| Summary/Abstract |
The trajectory of India’s rise and its attendant international conduct through 75 years of its independence is an appreciable anomaly from the perspective of International Relations (IRs) theory. India’s decided policy of nonalignment soon after independence belies realist predictions of weak states adopting a bandwagoning behaviour (Walt, 1985); its assertion of strategic autonomy broadly nullifies the constructivist account of increased socialisation and identification shaping alliance behaviour; and its characteristic strategic restraint invalidates the realist affluence theory. Paradoxical assessments such as ‘arming without aiming’ and ‘emerging but never arriving’ draw attention to a unique path that India has trodden. What this reveals, perhaps, is both the inadequacy of Western explanations of state behaviour and the agency of a geo-culturally conditioned view of statecraft that is perceptibly at intellectual odds with the dominant Eurocentric one.
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