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An Elephant in a China Shop? India’s Look North to Central Asia … Seeing Only China

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Book cover China and India in Central Asia

Abstract

The evaluation of New Delhi’s agency in Central Asia attests to the regionalization of India’s post-cold war foreign policy—that is, the development of distinct external policies toward different global regions. In this respect, the discourses of India’s relations with Central Asia offer insights into the country’s strategic culture and the modes of security governance that it fashions. It has to be noted from the outset that this chapter undertakes an assessment of the narrative construction of India’s involvement in Central Asia. The claim is that by focusing on the discourses of foreign policy making, this mode of analysis offers the opportunity to simultaneously experience and deduce the ingredients that go into the articulation of New Delhi’s external outlook.2 In other words, the discursive engagement with India’s interactions in Central Asia not only indicates that India has a “strategic will” but also probes “how [New Delhi] will manifest it in action.”3

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Notes

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Authors
  1. Emilian Kavalski
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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Central Asia-Caucasus Institute and Silk Road Studies Program, Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies, Washington DC, USA

    Marlène Laruelle (Senior Research Fellow) & Sébastien Peyrouse (Senior Research Fellow) (Senior Research Fellow) &  (Senior Research Fellow)

  2. French Centre for Research on Contemporary China (CEFC), Hong Kong, China

    Jean-François Huchet (Director) (Director)

  3. French Institute for Central Asian Studies, Kyrgyzstan

    Bayram Balci (Director) (Director)

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© 2010 Marlène Laruelle, Jean-François Huchet, Sébastien Peyrouse, and Bayram Balci

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Kavalski, E. (2010). An Elephant in a China Shop? India’s Look North to Central Asia … Seeing Only China. In: Laruelle, M., Huchet, JF., Peyrouse, S., Balci, B. (eds) China and India in Central Asia. The Sciences Po Series in International Relations and Political Economy. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230114357_4

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