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Does the Elephant
Dance? Contemporary Indian Foreign Policy
The author of this large and impressive tome of nearly 450 large-size pages deserves credit for unravelling the key features of India's foreign policy. He sets out to analyse not only the specifics of our policy in South Asia-where we belong-but also towards China, East as well as West Asia and the Arab world. Malone takes good care of our increasingly important relations with Japan, while Russia, too, looms large. Nor does he neglect Europe-and the all-important Uncle Sam. This is not to underrate New Delhi's fast developing ties with a host of countries in Africa, holding out a major international challenge, if also opportunity. Latin America-relatively distant but by no means unimportant-finds a place, too. Within the constraints of a short review, it may not be easy to sum up the major thrust of this important work, the following lines barely underscore a few facets that cut closer to the bone, if also nearer home: Of contemporary India's security challenges, the author poses the all-important question as to whether these are not more internal than external. On the Sino-Indian relationship, his chapter bears the intriguing, if revealing, caption, "Can two tigers share a mountain?". Here a lingering suspicion, and mistrust, he heavily underlines, bedevil a relationship which the two countries' competition for influence in South Asia, and neighbouring lands, complicates no end. The scope for a close, and keen, competition is "very significant, not least through third parties". While it would be wrong to assert that New Delhi is "a predictable player" with enduring national interests, major powers in the international system are "eager" to "engage" with India. Malone posits the view that while seeking to advance its interests and enhance its influence globally, India is likely to continue to engage in a "hedging" strategy as behoves another significant power. He cites Sunil Khilnani, an Oxford-based Indian academic, to underline the view that New Delhi's greatest asset remains its "accumulated political legitimacy" rather than any "hypothetical or real" accumulation of power. "Time and history", Malone is emphatic, are on India's side as it struggles to recover from several centuries of foreign domination and its consequences. Should it manage its major domestic challenges with success, he roundly concludes, New Delhi's re-emergence will be "one of the major shifts" of the 21st century. While today's "tentative, contingent" nature of many of his judgements may hopefully, he opines, seem overcautious a couple of decades from now. Often associated as an emerging power with China, Brazil and South Africa, India will, when its interests dictate, continue to disagree with them publicly, even as it did in April 2010 to join Brazil in criticising China's exchange rate policies. Resting solidly on an impressive reading list, this extremely well-turned, scholarly work is embellished with copious "notes" running into 75 pages of text and a by no means unimpressive bibliography-32-odd pages in cold print. The latter lists an array of books apart, chapters in edited volumes as well as journals and periodicals. And extended articles, culled inter alia from Jane's Defence Industry, the New York Review of Books, the Economist, the New Yorker, the Newsweek, official government documents, as well as "reports and other (sources)". There is an impressive list of books on "Indian history" as well as There are separate sections on "Indian Foreign Policy", "Indian Politics", "India's Neighbours" (relevant to Indian foreign policy) as well as "Indian Security". There is also an "Other" section which lists two of the author's own publications: an edited volume (2004) entitled The UN Security Council, from Cold War to 21st century and another The International Struggle over Iraq: Politics in the United Nations Security Council (2006). One is awe-struck by the formidable knowledge and understanding of what another country's ambassador managed to acquire in such a short span of time! President of the International Development Research Centre in Canada, Malone was his country's High Commissioner in India as well as non-resident Ambassador to Bhutan and Nepal (2006-8).
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