Narendra Modi and India’s normative power

6 January
2017
, Volume
93, Number
1
Authors

Ian Hall
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Periodically, India has sought to act as a ‘normative power’ in international affairs,
advancing a normative agenda about how states and other actors ought to behave,
what norms and rules should regulate their interactions, and what institutions
should exist to make and enforce them. The rise to power of Narendra Modi,
who became India’s prime minister in May 2014, with a declared aspiration to once
more make India a vishwaguru (‘world guru’) and a ‘leading power’, has generated
debate about whether India will again become a normative power. This article
analyses the intellectual resources with which Modi might construct that new
normative agenda. These resources include the work of a number of key Hindu
nationalist thinkers with whom Modi is well acquainted, but also the thought
of Swami Vivekananda, for whom Modi claims a special devotion. The article
concludes that constructing a new normative agenda for a revived ‘normative
power India’ out of these resources will be difficult, given the limited usefulness
of these intellectual resources, and that Modi’s government will likely continue to
pursue an essentially pragmatic foreign policy designed above all to further India’s
domestic economic development.
Featured comment | Dr Champa Patel
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The government must use a cross-departmental approach, where differing imperatives are aligned, to ensure effective action in situations like eastern Ghouta.