“Inconvenient Truths, Pluralism and Diversity: Why History and Cultures Matter?

Description

With the advent of Independence in 1947, there was euphoria of being free from the imperial/ colonial yoke, bondage and servitude. Decolonisation therefore implied a systematic transition from one of colonial ‘dependency’ to a republican ‘sovereignty’. While the postcolonial method sought to enable the provincialising of the privileged First World (Chakrabarty, 2000) to renew European thought from and for the margins, this paper on the contrary seeks to reinforce the point that non-Europeans, i.e. Indians have charted their indigenous version of the ‘West’. This includes reasserting diasporic cultural rights and identities and recalibrating what it means to be an Indian across the spaces of ‘Bharat’. The call for multilateralism overseas based on dialogue and consensus is tempered by the increasing challenges of domestic policies, where ‘West’ as a construct is used as a strawman’ to circumvent critical populist discourses.

This paper will trace the transformative changes to India’s domestic politics and its impact on foreign policy attributes. It will evaluate its ability to counter rhetorical geopolitical missives from neighbours such as China, Pakistan, Maldives, Sri Lanka and Nepal. The diminishing relevance of the idea of the ‘West’ in this multilateral world remains key among the former Non-Aligned Nations, such as India where individualised ‘bilateralism’ triumphs over global ‘multilateralism’ based on the ever-increasing recognition of renewed ‘transnationalism’. In other words, India’s identity as an ‘emergent nation’ triumphs its long-avowed identity as a most populous democratic country. Here mutual strategic interests of the nation will upstage the ideas of common democratic Western values, as espoused since 1947. The anticolonial-decolonial nationalist challenge today is one of forging a convincing autonomous identity independent of the West but at the same time aligning with its terms of reference.

Keywords: populism, eurocentrism, non-aligned, anti-elite, westernisation, transnationalism, diaspora, bilateralism

Period	01 May 2024
Held at	Royal Irish Academy, Ireland
Degree of Recognition	International