The primary role of a nation’s foreign policy is the maintenance and preservation of National Interest. How a nation conceives its national interest and seeks to protect and promote it through its foreign policy must hence be a matter of public importance and discourse.This book expounds upon the various facets of India’s foreign policy, tracing its roots from the times of Chanakya, millennia ago, and then expanding upon the post-independence phase of India’s foreign policy. Chanakya is credited with crafting perhaps the very first treatise on statecraft, sometime in the fourth century BCE. India thus has a rich legacy in dealing with foreign powers towards the furtherance of national interest.Post independence, India’s foreign policy was crafted by its first prime minister and since then has evolved over the last seven decades, maintaining at one level a distinct continuum even as it transferred from one Government to the other. A new zest has however been given to India’s foreign policy over the last four years, and a transformation is visible in multiple ways, though the core remains the same. The transformation is visible in the uncompromising firmness shown on issues related to the nation`s integrity and honour and in that sense, it has become a bold, proactive, innovative and ambitious foreign policy with ‘Samman, Samvad, Samriddhi, Suraksha, Sanskriti evam Sabyatha’ being the driving forces behind India’s global engagement. There is today a greater expectation of India’s role in the world, as reflected by India emerging as a natural participant in several regional and global discourses. Another important transformation has been the rekindling and strengthening of India’s linkages with its diaspora, cooperation in the field of counter terrorism, emphasis on the neighbourhood with significant progress taking place in terms of physical and cultural connectivity and on a renewed economic vigour.This book brings out the dynamics in play in India’s foreign policy and offers a holistic understanding of the factors which have shaped its growth. Covering a vast swathe, it delves on India’s strategic culture and security concerns, economic growth, soft power, and relations with the neighbourhood and the world.
