Imageries of Space

Spatial imaginations evolve. One such major spatial experiment has been India’s Look East/Act East policy that is the subject of this chapter. This chapter reads the genesis of India’s Look East policy in two spatial registers. First, this policy was reflected in India’s urge to redefine its neighbourhood as it finds itself bogged down in its immediate vicinity. The second register has to do with India’s efforts to find a solution to chronic economic underdevelopment of India’s turbulent and fraught northeastern region by bringing the advantages of scale to this geographically locked-in area. The author also discusses how the Look East policy has increasingly veered towards the new articulation of ‘Indo-Pacific’ as a geo-political theatre for a rising power that needs to balance against China.

Territoriality, Sovereignty, and the State

The chapter explains the chosen conceptual categories, clarifies the tropes of their deployment, and stitches together the two dual narratives of India’s domestic and external imaginations. The author goes on to show that India’s transforming models of nation building have evolved within the framework of sovereign territoriality. He also makes the argument that while the domestic/international divide is inappropriate to make sense of India’s negotiations in South Asia, it is equally facile to see the region as an extension of India’s domestic contests. This chapter shows how India has framed its project and negotiated with others in its neighbourhood. However, the fact that the lines of peoplehood and territorial nationalism never coincided in South Asia meant that there will always be tension in working out national projects predicated upon sovereignty. These states embarked on different projects of difference that were crucial to the making of modern South Asia.

India and the SAARC

This chapter is about how spatial imagination steeped in sovereign territoriality bedeviled local efforts to achieve a viable regional political community in South Asia. I invoke functional, security community, and post-colonial perspectives to interrogate regionalism in South Asia. This chapter shows that despite all South Asian states agreeing upon the virtues of regional cooperation, their underlying expectations are very different, which frustrates regional cooperation among countries. The chapter explains why spatial imagination is cardinal to this failing. It puts in bold relief how India has addressed regionalism in its immediate surroundings and achieved little in the process. The author shows that the civil society has failed to have any impact in reversing this trend. While a few states have found sub-regional cooperation more convenient, the net result has not been very exciting so far given that such sub-regional cooperation is also subject to the familiar geopolitical dynamics unleashed by territoriality. The limited record of collaboration among India, Bangladesh, Myanmar, Nepal, Bhutan, and China in some sub-regional efforts gives an excellent account of this process.

Globalization, Democratization, Liberal Peace, and Human Security in South Asia

The chapter deals with three transformative theses and their possible impact and consequences in South Asia. The author examines the impacts of globalization, democratic peace, and human security to find whether these have changed elite mindsets in the subcontinent. He finds that none of these alleged changes have impacted on the way Indian and South Asian elites imagine their neighbourhood. First, globalization has divided the subcontinent along economic lines that complicate India’s neighbourhood policies further. Second, the dynamic of globalization has unfolded within the given geopolitical parameters of South Asia and, therefore, no liberal order has grown within the region. This episode brings out the disjuncture of economic and political dynamics in this region despite two decades of globalization. Third, democratic peace has no credibility in South Asia given the intense geopolitical competition between India and Pakistan that also affects the foreign policies of smaller states. The state in South Asia has dominated the agenda of non-traditional security and defined it. South Asian states continue to suffer from fears and tensions since most of these insecurities stem from within and are the products of the state.

Securing South Asia

The chapter accounts for the growth of territorial nationalism and realism undergirding India’s security thinking in South Asian. The author concentrates here on the political and security narratives of Indian elites and shows how they have thought about India’s security primarily in realist, geopolitical terms. He also shows that while the perspectives differ on certain issues across India’s major political parties, when entrusted with actual policymaking, these differences lessen quite remarkably. The chapter also discusses the perspectives of the strategic elites in India who legitimate the narrative of space as power. While these experts are not a part of the ‘ruling elite’, their role in package legitimation of a realist or power-centric reading of the neighbourhood influences the official narratives to a great extent. The accessibility and privileging of certain discourses over others is an excellent indicator of the spatial thinking of the state.