The New World Order, with Indian characteristics?

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"If I had my way, Shashi Tharoor would be the External Affairs Minister," said Governor H.R. Bhardwaj, perhaps half out of his professed respect for the former Minister of State in that very ministry and half in jest. But to a Bengaluru audience, it came laden with political undertones. Speaking at the launch of Mr. Tharoor’s latest book, Pax Indica, the Governor, a living, breathing bit of history himself, talked about the birth of Indian foreign policy, created as it were, by Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru. "Even as ministers, there was little we could say of our own accord, we were always briefed by the MEA”.

India’s foreign policy and its practice has come some way from there, although its fundamental basis remains, agreed an elite panel that consisted Ambassador N. Ravi, economist Prof. Narendar Pani and Neena Gopal, Resident Editor, Deccan Chronicle. Mr. Tharoor, who said his book was not about how India could come to dominate the world as earlier Superpowers had – because it was neither possible nor India aspired to do so – but was about how India could help build a peaceful world order based on the principles it itself stood for, said India had moved from an era when it stood apart from the main antagonists of the Cold War into an era when it was necessary to be “multi-aligned” – allying with different groups based on the issues in question.

“India is part of the UN, we are part of the G-20, and the G-77, SAARC and BIMSTEC. With Russia and China, we form the RIC, with Brazil and South Africa included, BRICS, and if you take out Russia and China from that, we become IBSA…”, Mr. Tharoor breathlessly reeled out the alphabet soup of India’s various ‘alignments’. Prof. Pani provided, however, some grounded wisdom when he said that India’s foreign policy had become disconnected from the people at large. India’s aspirations on the world stage and its self-image must be based on what the people of India want them to be, he said.