the territorial integrity' of its geopolitical commitment to principles of plurality, synthesis and co-existence
realm, and the corresponding acute cartographic anxietyIndian this -transcending the factors of ethnicity, l£nguage, .religion and
generates, are 'also reflected in the manner in which the sub-regional identiies--is contrasted sharply to Pakitan's
 264
INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS IN INDIA: THE REGION AND NATION SANJAY CHHATURVEDI 265
devotion to the religious homogeneity of Islam as the sole basis The centralised state's hegemonic
project to infuse local and
for national and territorial identity. So any prospect of Kashmir I regional political economies
breaking away from the Indian union is dismissed as a challenge and cultures with a singular and :813046242
MOBILE
COLLEGE
monolithic idiom of nacional unity has
to its territorial and ideological integrity. displace the widespread sense of attachment somehow failed to
been made by certain ruling regimes in bothAttempts
Pakistan
have also
and India which is as potent as attachment to group,
to place' in India,
to re-write their respective countries pasts to suit and the two are
their present closely interwined (Weiner 1997, 248-49; Dumont
political ideologies (see Behera 1998). Pakistan's argument, that is yet another major source of cartographic anxiety for1997).
the
This
Kashmir was a part of Muslim kingdoms over the last 1200 years
and more, is strongly contested by Indian historians on the
state. Groups often regard the territory in which they live Indian
as the
site of their exclusive history, a place in
ground that history neither Tommences nor ends abruptly. If which great
occurred and sacred shrines are located. Tribal and events
Kashmir was a part of Muslin kingdmg and empires, linguistic
was' also a Hindu and Buddhistpoliy, atsome- stage. then it groups often regard a homeland as exclusively their own
position is that if political and territoOFial filiations wereIndia's would, if they could, exclude others or deny others the rightand to
to be Store enjoy the fruits of the land or employment provided within che
based on religious and historical arguments, the political map of
not only the Indian subcontinent but of the Colo62424,territory. Hence, India's linguistic minorities define themselves
9711491324
have to undergo changes. wholevgfldwould St¡tionery as 'sons of the soil' with group rights to employment,
Mai land and
According to Sumantra Bose (1998, 144) the*Kshmi political power denied to those who come from. 'outside'./
uprising has 'supplied the Hindutva movement Kir×ri According to Rajni Kothari (1997, 51), the more exploited K.M.C.
unrivalled propaganda weapon. For here was "evidence" winn segments of the Dalits [backward castes] and Adivasis (tribals],
of the afd81306geartd
on the one hand, and of several territorial units and
diabolical designs of a group of Muslims living in India to on
sub-units &
destroy India's unity in conjunction with the historical enemy Xerox the other, have given voice to a rising discourse of alienation'. COLLEGE
Pakistan. The "enemy within, enemy without" (where the Indian India's 'Northeast is one good example of how and why it is
Muslim is che ifth-columnist for Pakistan) conspiracy theory, a Hindu notg suficient that the groups be content with simply the
Pradeep
longstanding staple of the "Hindu naionalist" worldview, was ogupaion of the territory that they consider as their homeland, HINDU
ostensibly finding some vindication'. they ilso gesire and seek to exercise some political control over
it. To
Once physical preservation of the national, borders is held as qyot BVerghese (1996, 393):
synoDymous with the very
Indian union by one and allcxistence/survival
of the state of the Ir [Northc·sta wa long secluded, then CENTER
across the ideological spectrum in only to fin Tsslovernight reduced to politically 'excluded,
a distant appendage
the country, the perceived indispensability of 'secure' or at Partition, landlécle jis cconomy disrupted,
inviolable' borders for national unity, by migrant waves andátterly bewildered by theoverwhelmed
and a coherent and cogent national national development, XEROX
identity itself diverts and rapidity of change. Uncertainty, frustration and
suddenness
attention from the violence that produces the border (Krishna
1994, 511). A classic example of how a 'production of border' misperceptions in the minds of a series of hitherto sequestered PRADEEP
can lead to a senseless costly 'war' communities awakening to a new. identity consciousness
over the frozen wastes is the created some distance first from Assam and then from 'India'
conflict between India and Pakistan over the Si£chen Glacier
which begins at 12,000 feet above sea level, in the Saltoro Range through a process of differentiation. Sullenness turned to
of the Himalayas, and ascends to 22,000 feet. agitation, struggles and a series of insurgencies, most with
external connections, six of which are still extant in some
 266
INTERNATIONAL, RELATIONS IN INDIA: THE REGION AND NATION
PRADEEP measure or other in Nagaland, SANJAY CHATURVEDI 267
Tripura and Meghalaya, Manipur, Assam, 'Bodoland',
the number of armed
involved being much larger. groups oblique and qualified), and a concomitant deification of.
Other indivisible and unitary state power, on the other.
XEROX
are the
movements having abearing on India's national unity Today, a new Hindu identity is under construction in many
'separatist'
and Kashmit /'sccessionist
(Muslims) and the
movements in Punjab (Sikhs)
regional Dravidian movement
parts of India, especially in the northern and
Ludden 1996; Jain 1996; Nandy, central states (see
CENTER in Tamulnadu. As
Gertjan Dijkink996, This process is undoubtedly assisted Trivedi
by
and Yagnik 1995).
succinctly, 'although the separatisy mgYements131)in points
the
out is also the basis of political
mobilisatiòn
the fact that this identity
by the party in power
concern sImall
first, because minorities, their impact on nidÐhal unity is north in New Delhi, the Bharatiya Janata Party
HINDU they chreaten India's "sacrdOgraphy" and, huge, Singh 1994). The BJP is the only cadre-based(BJP) (Malik and
party in India in
because foreign actors n1ay be involved (like PkistananKashmir the real sense of the termn. Unlike the
and Punjab), introducing a dangerous the Congress, who have their front Communist parties and
OLLEGE insecurity. The Dravidian movement elemen also
external
obtainedat
organisations
identities, the BJP is a political arm of with distinctive
international dimension with its connection with Tamif Nadu the Rashtriya
Swayamsewak Sangh (RSS, National
separatism in Sir Lanka (the Tamil Tigers)'. Higdiscoln
eroxand.tationery-Store
Pradeep implement its programme. The RSS,Voluntary also
Corps), meant to
known
& 87302G22rori Parivar (family), ha_ emerged since its inception inas the Sangh
KMC. organisation 1925 as the
The Crisis of the
Nation-State' and the Rise of a articulating Hindu revivalism, cspecially among the
youth, devoted to the establishment of a 'vibrant
Hindutva' Geopolitics 9711491324
2424, with the .ethos of the alleged Golden Hindu nation'
LLEGE Vedic Age
The rise of 'Hindutva' or 'Hindu (Grahan 1993). Once a local, nativist party inat its core
nationalism' in India has been (Mumbathe Shiv Sena (Shiva's army) now finds itself Bombay
attributed by some, and perhaps rightly so, to the domint pliacal force in the state of the
OBILE
'organic' crisis of the Indian state, having reached its overarching
peak in the Bal with theBj wih a ready capacity to play theMaharashtra--in alliance
1990s. The various overlapping causes as well and callon thelgýaltiesof 'Hindu card'
this crisis have been ably discussed
elsewhere
consequences of
(see Kothari 1998; College a holy war (dharmydna, Marachi-speaking young men to fight
1524
Sumantra Bose 1997; Hasan 1997; Kaviraj 1994; Mukherji '(both thampion a patriotism that demonises
anti-national Muslis,xerg immense mobilisation power
1997), and need not detain us here. The issues that are
immediate concern to this essay relate to the 'geopolitical of more electoral and on te see)incite widespread violence,
material' used in the construction of a new Hindu raw extract rents, and shape publipoicy and legislative initiatives
part of a larger ongoing project to make India moreidentity as (Katzenstein, Mehta and Thakkar,
According to C.P. Bhambhri (1998, 4),1998, Gupta 1995).
'Hindu'a Hindu Raj'. According to Sumantra Boseexplicitly Hindu ethos is being 'a particular kind of
160-61), the entire project of 'Hindutva' is reducible to(1997, temples, rituals, priests,promoted
by the BJP
two tilak on the foreheadGovernment where
of ministers and
complementary core ideas: repudiation, denial, suppression or MPs ate on public display...the Hindu
neutralisation of the manifold forms of diversity, conflict, 1980s and 1990s are legitimising a politicssaints in politics in the.
of militant Hindutva
cleavage and oppression in Inian society on the pne h£nd; and directed against every minority community in the
aglorification of the monolithic, organic unity of the 'nation'
(preferably in its 'natural' hierarchy, though this is sometimes
sammelans (gathering of the saints) are being used country...sant
today for
targeting Muslims by raising the issue of
from "Government "liberation of
control" or for using violence to temples"
halt the
 268 INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS IN INDIA: 771E REGION AND NATION Stationery
StareCollege SANJAY CHATURVEDI 269
30462424,
9711491324
It is Rithambra's purpose to include all the
so-called invasion of foreign culcure, Muslim, Christian or a Hinduism
vagucly defined Western'. spawned by Hinduis1m. The presiding deity of the Shaivite 1491324
Mal sects, Shiva, is hailed, as is Krishna, the most popular god of
An insightful analysis of how Hindu--and for that matter Kirori the Vaishnavas. The overarching Hindu community is then
Muslimidencity is formed in popular geopolitical reasoning by :8130462424.97
and sought to be further enlarged by including the followers of
rumour, religion and bigo try, and how they are fueled by and other religions whose birthplace is India. They are the Jains,
nostalgic histories, periods of violence and peace between the two XeroxCollege the Buddhists, and the Sikhs, and Rithambra devoutly
communities and the anxieties and uncertainties produced by the Mahavira, Buddha, and the militant last guru of the Sikhs,
process of modernisation is ro bofound in Sudhir Kakar's, The Pradeep Guru Gobind Singh who, together with Banda Bairagi, has
Colours of Violence (1995, G. Ka¡r critically examines che Hindu the added distinction of a lifetime of armed struggle against MOBILE
constructed nature of the revival &HÃdidentity, but choosing the Mughals. The Harijans or 'scheduled castes the former
as l1is text a speech by sadhavi Rithatnbfa,one of the most "untouchables' of Hindu society, are expressly ackknowledged
articulate speakers for the RSS. The pref 'sadsaviisthe female as a part of the Hindu community by hailing Valmiki, the COLLEGE
counterpart of sadhu (monk), a man who as eñgaced the legendary author of the Ramayana who has been recently
world in search of personal salvation and universaf welfare?wighin elevated to the position of the patron saint of the
che Hindu religions worldview. The broader geopolitcaf gontct Harijans. . .the immortal gods and mortal heroes from past K.M.C.
of the speech is the mobilisation of Hindus by the BJPonsne and present are all the children of Mother India, che subject
issue of constructing a temple to the god Rama at Ayodhya, his of final invocation, making the boundaries of the Hindu
reputed birchplace, and che destruction that would follow of che community coterminous with that of Indian nationalism. &

GN
COLLEGE
Babri Masjid on 6 December 1992 by literally thousands of kar
sevaks led by Visbva Hindu Parishad (VHP), established in the
Rithambra, however, is not content with making her Hindu'
Audience aware of their collective cultural-national consciousness.
1970s to launch anti-Christian missionary campaigns in the Fohcf identity is not a 'product' but a process constantly under
North-East, and the Shiv Sena and spurred on by major leaders HINDU
chrg¥t byhostile forces both rom within and outside. In the
of the RSS and che BJP, followed by large scale killings of militang ynda discourse of which Rithambra's speech is
Muslims in many parts of the country. typically ¿pgignÁative, power and violence expresses themselves CENTER
Kakar shows how, in Richambra's rhetoric, a five-thousand most clearly[o thpotitics of space. "The rituals and riots are
year-old Hindu' religion, with a traditional lack of central intricately linked to specific rituals of violation of the
auchority structures such as a church, with a diffused essence, "territories of the selrbv¥nc threatening "Other", a slaughtered XEROX
and wich a variety of sects with diverse beliefs, is 'personalised cOw in the Hindu sacfed space or a slaughtered pig in the
around randomly chosen gods and saints from Indian history, Muslim sacred space' (van der Veer 1996, 259). For Richambra, PRADEEP
ancient and modern, and communalised' in terms of 'ego 'Our [Hindu] civilisation has never been one of destruction...
ideals', ob» shared by members of the community in order to wherever you find, ruins, wherever you come upon broken
bring aboåt and maintain group cohesion. To Rithambra, monuments, you will find the signature of Islam. Wherever you
identicy implies definition rather than bluring, solidiry rather find creation, you discover the signature of the Hindu... We
chan flux or Auidity, and chis makes boundaries of a group have always been ruled by the maxim, the world is one: family'
extremely pararmount. To quote Kakar (ibid., 200-201): [vasudhaiva kutumbakam]. Whereas the Hindus are being
 270 JNIERNATIONAL RELATIONS IN INDIA: THE REGION AND NATION
271
SANJÁY CHATURVEDI

ADEEP idealised by Rithambra as creative, compassionate, insightful and are where the
having religious tolerance in their bones, the Muslims are not kendras (centres to pay obeisance to strength)
only demonised as inherently destructive, but also warned to Hindu youth is trained in judo, karate and other martial arts to
'behave like sugar in the milk' or else face the fate of a lemon give a fitring reply to the Pakistan Inter-Services Intelligence
XEROX which is 'cut, squeezed dry and then thrown on the garbage agents, Chriscians and carriers of cultural invasion' (Bhambhri
heap'. What Rithambra is trying to put across as the Hindu 1998, 4).
ENTER nationalists' stand that non-Hindu groPS c£n be a part of India,
but only by assimilation. Hinduism, unationalists, is the Geopolitics of 'Nuclear Nationalism':
Source of India's identiry cuprovide national Exploding Geopolitical Imaginations
cohesiveness. Such a view inevitably raises tc
taequcstion: Who is
HINDU a Hindu? In the aftermath of the five nuclear tests conducted by India on
According to Savarkar, as mentioned earlier in hep«per, A the 'auspicious' day of Buddha Purnima, on 11 May 1998,
LLEGE Hindu mcans a person who regards his land...from nc l¥dus Pradeep
Hindu > moral arguments or morality-based politics are not considered
to the Seas as his Fatherland as well as his Holyland' (caed H relevant anymore; realpolitik Seems to have replaced
Varshney 1993, 231). In order to qualify as a Hindu' a perso 81306AroriCollegeMal Gep moralpolitik. Unlikethe first test in 1974, there is no apologetic
& or a group must meet three criteria: territorial. (land berween the AgFOX suffix of 'peaceful' to Pokharan II. To the contrary, there is a
K Indus and the Scas), genealogical ('fatherland') and religious deliberate attempt to faunt the yet-to-be acquired weaponry and
MC. ('holyland'). Hindus, Sikhs, Jains and Buddhists çan be 9711491324
part of 24, ant glorify the importance of 'peace-keeping bombs' to give Indians
this definition, for they were born in India and meet all three asense of security and self-confidence. According to India's
LLEGE criteria, whereas Christians, Jews, Parsis (already assimilated) and Stationery Prim_ Minister, Mr Aral BehariVajpayee, India has exercised its
Muslims meet only two. India is nor' their "hÍlyland'. If the auccafßption as a deterrent against any design that.cxternal
Muslims wish to become a part of the Indian nation, they must powets migbt have on the country. In his view, "The entire
stop insisting on their distinctivencss and agree to the following Store counti pÑwer was manifested in the success of the tests which
MOBILE essential requirements for complete assimilation: (a) accept took yearsrg ghievg In response to the observation that the
unconditionally the centrality of Hinduism to Indian civilisation; bomb was destibed ay aome as the 'Hindu bomb', Mr Vajpayee
(b) acknowledge ky Hindu figures such as Ram as civilisatioFal has said, 'such ruimoursare being spread to divide the country.
1324 People from different religongwere involved in the test-firing.
heroes, and not simply religious personalities of Hinddism;'
(c) admit that Muslim rúlers ('invaders') in various parts of India Dr A.P.J. Kalam, is a Muslim. The bomb is for the country's
(between roughly 1000 to 1857) destroyed the pillar_ of IndiBn protection' (The Hindu, NewDelhi, 31 May, 1998, 1). The
civilisation, especially Hindu temples; and (d) withdraw all touchstone that has guided India in conducting nuclear tests,
according to the Prime Minister (1998, 3), was 'national
claims to special privileges, such as the maintenancc of religious security'. As a result,
personal laws and special state grants for their eduçational
institutions. India is now a,nuclear weapon state. This is a reality that
More recently, a comprehensive programme of Hindu cannot be denied. It is not a conferment that we seek, nor is
mobilisation has been worked out by the Sangh Parivar by a status for the others to grant. It is an endowment to the
serting up Bajrang Dal Units in all 750 districts and 7,531 blocks nation by the scientists and engineers. It is India's due, the
in the country. These units of the Bajrang Dal bal upasana. right of onc-sixth of humankind. Our strengthened capability
 272 INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS IN INDIA: THE REGION AND NATION
SANJAY CHATURVEDI 273
3
adds to our sense of responsibility. We do not intend to use
chese weapons for aggression or for mounting threats against a government-inspired samencss of view in favour of the nuclear :8130462424,97
any country, these are weapons of self-defense to ensure that establishment which then, due to a very weak anti-nuclear
India is not subjected to nuclear threats or coercion. We do movement in the country and a widespread ignorance about the
not intend tO engage in arms race. scale of devastation that nuclear arms can unleash, becomes
The nuclear debate in India, at least for the time being, is public discourse. The Sunday Observer Special (New Delhi,
Mumbai, 24-23 May 1998) brought out 'a four-page
clearly titled in favour of the 'hawkish' loyalists; predominantly "felicitation' supplement entiled, 'Mr Prime Minister We Are
male doomsayers, expounding aacho-sounding hard-core Wich You', carrying congratulatory messages from various
realism, and proudly flagging ghgaptizwest patriotism. The private companies (automobiles, jewellers, cargo agencies,
basic rationale or compulsion' Beñind Idia's nuclear testing printers, ' taxi services, industrial security services, etc.) and MOBILE
initiative is described in the StoreCollege
India's foreign policy elite practicageópalitical reasoning of individuals..
as being e r to 8130462424
9711491324
environment, being responsive to its threae pegeptíonssecurity Stationery Today, we feel even more proud to be Indian. By successfully COLLEGE
being conscious that there is no substitute for slf-refanceforand Mal exploding five indigenously developed nuclear devices, our
ensuring the country's territorial integrity and K)fori scientists have shown that we are as good as the best in the
ccurifya
According to J.N. Dixit (1998, 16), a former foreign seerary world. By giving the go-ahead for the explosions, Mr Prime
of India, (1998), 'an answer' to all che critics ofIndia's Xeroxand Minister, you have, shown the world that we are capable of K.M.C.
nucle~pa and
weaponisation and the test of the 1lth and 13th of May, lies defending our nation, no matter what the consequences.
in the security environment around India stretching from Diego College Soon the world will realise the rightness of our stand, we &
love ahimsa [non-violence], but we know how to defend COLLEGE
Garcia in the west in an encircling arc right up to Pakistan, the Pradeep
Gulf and the Straits of
Hormuz and then on to the South China Hindu sOurselves when attacked, we believe in peaceful co-existence,
Sea. A number of countries have a nuclear presence in this entire Lit we are prepared for war; we have nuclear weapons, but
region, one of whom, Pakistan has threatened the use of its Wewill give up ours only when the rest of the world does so HINDU
CENTER
nuclear and missile capacities against India more than once' toÕ (entpRasis given).
(ibid.).
Whereas chose with a dissencing voice, tirelessly reminding the Apparèsdy, the sponsors and advocates of 'nuclear
nationalism' ndakave little concern to express over the
Indian political elite of formidable internal sources of gcological and healconsequences' for the tribal population of
such as communalism, criminalisation of politics, insecurity, the uranium mining l f Jaduguda in south-eastern Bihar,
corruption,
poverty, hunger and unemployment, growing socio-economic
PRADEEP
XERÒX
who are exposed to grave dangers but still keep the country's
polarisacion, institutional decline and decay, dismal record of nuclear programme going (Sarin, 1998). Also silenced in the
human resource development, political killings and group pro-nuclear assertions are che radical concerns and reservations,
massacres, violence and counter-violence, etc., (D'Monte, 1998) such as those expressed by human rights activist, Saumen Guha
fear chat they might be condemned by the 'pro-nuke' lobby as (Banerjec, 1998, 9):
deshdrohis (traitors), west-inspired anti-nationals or simply CIA
agents. Amidst the national euphoria, ably. assisted by a bactery The military-industrial-academic complex had long been at
of tele-hawks, a 'manufactured consensus' has emerged in India; work. Homi J. Bhabha, India's pioneering nuclear scientist
who headed the Atomic Energy Department in the 1960s, was
 274 INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS INDIA: THE REG1ON AND NATION SANJAY CHATURVEDI 275

DEEP pro-bomb, as are several retired generals and many hawkish Pokhran II by the foreign policy spokesmen and experts of the
defense analysts associated with policy think-tanks. In 1974, BJP-led coalition government at the centre is being circulated
when India first tested nuclear device in Pokhran, Prime among the masses through the media. According to Gupta
XEROX Minister Indira Gandhi was facing increasing trouble at (ibid.), 'By choosing nuclear power as its expression of greatness,
home...the test was used to consolidate her power base by India has chosen the bard road to success. India's defiance has to
appcaling to shallow nationalism. Subsequently, over the be'seen in historical terms, and only a party belieing in national
ENTER years, the Tatas and later, Larsen andLoubro, both of which destiny like the BJP could have taken this hard decision.. ,as a
won large defence contracts, erfergcdas the industrial hard state, it [India) will get more respect but less love.
component of the military-industrial aatemic complex Acquisition of nuclear capabiliy has placed India in the same
pushing India into the nuclear orbit. The cårrent BJP category of major Asian powers as China. It would have taken
HINDU a century of liberalised economics to reach this status' (emphasis
government is shaky and the nuclear tests wg nstewhat was given). To Gupta (ibid.), India's true friends are those who not
required to gain a measure of stability. And the BJ h§, always
KMC. proclaimed that it wants India to have the bomb. only support the nuclear blasts, important as they may be
internationally, but also 'show a commitment to Indian
The media-intellectuals and media-'experts' too have come HindeGolle
Pradeerkerox greatness'. Accordingly, concludes Gupta,
forward with most imaginative concoctions of gtopolitical 8303¢4 ...France has turned out to be India' best friend in its hour of
arguments/reasoning in support of the nuclear blasts (Chellaney,
1998; Karlekar, 1998; Ghatate, 1998; Prakash, 1998; Singh, need...A Pakistani-Islamic bomb is a security threat to Israel
as much as it is to India...India and Israel have common
1998; Gupta, 1998; Bhargava, 1998; Mehta, 1998). To cite just
a few examples, "Those who criticise India', are reminded that a Stationery
Storeand BRostrategic needs. Militant Islam is as much a threat to India
OLLEGE communist China has 'surrounded India with its nuclear might as jes to Isracl. The Hindu has been squashed as mucb as the
eu. B×t Hindus and Jews have sufered mental suffocations,
in alliance with Pakistan' [whose very survival is said to rest744491324
on CollegeMai o peYseitÑn agd lack of aDpreciation...India must reward its
its 'hate India' ideology] and Burma... threatening India's trade friendnd sunisits foes...This may be a good time to cut
MOBILE routes in the Indian Ocean. It has also deployed nuclear missiles loose frofa with defunct coåntries lilke Britain whÍ
in Tibet against India. Chinese technology has enabled Pakistan have cashed in an cgtonialism to hang on to India (ibid.).
to test-fire the Ghauri missile, a weapon aimed solely at India'
491324 (Prakash, 1998). Whereas those who equate Pakistan with India Thegeopolitical signiÊGang ofPokharan II is being conveyed
in terms of nuclear weapon capabiliy are being told that this by Gupta to his readers in oti geo-historical and geopolitical
'artificial parity' does not simply hold because 'India is no terms (ibid.). They are being aaked to rejoice over the 'fact'
territorial, ethnic or religious creation; it is heir to a mighty, At last India has found its destiny...The tests ar more. that
than
ancient and living citilisation', whereas, 'Pakistan is a recent nuclear tests. Their importance lies in fighting global inequality,
off-shoot of India, about one-seventh its size, with a poor in challenging Anglo-American domination...A new
to squeeze India dry on the tests which in time will lead sinister plan
to the hyegt
tradition of democracy and pretensions to cquality' (Jain, 1998). up of the country is on the anvil. Some
An editorial by Ranjan Gupta, a freelane foreign' may be a good time to balkanize IndiaWestern nations think this
so that it néver again
correspondent and author, for one of the widely read national challenges Western hegemony'. And 'unpatriotic' Indians who have
dailies (The Pioneer, New Delhi, 12 June 1998, 8), shows how failed to grasp the historic significance
the sophisticated geopolitical reasoning deployed in support of of the event as well as the
 276 INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS IN INDIA: THE REGION AND NATION
SANJAY CHATURVEDI 277
political parties that have criticised the tests, both in and ourside
Parliament, on 'narrow partisan Considerations' are said to be the Wheres the måjor geopolitical concerns of the post-colonial
state ('nation-state'!) in India seem to revolve around (a)
the MOBIL
victim of the same 'narrow considerations that lead countless Mir
Kasims to sell India to Englishmen'. uncontestch inheritance oftertain colonial legacies, especially the
The nuclear tests have also set off an explosion of geopolitical
British ideology of 'communal' difference in India, (b) the subtle
but harsh denial and disciplining of religious,
imaginations among the Hindu nationalists. In the wake of India and linguistic diversity by invoking the myth socio-economic
of
becoming a'nuclear weapon state' the Vishva Hindu Parishad unity', and (c) the growing tendency on the part ofgeopolitical
the Indian
(VHP) has proposed to carry Pokhran dustsacred soilin state to deal 'authoritatively', both at home and abroad, with
sanctified vessels across the country yet another set of yatras, mounting cartographic anxieties over preserving the 'territorial
this time in the name of gaurav gr pidethas been proposed Store
by the same organisation that a teimpk to ha,bomb should be College
62424, integrity' of the country, a concern shared by both the so-called
9711491324
Stationery secular nationalists and the Hindu nationalists.
built at the site of five nuclear explosißnsashakripeeth.
It has also been observed that the dominant understandings
Mal COLLEG
of what constitutes the 'foreign' in the practical geopolitical
Conclusion Kirori reasoning of the Indian political elite are grounded in and draw
apdColegeand upon some of the larger and enduring themes of Indian
This cssay has shown that whereas there is a long linagss6f Xerox geopolitics, discussed in part three of the paper. While it is crue K.M.C.
geopolitical thought and theorising on the Indian subcontiner, that geopolitics is about both discourse and pracice, the
it is difficult to identify an essential, immanent core or content Pradeep intellectuals and practitioners of foreign policy usually act
of Indian geopolitics. Indian geopolitical imaginations are found through discourses, and it is chrough the mobilisation of certain &
COLLE
grounded in both the traditional domains of statecraft and in Hindu
'nationalist' encounters with the British, while drawing upon a
simple, often abstract, geographical understandings that foreign
piiy actions are cxplained and justified. This point is well
whole range of other discourses, assumptions and beliefs that are lgsated,by our analysis of the various forms of geopolitical
specific to religious-cultural moorings and manifestations of HINDU
reasõning offered in support of the nuclear blasts by che BJP-lead
Indian civilisation. What is conspicuous by its absence in Indian coalition goaerriment in New Delhi. Neumann's contention,
geopolitical tradition(s), however, is projections of a worldwide (1997, 148 3hat goopolitical shifts [as in che case of post CENTE
geopolitical view like that of western geopolitical chinkers (Sen Pokharan II SouthAsia are not only, or perhaps not even first
1975, 218). But then, it is not fair perhaps to base one's and foremost, abouteanges in the balance of power; chey are
assessments of Indian geopolitics excessively upon western about changes in the b±lane Ñf threats and challenges as these XEROX
model(s) and condemn it for its failure to conform with those are constructed in discourse Furthermore, such threats do not
models.
exist "out there", but are socially constructed as part of political
Ihave shown that the 'geopolitics of Raj' in India addressed discourse' appears quite valid in the context of India-Pakistan "PRAD
itself largely to (a) che task of constructing differences between relacions. Our discussion of India's policy of non-alignment in
che 'British' and the 'Indians' on the one hand, and among the addition has shown that the pracices related to the production
'Indians' on the other, (b) the ordering of those differences through of knowledge to aid the conduct of statecraft can also be seen as
social engincering, and (c) coping with the contradictions by a part of the larger geopolitical project to further the power of
constructing, representing and enforcing the imperial authority. the state.