Pax Indica: India and the World in the Twenty-first Century is a 2012 non-fiction book written by Shashi Tharoor, about India's foreign policy. [1] [2]
Pax Indica: India and the World in the Twenty-first Century is a 2012 non-fiction book written by Shashi Tharoor, about India's foreign policy. [1] [2]
Tharoor emphasizes the significance and impact of globalization for India's society, and states that the primary objective of India's foreign policy must be to protect the process of domestic, social and economic transformation, by working for a benign environment that will ensure India's security and bring in global support for efforts to build and change the country for the better.
In the first seven chapters, he analyzes the geopolitical situation of various regions of the world, including Pakistan, South Asia, China, the Middle East, the West, Africa, and Latin America. The bulk of it consists of a brief history of India's relationship with that country, and numerous conflicts, disputes, and solutions are discussed.
In the last four chapters, he gives his recommendations. The concepts of 'soft power' and 'hard power' are talked about, and he weighs in the pros and cons of these two ways of influencing foreign policy and diplomacy. A fan of soft power, he believes that India should use a combination of soft power and public diplomacy in this multi aligned world to achieve her objectives.
In a review of the book, Aditya Menon stated in the weekly Indian English-language news magazine India Today magazine that "...Pax Indica promises to be a seminal work on Indian diplomacy" and that "Tharoor covers almost every possible aspect of the foreign policy challenges before the country in the 21st century", providing insights on "India's relations with the US, Pakistan, the UN". However, he does not treat India's relations with Iran and China in depth. [3] In this lively and informative work, Shashi Tharoor demonstrates how Indian diplomacy has become active and where it needs to focus in the world of the 21st century. [4]
In politics, soft power is the ability to co-opt rather than coerce. It involves shaping the preferences of others through appeal and attraction. A defining feature of soft power is that it is non-coercive; the currency of soft power includes culture, political values, and foreign policies. In 2012, Joseph Nye of Harvard University explained that with soft power, "the best propaganda is not propaganda", further explaining that during the Information Age, "credibility is the scarcest resource".
A state's foreign policy or external policy is its objectives and activities in relation to its interactions with other states, unions, and other political entities, whether bilaterally or through multilateral platforms. The Encyclopedia Britannica notes that a government's foreign policy may be influenced by "domestic considerations, the policies or behaviour of other states, or plans to advance specific geopolitical designs."
In international relations, a middle power is a sovereign state that is not a great power nor a superpower, but still has large or moderate influence and international recognition.
Shashi Tharoor is an Indian former international civil servant, diplomat, bureaucrat, politician, writer and public intellectual who has been serving as Member of Parliament for Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala, since 2009. He is the Chairman of the Standing Committee on Chemicals and Fertilizers. He was formerly an Under-Secretary-General of the United Nations and unsuccessfully ran for the post of Secretary-General in 2006. Founder-Chairman of All India Professionals Congress, he formerly served as Chairman of the Parliamentary Standing Committee on External Affairs and on Informational Technology.
Ratan Kumar Nehru, or R.K. Nehru, was an Indian civil servant and diplomat. He served as the Foreign Secretary, 1952–1955, and later as India's ambassador to China and United Arab Republic (Egypt). During 1960–1963, he was appointed the Secretary-General of the Ministry of External Affairs, a period in which India faced an invasion from China. He retired in 1963, after which the position of Secretary-General was abolished, and the Foreign Secretary role became the head of the Ministry.
The Indian Foreign Service (IFS) is the diplomatic service and a central civil service of the Government of India under the Ministry of External Affairs. The Foreign Secretary is the head of the service. Vinay Mohan Kwatra is the 34th and the current Foreign Secretary.
The Indian Century is the idea that the 21st century will be dominated by India, as the 20th century is often called the American Century, and the 19th century as Pax Britannica. The phrase is used particularly in the assertion that the economy of India could overtake the economy of the United States and economy of China as the largest national economy in the world, a position it held from 1 to 1500 CE and from 1600 to 1700 CE.
Relations between India and the United States date back to India's independence movement and have continued well after independence from the United Kingdom in 1947. Currently, India and the United States enjoy close relations and have deepened collaboration on issues such as counterterrorism and countering Chinese influence in the Indo-Pacific.
Economic diplomacy is a form of diplomacy that uses the full spectrum of economic tools of a state to achieve its national interests. The scope of economic diplomacy can encompass all of the international economic activities of a state, including, but not limited to, policy decisions designed to influence exports, imports, investments, lending, aid, free trade agreements, among others.
Shahryar Mohammad Khan is a former career Pakistan diplomat who became Foreign Secretary of Pakistan in 1990, and remained so until his retirement from service in 1994. He later served as United Nations Special Representative of the Secretary-General to Rwanda (1994–1996), and wrote the book Shallow Graves of Rwanda on his experiences on what Rwanda went through. Since August 1999, he has intermittently served as the chairman of Pakistan Cricket Board, and also served as the president of Asian Cricket Council in 2016.
For India, the concept of non-alignment began as a policy of non-participation in the military affairs of a bipolar world and in the context of colonialism aimed towards optimum involvement through multi-polar participation towards peace and security. It meant a country should be able to preserve a certain amount of freedom of action internationally. There was no set definition of non-alignment, which meant the term was interpreted differently by different politicians and governments, and varied in different contexts. The overall aims and principles found consensus among the movement members. Non-aligned countries, however, rarely attained the freedom of judgement they desired and their actual behaviour towards the movement's objectives, such as social justice and human rights, were unfulfilled in many cases. India's actions often resembled those of aligned countries. The response of the non-aligned nations during India's wars in 1962, 1965 and 1971 revealed non-aligned positions on issues such as secession. The non-aligned nations were unable to fulfil the role of peacekeepers during the Indo-China war of 1962 and the Indo-Pakistan war of 1965 despite meaningful attempts. The non-aligned response to the Bangladesh Liberation War and the following 1971 Indo-Pakistan War showed most of the non-aligned nations prioritised territorial integrity above human rights, which could be explained by the recently attained statehood for the non-aligned. During this period, India's non-aligned stance was questioned and criticized. Jawaharlal Nehru had not wanted the formalization of non-alignment and none of the non-aligned nations had commitments to help each other. The international rise of countries such as China also decreased incentives for the non-aligned countries to stand in solidarity with India.
In international relations, the term smart power refers to the combination of hard power and soft power strategies. It is defined by the Center for Strategic and International Studies as "an approach that underscores the necessity of a strong military, but also invests heavily in alliances, partnerships, and institutions of all levels to expand one's influence and establish legitimacy of one's action."
India was among the charter members of the United Nations that signed the Declaration by United Nations at Washington, D.C., on 1 January 1942 and also participated in the United Nations Conference on International Organization at San Francisco from 25 April to 26 June 1945. As a founding member of the United Nations, India strongly supports the purposes and principles of the UN and has made significant contributions in implementing the goals of the Charter, and the evolution of the UN's specialised programmes and agencies.
Sunanda Pushkar was an Indian-born Canadian businesswoman and the wife of former International diplomat serving under the UN and politician Shashi Tharoor. She was a sales director in the Dubai-based TECOM Investments, and a co-owner of the India-based Rendezvous Sports World (RSW), a cricket franchise in the Indian Premier League.
The Ministry of External Affairs of India set up its Public Diplomacy Division in 2006 to advance India's conversations with the world. The key goal of Indian Public Diplomacy is to explain, on a day-to-day basis, the background of policy decisions in Indian foreign policy, to promote a positive image of India and to engage scholars, think tanks, and the media through its outreach activities. It was merged with the External Publicity Division of the Ministry of External Affairs of India in January 2014.
India Is is a series of photography and video challenges organized by the Public Diplomacy Division (PDD) of the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA), Government of India. Both of the contests invite photo and video entries, respectively, on given themes.
The Paradoxical Prime Minister: Narendra Modi And His India is a 2018 nonfiction book written by the senior leader of the Indian National Congress, Shashi Tharoor, about the Prime Minister of India, Narendra Modi. The book was released on 26 October 2018 by Manmohan Singh, P. Chidambaram, Arun Shourie, and Pavan Varma.
The History of Indian foreign policy refers to the foreign relations of modern India post-independence, that is the Dominion of India (from 1947 to 1950) and the Republic of India (from 1950 onwards).
V.P. Menon: The Unsung Architect of Modern India is a non-fiction book by Indian historian Narayani Basu, published by Simon & Schuster India in 2020. The book is a biography of V. P. Menon, an Indian civil servant who assisted Sardar Patel in the political integration of India, and was one of the founders of Swatantra Party which advocated free market policies.
During a debate at the Oxford Union on 28 May 2015, the Indian Member of Parliament, diplomat and writer Shashi Tharoor delivered a speech supporting the motion "Britain owes reparations to her former colonies". Tharoor was the seventh speaker in the debate, the final speaker from the proposition, and spoke for about fifteen minutes. While criticising the opposition, he argued that British colonial rule damaged the Indian economy.
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