Search

Disputes between Sri Lanka and India over the Tamil issue, the issue of fishers, refugees, the island of Kachchativu, and the maritime bor-der have strained relations between Sri Lanka and India. This caused Sri Lanka to look elsewhere for support. Rajapaksa has reduced Sri Lanka's ties with India and expanded its ties with China and Pakistan, who have helped Sri Lanka's economic development and defense from insurgen-cy. Recognizing the strategic impor-tance of Sri Lanka and the Indian Ocean, China has built ports andvarious projects in Sri Lanka. These relations between China, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka affect India's security. This paper describes the impact on India from the relationship devel-oped between Sri Lanka with China, Pakistan and the US. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the pattern of engagement by China and India in terms of the G20 and BRICS. Both countries are torn between a self-identity as status-seeking 'rising' powers and as champions of solidarity with other countries of the Global South. In conceptual terms, primary reference is made to the notion of ambivalence inherent in the fundamental co-existence of the privileging of these two different identities. That these contrasting mindsets are held in tandem is highly salient for an examination of foreign policy in comparative perspective. Privileging ambivalence is different from ambiguity. Ambiguity conveys a lack of clarity, rather than the persistence of a dualistic mindset central to ambivalence. Although highlighting generalised commonalities, the means of managing ambivalence adopted by China and India are markedly differentiated. As illustrated by the pattern of engagement with the G20 and BRICS, what separates China from India is China's ability make up its mind in an instrumental manner if and when needed. By way of contrast, the projection of Indian foreign policy on the G20 and the BRICS highlights a more fundamental contradiction between the exceptionalistic and universalistic sides of self-identity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article explores the implications for U.S. foreign policy of the India-Russia defense partnership. It notes the attempt of the U.S. to deter arms transactions between the two countries taking advantage of India's budget limitations caused by economic crises. It offers information on the strength of the arms relationship between India and Russia. It discusses the implications of such partnership for the U.S. such as being a hindrance to full U.S.-India military inter-operability.

This paper argues that the incipient tensions over the Brahmaputra between India and China has become a considerable threat and cause for concern to the downstream dwellers of India's North East Region (NER), especially Assam and Arunachal Pradesh. It enlarges the term 'Brahma-hypothesis' and considers Chinese 'hydro-hegemony' over the Brahmaputra as a 'national security' threat to India. It also argues that apart from having the occasional Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with China, India should seek to develop with China and other countries a multilateral diplomatic agreement regarding the management of the Brahmaputra River to secure India's vital interests at national and regional levels. This is also necessary to minimise the sense of insecurity continuously growing in the minds of the people of the NER. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 1991, India's Prime Minister P.V. Narasimha Rao outlined the 'Look East' policy, designed to address India's neglect of the Southeast Asian region during the Cold War period. The purpose of the Look East policy initially was to build closer economic and cultural ties with the countries of the region and with ASEAN in particular. The current Modi administration's new 'Act East' policy has sought to expand these ties to include deeper security cooperation and defense partnerships as well. In addition, the new policy focuses on building ties with countries in the wider Asia-Pacific region, including Australia, New Zealand, Japan, and South Korea. The new policy is more than an exercise in rebranding. The primary goals behind the Act East policy are both to promote India's economic growth and development and respond to China's rise and expanding influence in the region. However, India needs to be mindful about the challenges associated with the implementation of this policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article explores the foreign policy of India towards neighboring countries in the northeast region. Topics discussed include the reasons why the said region may be deemed as geopolitically significant for India, the need for India to address challenges associated with its relationship with China, Bangladesh, and Myanmar, and the evolution of the Look East Policy (LEP) of India with regard to Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) member states.

Literature in Diplomatic Studies often reference a phenomenon where diplomats sent for too long to another country develop an affinity for their assigned country, sometimes to the detriment of their home country. This has profound implications when we examine diplomatic agents as personalities in their own right and their ability to perform as state agents. This article investigates the basis of such a claim by examining the Indian diplomatic corps as a case study to verify its validity and enlist the factors that influence this phenomenon. This article relies on interviews given by former diplomats of the Indian Foreign Service to highlight the structures that influence behaviour of diplomatic agents and the implications it may have on training for future diplomats and preparing them for the evolution of diplomacy in the technological age. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

On the eve of Indian Independence, as Britain prepared to devolve the Crown's treaties with Tibet to the Indian government, the Tibetan government was debating its future treaty relationship with India under the 1914 Simla Convention and associated Indo-Tibetan Trade Regulations. Soon after Indian independence, Tibetan government made an expansive demand for return of Tibetan territory along the McMahon Line and beyond. This led to a long diplomatic exchange between Lhasa, New Delhi and London as India deliberated its response to the Tibetan demand. This article decodes the voluminous correspondence between February 1947 and January 1948 that flowed between the British/Indian Mission in Lhasa, the Political Officer in Sikkim, External Affairs Ministry in Delhi and the Foreign Office in London, on the Simla Convention and the ensuing Tibetan territorial demand. Housed at the National Archives in New Delhi, this declassified confidential communication provides crucial context for newly independent Indian state's relationship with Tibet. It also reveals the intricacies of Tibetan elite politics that affected decision-making in Lhasa translating to a fragmented and often contradictory policy in forging its new relationship with India. Most importantly, this Tibetan territorial demand undermined the diplomatic efficacy of Tibet's 1947 Trade Mission to India entangling its outcome with the resolution of this issue. This was a lost opportunity for both India and Tibet in building an agreement on the frontier which worked to their mutual disadvantage in the future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Having fought its third war and staring at food shortages, independent India needed to get its act together both militarily and economically by the mid-1960s. With the United States revoking its military assistance and delaying its food aid despite New Delhi's devaluation of the rupee, India's newly elected Indira Gandhi government turned to deepen its ties with the Soviet Union in 1966 with the aim of balancing the United States internally through a rearmament campaign and externally through a formal alliance with Moscow. The US formation of a triumvirate with Pakistan and China in India's neighbourhood only bolstered its intent. Yet India consciously limited the extent of both its balancing strategies and allowed adequate space to simultaneously adopt the contradictory sustenance of its complex interdependence with the United States economically. Did this contrasting choice of strategies constitute India's recourse to hedging after 1966 until 1971, when it liberated Bangladesh by militarily defeating a US-aligned Pakistan? Utilising a historical-evaluative study of archival data and the contents of a few Bollywood films from the period, this paper seeks to address the question by empirically establishing the extents of India's balancing of, and complex interdependence with, the United States. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For a half-century, the historiography on Spanish Habsburg rule suggested that the crown envisioned Indies society as best divided into two segregated sociolegal groups: the republic of the Spaniards and the republic of the Indians. This model was popularized by the eminent mid twentieth century Swedish historian Magnus Mörner and has since become a foundational concept in the field. However, using extensive archival evidence, this article suggests that the Mörner Thesis of the Two Republics is flawed. Historicizing sixteenth-century uses of the concept of the republic, it finds that contemporaries conceived of a complex social order in which many political communities such as municipalities and groups of petitioners could overlap within larger meta-republics, such as the Indies republic and the Christian faith-republic. It then turns to subjects' uses of the two republics, noting that this conceptual duality appeared rarely in the petitions of Spanish officials, commoners, Indians, Afro-descendants, and mestizos, and was also rare in royal and viceregal legislation. Moreover, this binary most often served to suggest Spaniards' and Indians' common ground. The article then reflects on other approaches to understanding the Indies' Spanish-Indian binary, the place of non-Spanish, non-Indian vassals within republic-thinking, and the staggering complexity of Indies laws, categories, and social interactions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the nineteenth century, today's South and Southeast Asia have become part of scholarly and popular geographies that define the region as a single, superior, civilization with Hindu-Buddhist spiritual traits and its origins in India. These moral geographies of "Greater India" are still current in universities, museums, textbooks, and popular culture across the world. This article explores, for the period from the 1890s to the 1960s, how networks of scholars, intellectuals, and art collectors linking Indonesia, mainland Asia, and the West helped shaping these moral geographies and enabled the inclusion of predominantly Islamic Indonesia. It contributes to recent debates on the role of religion and affections in Orientalism by following object-biographies and focusing on knowledge exchange via the networks they connected, and by exploring the possibilities, violence, and limits of cultural understanding as objects travel from their sites of origin to elsewhere in the world. The article conceptualizes moral geographies as a heuristic device to understand how people have imagined their belonging to a transnational space—in this case Greater India—whether they live inside or outside of that space. It examines the impact these moral geographies have on processes of inclusion and exclusion, particularly their common disregard for Indonesia's Islamic cultures. It warns against pitfalls of transnational, "Oceanic" approaches to Asian history that focus on cultural flows, as these can exaggerate the region's cultural unity and, in doing so, reify the moral geographies of Greater India that the article interrogates. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the development of a close relationship between the Ford Foundation—the world's richest and most internationally oriented philanthropic organisation in the Cold War era—and India in the 1950s. Unlike existing literature on private foundation–recipient country relationships, which overwhelmingly focusses on the donor perspective, this essay explores the recipient perspective, thereby contributing to the emerging literature on Third World agency in international politics. Complicating the idea that recipient countries were overwhelmingly interested in aid maximisation, this article shows that India moved closer to the Ford Foundation in order to fulfil diplomatic rather than aid-related objectives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on growing importance of the Indian and Pacific Oceans and the rapidly evolving geopolitical landscape in Asia have brought the Indo-Pacific construct to the center of global political discourse. It mentions inclusiveness, openness, ASEAN (Association of Southeast Asian Nations) centrality, and unity lie at the heart of India's conception of the Indo-Pacific. It also mentions India's attempts to manage and its strategic partnership with Moscow, Russia are key to ensuring a stable, open, secure, inclusive, and prosperous Indo-Pacific region.

The article focuses on rules-based Indo-Pacific Region addressing economic and geostrategic challenges, and building Indo-Pacific cooperation during the COVID-19 pandemic with Australia-France-India Trilateral Dialogue. It mentions cooperation on marine global commons; potential areas for practical partnership at the trilateral and regional level, including through regional organizations such as the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), Indian Ocean Rim Association (IORA), and the Indian Ocean Commission; and the challenges and priorities of multilateralism. It also mentions separate evolution of the bilateral partnerships.

In the first two decades of Indian independence, members of the Sarvodaya movement—India's popular, non-state program for Gandhian social uplift—sought to partner with representatives of Israel's developmental apparatus to build a communal agricultural settlement at Gandhi's former ashram. Working against the lure of large-scale, Nehruvian development, Cold War politics, and cool formal diplomatic relations between the two countries, Indian votaries of small-scale rural uplift saw in Israeli collective agriculture the chance to give Gandhian "constructive work" a practical program rooted in voluntary, village-based socialism—a goal that eluded Gandhi himself. Israeli planners saw their work with Indian civil society as a means of securing the formal diplomatic sanction largely stymied by India's relationship with the broader Muslim world. Gandhi's vision of the Indian "village Republic" and the Israeli model of agrarian collectivism both owed their origins to nineteenth-century utopian thought, and both projects felt anachronistic by the time of their decade-long joint effort, whose initial promise succumbed to realpolitik and the hegemony of the developmental state. Yet their work foregrounds the enduring international stake that Indian civil society maintained in development and nation-building, long presumed to have withered with the arrival of the nation-state. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Mausam Initiative has not met the expectations with which it was announced. As a flagship initiative of the Government of India, its programmatic framework remains unclear and the understanding of the Initiative unifocal. Apart from the effort to transcribe it in the UNESCO's world heritage list, there is little clarity on how the ancient, mediaeval and premodern histories of the Indian Ocean (IO) may resonate with our times and concerns. There is also little thought put to what this can mean in writing a revisionist history of the Indian Ocean World and what that revisionist writing would mean to India's relations with its IO neighbours. This article will outline briefly the Mausam Initiative as it stands and what a revisionist history of the IO region could suggest. Many of the discussions around this are already present around the IO intellectual and scholarly circuit, dislocating notions of dominance, sovereignty and statecraft. It remains for policymakers to take note of these to nuance the Mausam Initiative and make it an actually effective arm of policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay deals with the topic of relations between India and Italy since the birth of the Kingdom of Italy in 1861 until the end of WWII. After an introduction regarding the long history of relations between Italians and Indians, the study focuses above all on the analysis of the Italian government's attitude towards the Indian nationalist movement during the liberal and fascist period. It was during Mussolini's rule, with his growing interest in extending Italian political and economic influence to the Middle East and the Islamic world, that the need to pay attention to Gandhi's and Nehru's movement began to grow. Italy's objective was to nurture relations and contacts with Indian nationalism, anticipating some chance that India would gain self-government. When, in the second half of the 1930s, relations between Italy and Great Britain deteriorated, Italy kept in touch with the most extremist anti-British nationalist leaders, such as Subhas Chandra Bose and Iqbāl Shedai. The last part of the essay focuses on the different views by the powers of the Axis on the possibility of India's independence, and on their attempts to destabilize British India during WWII. In particular, the Italian point of view on how to use Indian nationalists and on the emerging pro-Pakistan movement is outlined. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Competition is a natural byproduct of major powers navigating an anarchic world. Small states operating in such a milieu however, face a dilemma when strategizing their foreign policy. At present, two regional behemoths – India and China – remain locked in a Realpolitik affray as they vie for influence by enticing and attracting South Asian states through economic, security and diplomatic initiatives. How do these structural dynamics impact Sri Lanka's policymaking process? Moreover, has the island been able to mount a timely and appropriate response to structural dictates? In what way has domestic variables influenced and channeled policy preferences in Sri Lanka since 2015? By adopting a Neoclassical Realist frame of analysis, this paper appraises the impact made by the external environment and domestic intervening variables on the island's foreign policy trajectory. It concludes that domestic intervening variables drew the island away from optimal choices in its relations with India and China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Indo-Israeli relations have gained tremendous momentum under Prime Minister Narendra Modi. While the PM's deliberate and cohesive efforts deserve credit, other significant contributing factors must not be overlooked. Moving away from the dominant Modi-centric approach, this article explores significant contributing factors in the new phase in India-Israel relations under Modi. It concludes that more than a single factor, it is a combination of conditions and factors that actively and collectively brought about the change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has shown a keen interest in his country's relationship with India with an intention to protect Japan's stake in maritime affairs under the 'Indo-Pacific' concept. In evaluating Japan's India strategy, a particularly important factor is China's regional presence. This article, through an analysis of Japan's India policy during 2013–18, seeks to address the following two questions. First, how has Japan's India diplomacy under Prime Minister Abe in politics, security, and economics been influenced by its strategies towards China? Second, how can Japan's diplomatic policies towards India be evaluated in terms of key concepts in relation to a state's foreign policy responses? The exploration of the development of Japan's India diplomacy, the geopolitical and geo-economic factors behind it, and the strategic nature of the diplomatic policies enables us to understand the prospect of increasingly important Japan–India relations and their strategic implications for rapidly evolving regional politics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The rise of China in recent decades has forged closer naval bilateral relationships in the Indo-Pacific region. Amongst these the Indo-Australian maritime ties have been a noteworthy development. Beijing's expanding maritime capabilities in the Indian Ocean Region and growing influence in the South China Sea have become a core convergence in Indo-Australian cooperation. China's approach of asserting its rise as friendly while simultaneously becoming more aggressive in boundary claims has increased security concerns for Australia and India, thereby prompting maritime security convergences through the AUSINDEX exercises, increased trilateral engagements and establishing a Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (QSD). However, the maritime convergence is not only based on hedging, as there are common views of maintaining an inclusive security framework with China to address non-traditional maritime security threats affecting the region. In examining the China factor, this article also draws in other players such as USA, Japan and the ASEAN states with stakes involved in the region as also influencing Indo-Australian relations in their considerations of China. This article will explore China as a strong point of interest in India-Australia maritime cooperation; the roots of which can be traced from 1991 and have culminated into synergies of collaboration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article informs about Afrasian Connectivities with entangled cultures, literatures and politics Between Africa and India. Topics include diversity and heterogeneity of Afrasian connectivities that have traversed national, religious, and ethnic boundaries; and disassembles the nation-state or other container-based model of writing world history.

2020 will be remembered for a number of reasons. COVID-19 has changed the world in unimaginable ways. However, one silver lining of the pandemic is that it expanded Taiwan's global space. One of the greatest developments of 2020 was a deeper understanding about Taiwan worldwide, especially in India. Due to Taiwan's impeccable COVID-19 response and also India-China violent clashes in the Galwan valley, domestic public opinion in India is increasingly shifting in favour of Taiwan. However, despite this positive momentum, the Indian leadership still remains cautious about elevating political ties with Taiwan. There have been calls to re-evaluate India's China policy and advance ties with Taiwan. India does not have formal diplomatic ties with Taiwan, and the relations are managed primarily through unofficial channels. The China factor has loomed large over the prospects of setting the right context for India-Taiwan relations. While the recent standoff has provided a window of opportunity for India to look towards Taiwan, there is need for India to devise a long-term strategy to engage Taiwan. Taiwan too, under the administration of President Tsai Ing-wen, has emphasised the importance of strengthening ties with India. A persistent policy and a long-term framework to guide the relationship is the need of the hour. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Two decades into the twentieth century, traditional interstate conflicts continue to persist. However, peace and security are no longer measured only in terms of conventional wars. Under-development in many parts of the globe manifests itself in crime, terrorism, and civil wars which, invariably, have a transnational character, and affect regional stability. In 2016, the United Nations Security Council and the General Assembly adopted concurrent resolutions on Sustainable Peace, recognising that development, peace, and security are firmly interlinked. In 2015, Prime Minister Modi enunciated India's foreign policy vision of Security and Growth for all in the Region (SAGAR) that conflates security with development. This paper seeks to access the extent to which the United Nations has been able to deliver on its sustainable peace agenda. It examines the conceptual compatibility between sustainable peace and SAGAR. Finally, the essay argues that SAGAR not only provides a framework for maritime governance in the Indian Ocean but is also a strategy for sustainable peace with a global footprint. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Colonial and postcolonial relations have always constituted sites of knowledge production in the Global South. This is particularly noticeable when it comes to the production of knowledge of a Global South self vis-à-vis the West. However, the literature has not seriously attended self-knowledge production in the Global South with regard to non-Western others. The paper compares South and Southeast Asian think tanks to reflect upon a common identity strategy of small nations to become a civilizational bridge between competing major neighbours. Specifically, China experts in these areas host more or less a common wish or even a desire to be a bridge over the difference of China and its potential rival in India, the West, or both. The bridge role is a rare sensibility in the postcolonial critique of the West. Watching China from its Southern Third World neighbourhood incurs such an agenda. Relying on interviews of retired diplomats and think tank experts, the paper also discusses how the above mentioned methodological characteristics affect the enactment of the bridge role. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article is an attempt to relook at the treaties of 1949 and 2007 between India and Bhutan and argues that the 2007 Treaty is the outcome of the evolution and maturity of Bhutan as an independent and sovereign state, that it is imperative for India to make constant adjustments in its foreign policy towards Bhutan to secure its influence in the tiny but important country and maintain the strength of India–Bhutan bilateral relations. From the side of Bhutan, it is also important to have an 'alliance shelter', and India is best suited to meeting Bhutan's needs for political, economic, societal and strategic shelter. 1 By using a historical approach, this article shows why it was necessary for the two countries to renew the 1949 Treaty in the first decade of the twenty-first century. The article uses historical methodology, in combination with interdisciplinary methods such as comparative analysis, generalisation, and expert interviews. Major sources for the paper include the texts of the Treaties, speeches by political leaders and published articles and books by international writers, including writers from India, Bhutan and Vietnam. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An introduction to the journal is presented which discusses topics featured within the issue including the foreign policy of India, the foreign and security policies of Nigeria in response to Boko Haram terrorism, and the no first use (NFU) policy of China with regard to nuclear weapons.

There is a big gap on the study of Indo-Myanmar relations between India and China, in which the Indian experts are mainly concerned about the serious consequences of the China factor, while few Chinese scholars focus on Indo-Myanmar relations. This article, therefore, looks into the post-Cold War Indo-Myanmar relations from a Chinese perspective, so as to fill the research gap. It argues that India's influence upon Sino-Myanmar relations is actually marginal, though it has established a budding relationship with Myanmar through deepening political engagement, naval cooperation and physical connectivity with the country. The main reason is that India lacks full capability to develop the bilateral relations with Myanmar and thus compete fully with China. Additionally, the suspicion and resistance from the Burmese elite and local communities constitutes another major obstacle to the further engagement between India and Myanmar. Naypyidaw, notwithstanding its efforts to advance Indo-Myanmar relations, would prefer to gain benefits from both China and India. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Extension services in district Muzaffarabad Azad Jumu and Kashmir (AJK) was analyzed in the present study. Multistage Sampling technique was used to select the required sample, 80 farmers were randomly selected from five villages and data were collected through interview schedule. It was found that majority farmers were literate up to middle; young farmers showed more positive attitude towards extension recommendations, 93% farmers knew extension workers both by name and face and also knew extension recommendations, but they faced problems like small land holding, high prices of inputs, poor financial position and lack of labour in adoption of these recommendations. Half of the sample respondents reported satisfaction from different extension activities/facilities like location of extension office, availability of extension personal, result and method demonstration, farm/home visit and personal meetings. Whereas, the rest were not satisfied with radio programs, television programs, exhibitions, pamphlets, and farmer day. It was concluded that production of maize in the study area was increased up to 910 kg/acre after extension recommendations. In case of wheat production was increased from 1177.50 kg/acre after extension recommendations to 1806.25 kg/acre. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article deals with the state of play in the relationships between the United States, India and Russia. The focus of the article is placed on the geopolitical environment in which the three countries have been building their relationships in contemporary times. The author analyses the approaches of the US, India and Russia towards two geographical concepts of the Indo-Pacific and Eurasia. The situation in Afghanistan is examined through perspectives and interests of all three players as each of them is involved—though in a different manner—in the resolution of the crisis. The author displays the role of Beijing as a key variable for the US-India-Russia triangle. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

India's relations with Afghanistan and the post-Soviet countries of Central Asia have contributed to the growing interest in the country's rise. By treating them together as "Central Eurasia," the discourses of Indian foreign policy invoke a contiguous geopolitical locale bound to India by a shared past. Yet, despite the strategic articulation of a manifest Central Eurasian region, the article uncovers a puzzle of bifurcation in India's foreign policy reflecting distinct operationalizations of India's cultural capital in its relations with Afghanistan and the Central Asia republics. The comparative analysis indicates that prior historical experience becomes a compelling strategic context for the continuous framing and reframing of the country's foreign policy space, which reveals India's shifting perceptions of international order, self-identity, and global roles. India's interactions in Central Eurasia offer a good illustration of the crossroads that New Delhi's foreign policy is facing – either keep on proliferating discourses that spin yarns of the international influence of its historical capital or develop proactive diplomatic strategies that deliver the international status that India desires. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Foreign policy making in India is typically viewed as highly centralised and dominated by the Prime Minister's Office and bureaucracy. Yet in 2004, the Congress-Party-led United Progressive Alliance government launched a Composite Dialogue with Pakistan which included a place for Indian think tanks in the Kashmir dispute. We suggest that as India liberalised its economy amidst domestic political upheaval, think tanks were given greater access to domestic and foreign funding and adopted new roles in foreign policy making. In the case of the Kashmir conflict, peacebuilding think tanks were encouraged by the government to engage in cross-border activities that would build constituencies for peace with Pakistan and promote economic cooperation as an incentive for peace. While the government aimed to depoliticise the conflict, these think tanks used this opportunity to draw attention to marginalised perspectives and issues. Peacebuilding think tanks nonetheless faced significant challenges in shaping the peace process because of structural constraints regarding access to resources and lack of autonomy to further their agendas. This reflected resistance within the state to depoliticising a conflict that has long been India's central national security issue. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Indian state has undergone significant transformation since the late 1980s, most notably the extensive decentralisation of power, with consequences for the formation and implementation of Indian foreign policy. This article explores the role of India's constituent states explaining the extent and limitations of their autonomy and influence. It deploys and extends the state transformation approach to incorporate considerations of issue area and coalition type. Under coalitions led by typical national parties, subnational governments are less likely to influence foreign and security policy. Under the same coalition type, they are more likely to behave autonomously on non-traditional security issues such as sharing of water resources with neighbouring countries. They are less likely to behave autonomously on security issues such as the transnational expression of ethnic solidarity. Under coalitions led by atypical national parties or regional parties, subnational governments are likely to exercise a moderate level of autonomy and influence on issue areas such as transnational expression of ethnic solidarity. They are likely to exercise a high level of autonomy and influence on non-traditional security issues such as sharing of water resources. The framework is illustrated through Tamil Nadu's activism on Sri Lanka, and West Bengal's position on water-sharing with Bangladesh. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In Africa, China and India are considered to be following a donor–recipient approach and are explicitly criticised for exploiting the continent's energy resources. This study focuses on the presence of the Asian countries in terms of institutional theory, historical connections, instrumental motivations and political engagement with Africa in general, and with Ethiopia in particular. India offers non-pecuniary value, such as scholarship and technical assistance, whereas China focuses on a wider range of economic aids and non-pecuniary packages; thus, both countries are well positioned in Africa. This study is an exercise audit of the impact of Chinese and Indian economic activities on Ethiopia's economic growth and examines the period from 1992 to 2016 from historical and contemporary perspectives. This study also includes a case study of members of Ethiopian society's attitudes towards the presence and prospects of Chinese and Indian investment projects and its perceptions of these projects. Although some long-term developmental impacts remain uncertain, this study argues that the presence of the Asian drivers has favoured Ethiopia in many investment sectors and concludes that the overall impact of the Asian drivers on Ethiopia is beneficial. To collect primary data, individual and group interviews and discussions were conducted. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the first decade after Indian independence in 1947, the secular Indian state projected a vision of itself as being guided by universal ethics rooted in the nation's ancient Buddhist past. From the circulation of Buddhist relics in distant lands to the reinvention and incorporation of Buddhist symbols in contemporary state regalia, the government sponsored a wide variety of programmes in the name of world peace, Pan-Asian unity, and enlightened democratic values that promoted Buddhism both within India and across Asia. This more than decades-long effort was entirely the outcome of the political and social visions of India's first prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru and key members of his cabinet. In its most concise formulation, this Nehruvian-style Buddhism consisted of a two-pronged approach, one concerning the uses of Buddhism in the domestic sphere—that is, for domestic consumption by citizens of the new nation—and one concerning the uses of Buddhism as an instrument of foreign policy. At the heart of these projects was the dual effort to integrate a diverse South Asian populace into a wider national consciousness and yield influence among the post-colonial order in Asia. This article details the strategies and ideologies that Nehru and his cabinet employed vis-à-vis Buddhism from the mid-1940s to late 1950s when their Buddhist statecraft began to unravel due to geopolitical crises and the mass conversions of Ambedkarite Dalits. After tracing these developments, the article briefly considers the continued relevance of the Nehruvian engagement with Buddhism as it relates to twenty-first century Indian affairs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Indo-Myanmar relations are based on history and civilizational ties. Indo-Myanmar's close socio-economic, commercial, political, cultural relations had existed all through the ages dating back to ancient and medieval times. Beyond these ties, ethnic links between the people of Myanmar and India exist in four states bordering Myanmar, namely, Arunachal Pradesh, Manipur, Nagaland, and Mizoram, and have continued since antiquity. In contemporary epoch, both countries have been enjoying warm and friendly relations. For example, Myanmar is the only gateway to Southeast Asia connecting India by land and acts as a buffer zone between the northeastern region and China. Myanmar is considered as one of India's immediate neighbors and part of its successful Look East Policy (LEP), currently Act East Policy (AEP). For India, Myanmar is the connecting bridge as it is crucial for India's LEP, besides the development of stronger ties with Southeast Asia and East Asian countries. Consequently, it is important to examine the role of the Indian Diaspora in achieving internal (stabilizing border areas) as well as external (stabilizing Southeast Asia) security objectives of India. The diaspora has emerged as a powerful lobby since they are documented as "soft power" in International Relations and foreign policy strategy. It is also a driving force or agent of economic development between India and Myanmar. Therefore, this paper attempts to study the role of the Indian Diaspora in transforming the bilateral relations between India and Myanmar in the contemporary context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the German Nazi regime's alliance with nationalist and anti-imperialist movements from the developing countries during World War II. An overview of German Nazis' solidarity with national liberation movements of Arabs and Indians against the British empire, including Indian anti-colonialist leader Subhas Chandra Bose's relations with German authoritarian dictator Adolf Hitler, is provided.

Narendra Modi's prime focus on foreign policy has made a few commentators around the world argue that India is witnessing a change in its foreign policy, and there has emerged a 'Modi Doctrine' based on 'Neighbourhood-First Policy'. However, an in-depth study on the theme suggests that there are no major doctrinal changes in Indian foreign policy; the present government is acting mostly within the guidelines set up by previous Prime Ministers of India especially in regard to India's South Asia policy. Credit, if any, should go to Narendra Modi for breaking a logjam by making visits to almost all neighbouring countries during his first term as Prime Minister of India, 2014-2019. This paper argues that the Modi government in its first term has mainly continued with the past instead of making any changes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We examine the inter-relationship between India, the USA, Japan, China, France, Dubai and Germany using multivariate co-integration techniques. The study has investigated co-movements between these world indices from 2009 to 2018. During this period, it was found using Johansen co-integration that these indices were co-integrated in the long run. However, in the vector error correction model, long-run causality could not be found. Thereafter with Wald-χ2 diagnostics, it was found that short-run linkages existed among Indian and rest of the world markets in the study. Therefore, the seven indices may be concluded to have causal relationship in the short run and co-integrating association in the long run. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Perhaps the first thing to note about a forum on the subject of 1919 in Asia is how awkwardly the spatial frame of "Asia" maps onto the international history of that moment. To be sure, the postwar international conjuncture, which I have elsewhere called the "Wilsonian Moment," had a revolutionary impact across Asia, perhaps more so than in any other world region outside of Europe. As the three preceding essays in this forum note, that year was a waypoint, and sometimes a launching pad, for a rush of novel or renewed revolutionary discourses, connections, and mobilizations in China, India, and Korea, as it was in other parts of Asia and of the world. These were all propelled by the accumulated material and ideological transformations of the years of war, transformation that imbued the moment with revolutionary potential and gave contemporaries a sense that the international order, its power structures and its norms of legitimacy, were uniquely malleable, amenable to concerted action. Indeed, 1919 was a moment in which the very idea of "Asia"—its spaces, the identities they attached to, and the solidarities that ran across and beyond it—was reimagined in ways that at once stitched it together and rent it apart. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

India's West Asia policy is being constantly reshaped under the tutelage of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, whose Israel visit in July 2017 represents a momentous milestone in the Indo-Israeli relationship. The first ever visit of an Indian prime minister to the Jewish state unambiguously underscores that New Delhi under Modi is confident enough to deal with Israel as it deals with any other state in the volatile West Asian region without being concerned about third parties. Modi has been unequivocal in showing the importance India accords to its ties with Israel. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]