Domestic concerns still shape India's foreign policy

It is a truism that foreign policy begins at home. But how does this work in India's case? There are strong domestic political foundations to India's role in the world and the abiding continuities of India's external engagement. Five aspects influence India's foreign policy- economic development, geographic reality, ideological positioning, transactional necessities and its place in the international order. The prime directive of India's foreign policy is to enable the domestic transformation of India. There has therefore always been a strong link between India's vision of the international order and her domestic political system. India's abject condition upon gaining independence in 1947-caused by colonialism and well over a century of no economic growth-meant that the overriding goal of foreign policy was the transformation of India into a prosperous, secure and modern country. Taken to its logical extreme, one Indian oversimplified by saying, 'our foreign policy is 8.5 per cent GDP growth'. To transform itself, newly independent India had no choice but to engage with the world on its own terms, namely through non-alignment and by working with both the US-led capitalist bloc and Soviet-led communist bloc. Nor was the Cold War going to leave the subcontinent alone, as Pakistan entered the US alliance system in 1954-5. But rather than joining a bloc in response, Nehru's India chose to work with both sides to try and build an 'area of peace' in South Asia, insulated from the rivalry between the US and Soviet camps.