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Nehru: Thinking Beyond International Relations Theory

Vineet Thakur

(Published in Indian Journal of Politics, Vol 45, no 3-4:224-240)

Chinua Achebe, in an interestingly titled essay The Truth of Fiction, says “…the ultimate

judgment of a man is not whether he acquiesces to a fiction but rather what kind of fiction will

persuade him into that acquiescence”.1 Elaborating on his scheme, he further distinguishes

between two forms of fiction: Beneficent fiction and Malignant fiction. A beneficent fiction

according to him is always conscious of its pretensions, its imaginative character; but it also

keeps within a kernel of truth however widely caricatured and exaggerated. A malignant fiction

on the contrary never says “let us pretend”. While “the first (beneficent) never forgets it is

fiction, the other (malignant) never knows that it is”. The bearer of a malignant fiction does not

merely imagine it but he lives it. The fiction moves out of the insipid and educative domain of

the myth and drowns into superstition.2 He concludes by saying “the truth of a (beneficent)

fiction is not like the canons of an orthodoxy or the irrationality of prejudice and superstition. It

begins as an adventure in self-discovery and ends in wisdom and human conscience”.3

Topicality of this analysis of fiction to International Relations could be apprehended through a

suggestive reading of Nehru:

There are two approaches to this question of war and peace. One is the approach of

feeling that war is almost inevitable and therefore one must be prepared for war. The

other is that war must be avoided, if not at all costs, at almost all costs…. If you lay stress

on war was coming you lose the battle for peace, and war is likely to come because your

minds have succumbed to the prospects of war.4

Achebe and Nehru reach a point of commonalty from oppositional starting points. The former

starts out with fiction and goes on to explicate how it connects to the fact. The latter meanwhile

1 Chinua Achebe. “The Truth of Fiction” in Hopes and Impediments: Selected Essays (New York: Anchor

Books, 1988), p. 140. 2 Ibid., p. 148.

3 Ibid., p. 153.

4 Nehru quoted in Ross N. Berkes and Mohinder S. Bedi. The Diplomacy of India: Indian Foreign Policy

in the United Nations (London: Oxford University Press, 1958).

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starts with the purported “foundational fact” of international relations – war – and fictionalizes it.

Both however take pains to argue that a malignant fiction – war – becomes a reality first only in

the minds of men, outside of which it cannot ontologically pre-exist. War is a fiction that

becomes a reality the moment one starts preparing for it. Peace, the fact of it, however, as a

beneficent fiction is definitely exaggerated. It too does not exist apriori however it is an

adventure in self discovery that would end in wisdom. The battle for peace, as Nehru puts it, has

to be fought. It is a vision that would take continuous efforts and might never be reached in

perfection like a fiction would never be intertwined with a fact. However, the fact that it has

positive effects for all, even in the process, is the greatest reward. If one could sum it up as

Nehru”s vision of the world, it is not way too off.

World Visions: International Relations Theory and its silences!

By way of disciplinary disbursement, International Relations Theory (IRT) becomes the

legitimate authority on discursive ruminations on world visions. However, owing to the west-

centric predisposition of this discipline, the ontological and epistemological constraints are

defined in advance. The Westphalian straitjacket and the assumption of anarchy become the

foundational myths of the discipline and any imagination of a world that does not take into

cognizance these two fundamentals becomes delegitimized at the very outset. To speak of Non-

Western IRT is, in a way, to make a claim that is already located ontologically and

epistemologically outside of the discipline. Anything from outside of this discursive space ought

to follow a pattern of mimicry, admittedly though it may still bear some insurrectionist

tendencies.5

5 In recent years, non-western IRT is gaining in prominence. Writers from Latin America, Africa and Asia

continue to infiltrate into the discipline and open it up. See, Robbie Shilliams. ed. International Relations

and Non-Western Thought: Imperialism, Colonialism and Investigations of Colonial Modernity (New

York: Routledge, 2011); Arlene Tickner and Ole Waever. eds. International Relations Scholarship Around the World (London: Routledge, 2009); Amitav Acharya and Barry Buzan. eds., “Why Is There

no Non-Western International Relations Theory: Reflections on and from Asia”, published as a special

issue of International Relations of the Asia-Pacific (vol. 7, no. 3, 2007); Kevin C. Dunn and Timothy S. Shaw. eds. Africa”s Challenge to International Relations Theory (New York: Palgrave-Macmillan,

2001); among others, for some recent works. In India, International Studies recently published a full

volume of the state of IR in India, see in particular Siddharth Mallavarapu (2009), “Development of

International Relations Theory in India: Traditions, Contemporary Perspectives and Trajectories” International Studies (vol.46, no. 1&2: 2009), 165-183.

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The chronicles of disciplinary IR document three generational debates that narrate the life history

of the discipline, beginning with setting up of first IR Chair in Aberystwyth in 1919.6 Early years

of IR were defined by a debate between Idealists and Realists.7 This debate was effectively

settled in favour of the latter with the failure of the League of Nations and the onset of the

Second World War. EH Car”s Twenty Years Crisis followed by Hans Morganthau”s Politics

among Nations became the most crucial texts on the tenets of classical realism.8 With the

intensification of Cold War, there was an increasing clamour for social sciences to become more

predictable and precise following the lead of sciences. The drive towards scientification heralded

the behavioural revolution in the West. This revolution was hailed as a methodological

departure, although admittedly its ontological and epistemological imprint was as revolutionary.

Concomitantly, a similar shift in IRT was heralded with COW project lead by David Singer and

others.9 Its climactic moment however came with Kenneth Waltz”s canonical Theory of

International Politics that for the first time laid out a parsimonious theory of international

relations with “international system” as a variable.10

The third debate began to emerge as

globalization began to set in and European integration was at the forefront of the change towards

To be sure, these explorations have remained sensitive about the disciplinary boundaries. It is however to be seen whether their engagement with the discipline remains permanent or like a previous generation of

critical theorists they frustrate themselves to move into cognate disciplines like Social theory,

anthropology, critical studies, postcolonial theory, feminist studies, third world studies, among others. 6 For an excellent critical analysis of the three debates and the disciplinary history of IR, see Brian C.

Schmidt. “On the History and Historiography of International Relations” in Walter Carlsnaes et al..,

Handbook of International Relations (London: Sage, 2002), 3-22. 7 As Schmidt, Ibid., shows, it is a completely fictional debate with no evidence of such a debate actually

having taken place. “Idealism” was in essence conjured up to become a punching bag for the realists to

lay out their claims. On the misrepresentation of the alleged “Idealists” see Joel Quirk and Darshan

Vigneshwaran. “The Construction of an Edifice: The Story of First Great Debate” Review of International Studies (vol. 31, 2005). 89-107. Some go further and argue “Realism” itself was inspired from

“Idealism”; see, Ronan P. Palan and Brook M. Blair. “On the Idealist Origins of the Realist Theory of

International Relations” Review of International studies (vol. 19, 1998). 385-399. 8 See, E.H. Carr. The Twenty Years Crisis1919-1939: An Introduction to the Study of International

Relations (London: Macmillan, 1939); and Hans J. Morganthau. “Politics Among Nations: The Struggle

for Power and Peace” (Alfred Knopf: New York, 1948)

9 The Correlates of War project was started in 1963 by David Singer at the University of Michigan. The

goal of the project was to systematically accumulate scientific knowledge about war. For more see COW

website http://www.correlatesofwar.org/ 10

Waltz”s work was hailed as the first theoretical work on IR. Earlier, Martin Wight in his seminal

article had argued that there can be no international relations theory. See, MartinWight. “Why is there no

International Theory” in Diplomatic Investigations. eds. Herbert Butterfield and Martin Wight (London: George Allan and Unwin Ltd, 1966).

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a more interdependent world. A set of scholars who had refined the arguments of early liberals

and analyzed the role of international institutions in facilitating cooperation in the world came to

be known as neo-liberals. A debate between Neo-Liberals and Waltz-led Neo-Realists was

projected as the third great debate.11

However, there is no agreement about this. As the Cold war

ended and identity conflicts proliferated across the World, realism was panned for being unable

to foresee and explicate these developments. There emerged a raging debate about the positivist

epistemology of IR, elegantly captured by Robert Cox in his distinction between problem solving

theory and critical approach.12

Keohane and Yosef Lapid subsequently identified this division

between “Rationalists – Reflectivists”13

or “Positivists – Post-positivists”14

as the third great

debate.

In this life history of the discipline, a couple of things become evident. First, IRT never moves

out of the imaginative imprint of the West and only the events in the West seem to contribute to

or bring in changes into its discourse. Across this sweep of three generations; colonialism,

slavery, anti-colonial movements, and neo-colonialism which affected lives of many more

people than the signature events in the West find no mention. Seldom was any effort made to

incorporate these important events and changes into the IR discourse. Never was it asked in

mainstream IR that how does anarchy operate when for most colonized countries in the world the

world was clearly hierarchical? There was a set of actors who ruled over another set of actors in

world politics.15

Further, IRT never accorded any attention to non-Western thinkers and statesmen. It is

inexplicable how a dispassionate academic could ruminate and theorize about the World that

11

Robert Keohane. ed. Neo-realism and its critics (New York: Columbia University Press, 1986) 12

Robert Cox. “Social Forces, States, and World Orders: Beyond International Relations Theory”

Millenium: Journal of International Relations (vol. 10, no. 2, 1981). 125-155. 13

Robert Keohane. “International Institutions: Two Approaches” International Studies Quarterly (vol. 32, no. 4, 1988):379-96. 14

Yosef Lapid. “The Third Debate: On the Prospects of International Theory in a “Post-Positivist” Era”

International Studies Quarterly (vol. 33, no. 3, 1989): 235-254. 15

Evidently, Marxist and neo-Marxist theories incorporated third world concerns. However, it was only to

the extent that they proved valuable cogs in the wheel of the greater Marxist cause. Marxism primarily

remained a west-centric theory. Attempts like Maoism, African socialism and dependency theory, initially

supported, were later panned for their tendency to become independent of western Marxism. In any case, Marxism itself remained peripheral to IRT.

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“he”16

only experienced in abstract, while people like Gandhi, Nehru, Nkrumah, Senghor or

Fanon, who were incessantly negotiating with the world in political as well as moral capacity,

and with a lot of success one must add, were only tangential to the discipline?

Against this perennial exclusion, any effort to insert Nehru faces acute opposition. In the

alphabetic possibilities of IR language, Nehru”s thinking about the world is confined to the

archaic world of idealism. In effect, his inclusion into the pantheon of idealist thinkers is a post-

dated cheque since Idealism as a school of thinking in IRT had lost the battle to Realism before –

or just as – Nehru had begun elaborating his world vision as the Prime Minister of independent

India.

Assessments on Nehru

Jawaharlal Nehru”s radio address to the nation on 7 September 1946 is widely considered the

foundational text of Indian foreign policy. Three key features of the speech formed the kernel of

his foreign policy for the next two decades: first, a policy of keeping away from power groups

yet being an active, independent participant of world deliberations (non-alignment); second,

reconciliatory attitude towards the West however a frantic opposition to anti-colonialism and

anti-racism; and finally, working towards world peace and “One World” through generation of

solidarities across societies starting with harnessing such solidarities in Asia17

.

His legacy has been variously interpreted by scholars across generations. The American policy

makers of the time surely believed that Nehru”s idealism was immoral as well as arrogant. His

efforts were seen as an affront to US in form of a tacit alliance with USSR and simultaneously an

effort to create a third bloc of newly independent Afro-Asian countries.18

However, some

scholars in the West saw it as a genuine attempt to bring innovative ideas to the international

16

Another conspicuous absence is the absence of women in theorizing about the world.

17. See, Jawaharlal Nehru. India”s Foreign Policy – Selected Speeches 1946-1961. Ministry of

Information and Broadcasting, Government of India (Delhi: Publications Division, 1961), pp. 1-3. There was also a fourth element which earned Nehru much criticism later. It stated: “China, that mighty country

with a mighty past, our neighbor, has been our friend through ages and that friendship will endure and

grow”. 18

Baldev Raj Nayar and T.V. Paul. India in the World Order: Searching for Major Power Status (New Delhi: Foundation Books, 2004).

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table which had the potential to transform the pessimistic cold war international order.19

Back

home, his critics have chastised him for making the defence of the country a sacrificial goat of

his idealism.20

Others have excavated a realist in him and argued that he was very much playing

by the rules of Balance of Power.21

More balanced assessments of his legacy opine that both

realist and idealist streams are suffused in his policies, often terming him as a “pragmatic

idealist” or “liberal realist”.22

Rana suggests that Nehru”s insightful understanding of

international affairs allowed him to pre-empt the regression of the bipolar world into a biglobal

polity where the two polar actors would strangulate the maneuvering space of newly emergent

nations through encapsulation. This would rob these states of their newly found independence in

foreign policy. Non-alignment, as an “area of peace”, would therefore be, “a pioneering, pre-

emptive voice, against such eventualities”.23

Others divide Nehruvian years into two phases –

pre-1954 and post-1954 – and suggest that he moved from idealism to realism from first phase to

the second.24

Nehru”s critics have been vociferous against him for his flawed policies towards China and, less

scathingly towards Pakistan. India”s loss to China in 1962 is presented as a classic case of his

wrong conceptualization of the world. The “revenge of realism”25

, the popular lore suggests,

took his life as he died a dejected man after the Chinese betrayal. Recent archival explorations

19

Arnold Wolfers. Discord and Collaboration: Essays on Interntional Politics (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins

Press, 1961). Alan De Ruset. “On Understanding Indian Foreign Policy: Continuation of a Discussion” International Studies, 2 (1961), 220. 20

Ashok Kapur. India – From Regional to World Power (New York: Routledge, 2006); Harsh Pant.

“Introduction” in Indian Foreign Policy in a Unipolar World, ed. Harsh Pant (New Delhi: Routledge, 2009). 21

K. Subrahmanyam. “Nehru and the India-China conflict of 1962”, in Indian Foreign Policy: The Nehru

Years, ed. B.R. Nanda (New Delhi: Vikas, 1976); C. Rajamohan. “The Re-making of Indian Foreign

Policy: Ending the Marginalization of International Relations Community”, International Studies, 46 (1&2, 2009): 147-163; Bharat Karnad. Nuclear Weapons and Indian Security: The Realist Foundations of

Security (New Delhi: Macmillan, 2002). 22

Gopal Krishna. “India and the International Order: Retreat from idealism” in The Expansion of International Society eds. Hedley Bull and Adam Watson (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1984); K.P. Misra.

“The Nature of Jawaharlal Nehru”s Realism in Foreign Policy” in Studies in Politics: National and

International. ed. M.S. Rajan (Delhi: Vikas, 1970). 23

A.P. Rana. “The Nehruvian Tradition in World Affairs: Its Evolution and Relevance to Post Cold War

International Relations” in Nehru”s Foreign Policy: Fifty Years On. ed. Surjit Mansigh (New Delhi:

Mosaic Books and IIC, 1998), pp. 47-49. 24

Nayar and Paul, India in the World Order. 25

Nayar and Paul, India in the World Order.

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however suggest that Nehru was much more perceptive of the world and the Chinese threat than

his detractors are willing to afford him.26

More textured judgments on him have looked at his articulation of the project of “ethical

modernity” as his guiding theme in which he was trying to fashion and write an alternative script

of international relations basing it on a “internationalist nationalism” through an alternative

genealogy of Buddha-Gandhi-Marx and Tagore. His approach to bringing this transformation

was conceptually revolutionary but practically an incremental one.27

As one scholar noted, “It

seems to me Nehru is very cautiously, and with strict control over Indian sovereignty, seeking to

establish a series of successful precedents, procedures and instruments for their further

application…”.28

It was an innovative scheme of transforming the international system through

incipient institutional changes. In today”s parlance, it is termed as “diffusion of norms”.29

Nehru and Realism

These categorizations of Nehru”s thought most definitely do not exhaust his thinking on

international affairs. His intellectual fertility goes on much beyond the strict dichotomies of

idealism and realism in international relations. He most definitely did not have the theoretical

pedigree and methodological tools available today to eke out a coherent theory of IR. However,

his vast reading and political persuasions gave him ample IR fodder to chew and ruminate about.

For him, “Idealism” based on fantasy for sure would be vulgar in the modern world, but

“Realism” was filled with masochistic urges.

In his various writings, he formulated a sustained critique of Realism. In his magnum opus

Discovery of India, he opined

Realism of course there must be, for no nation can base its domestic or foreign policy on

mere good-will and flights of imagination. But it is a curious realism that sticks to the

empty shell of the past and ignores or refuses to understand the hard facts of the present,

26

Srinath Raghavan. War and Peace in Modern India (Palgrave Macmillan: New Delhi, 2010). 27

Priya Chacko. “The Internationalist Nationalist: Pursuing an ethical modernity with Jawaharlal Nehru”

in International Relations and Non-Western Thought: Imperialism, Colonialism and Investigations of

Colonial Modernity, ed. Robbie Shilliam (New York: Routledge, 2011). 28

Ruset, “On Understanding Indian Foreign Policy”, p.232. 29

Chacko, “The International Nationalist”, p. 192.

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which are not only political and economic, but also include the feelings and urges of vast

numbers of people. Such realism is more imaginative and divorced from today”s and

tomorrow”s problems than much of the so called idealism of so many people.30

As evident here, Realism for him was incapable of grasping the reality for its state-centric

assumptions precluded it from taking into cognizance the feelings of the people. For him, a

peoples-centric approach, rather than a state-centric dogma, could only present a wholesome

picture of the world. We shall explore this aspect a little later in this segment.

His second issue with realism, in the above excerpt, is on realism”s misuse of history – one that

gives fuel to dogma. Realism in IR is often presented as an ahistorical thesis. Theoretically, it

means that one does not need to look at history for “self-interest” and “enmity among social

forms” are objective facts of the history of mankind. History merely stands as a testimony, a

validating enterprise. Such an approach to Nehru was not tenable. “The present and the future

inevitably grow out of the past and bear its stamp, and to forget this is to build without

foundations and to cut off the roots of national growth”.31

He however added that just as it would

be foolish to judge the past with the eyes of the present, it would be catastrophic to judge the

present with the eyes of the past.32

The objective laws of the realist and their alleged unchanging

facticity were derived by reading from specific slices of history, temporally as well as spatially.

The wide sweep of history, across ages and across places, he argued, presented human kind with

a tale of vitality and progress, not one of static laws.

In his words: “…the self-interest of the realist is far too limited by past myths and dogmas, and

regards ideas and social forms, suited to one age, as immutable and unchangeable parts of human

nature and society”.33

In one of his unpublished essays during his lifetime, he says “All history

teaches us this lesson of progress, and indeed life would be a burden difficult to carry if we did

not believe that a better order of things is gradually evolving itself in this world of sorrow”.34

The art of changing with times and learning from the past to transform the present and future

30

Jawaharlal Nehru. The Discovery of India (New Delhi: Penguin, 2004), pp. 600-601. 31

Nehru, Discovery of India, p. 573. 32

Jawaharlal Nehru. The Essential Writings of Jawaharlal Nehru, ed. S. Gopal and Uma Iyenger, Vol. 1

(New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2003), pp. 76-77. 33

Nehru, Discovery of India, p. 602-603. 34

Nehru, Essential Writings, p. 82.

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determined a nation”s progress. Flowing from this, he argued that the idea of human nature as

evil and unchanging was at variance with what history had taught us. Human nature, if at all one

could talk about it, was dynamic. Nothing is more changeable than human nature and society. It

adopted itself to the times. For that reason, he said “we must get rid of the inertia and

woodenness and recover some elasticity of thought and movement”.35

Such an interpretation of history was exemplified in Discovery of India. In a narrative about

India and its 5000 years of claimed history, he appropriates stories about a continuous cultural

unit called India. This narrative for him was bound by a strong imperative of change and

emergence of new ideas. India according to him flourished whenever its intellectual fertility was

at its best and stagnated whenever tradition trumped ideas. The degeneration of India

culminating into India”s colonialization by the Britishers was a consequence of a superstitious

devotion to the social and ideational forms of the past and the failure to emerge with any new

ideas. 36

In the context of post World War II world order, he argued that in its understanding of the world

realism did not take into picture two fundamental changes that have occurred. First, nuclear

weapons have changed the nature of war. While earlier war was fought for some gains, a nuclear

war ensures a collateral damage. If war is to be understood as a continuation of diplomacy by

other means, war has lost its purpose since the end that nuclear war leads to is a destruction of

all. With that in mind, he argued that war was no more an option. It was no more a tool of

statecraft. Theories of international relations have made the fear of war as the best guarantee of

peace. However, that could no more be true as the only peace nuclear war ensures is peace of the

grave.37

The second change that realism elided was the entry of peoples of Asia and Africa into the world

system as free citizens. The new nations of Asia and Africa he argued brought in a new approach

to international politics. The primary need of these people was not security as realism would

argue. Power, in terms of possession of arms for self protection, for them was not the primary

motive of their existence. The peoples of these states sought empowerment through fulfillment of

35

Nehru, Essential Writings, p. 82. 36

Nehru, “India”s Strength and Weakness” in Discovery of India, pp. 45-49. 37

Nehru, Indian Foreign Policy, pp. 66.

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their basic humanitarian needs. Pillaged for decades and centuries by their colonial masters,

these new states were driven by strong motive of economic development. Besides, historically

these new nations have strong alternative traditions of communitarian living that promote virtues

of peaceful co-existence.38

Realism, he argued, was based on a selective reading of European

history which was riveted with wars. In an emphatic appeal to move out of the mentality of wars,

he stated:

Nevertheless, I say that Europe has been in the past a continent full of conflicts, full of

trouble, full of hatred. Europe”s conflicts continue its wars continue and we have been

dragged into these wars because we were tied to Europe”s chariot wheels. Are we going

to continue to be tied like Europe”s troubles, Europe”s hatreds and Europe”s conflicts? I

hope not.39

An Asian or African approach to world would in essence be different from that. “The only

approach to the mind and spirit of Asia [and Africa] is the approach of toleration and friendship

and cooperation, not the approach of aggressiveness”. 40

He also problemized the notion of realism being a mere explanatory theory. He argued that

realism was not an insipid, divorced, theoretically abstract understanding of the world. For him,

realism did not merely understand but shape the world. War and peace were entrenched in the

minds of men and realism through advocacy of aggressive policies towards other states helped

wars happen. Realism according to him was a self fulfilling prophecy. He said, “if you are

shouting it does not matter if it peace you are shouting about”.41

Here he preempts the current

critical literature in IR which too makes the point that theories do not merely explain, but

construct the world they theorise about.

Nehru contested the arguments of realism both for empirical and theoretical inconsistencies.

Empirically, he argued, this balance of power system has only taken the world from one war to

the other, the worst being the two world wars. Another war, possibly a nuclear war, cannot not

be afforded. For him, Balance of Power had clearly failed in doing what it ought to do – ensure

38

Ibid., pp.22-23. 39

Ibid, p. 321. 40

Ibid. 41

Ibid., p.58.

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peace. He said, “In spite of every effort, the world has reportedly failed to achieve harmony. The

astonishing thing is that failure does not teach us a lesson and we make the same mistakes over

again. This is really extraordinary. I should have thought that the lesson of the two great world

wars was obvious enough to anybody willing to give though to it”.42

Theoretically, the problem

with Balance of Power, he reasoned, was with the mental approach to the problem. Balance of

Power was “the approach of fear and anger, the approach of not being made to appear that one is

weak”.43

In his own terms, it was a position of “speaking from strength”. He says: “we have been

seeing the results of this policy of “speaking from strength for many years now. When one side

grows a little stronger also, so that any reference to strength induces the other party to build up

its strength as rapidly as possible. And we are where we were, and perhaps in a worst

condition”.44

Another criticism, he directed at realism, was for its instrumental rationality. Realism for him

was an extremely parochial understanding of self-interest. It was, at best, a very short term

understanding of self-interest. A more reflective view of rationality would take into picture the

potential for devastation that realism has. A long-term view of state interest would inevitably

look for durable peace as foundation of a strong state. He says,

Some people may think of interests of their country regardless of other consequences, or

take a short distance view. Others may think that in the long-term policy the interest of

another country is as important to them as that of their own country. The interest of peace

is more important, because if war comes everyone suffers, so that in the long-distance

view, self-interest may itself demand a policy of cooperation with other nations, goodwill

for other nations, as indeed it does demand.45

He did not like the term idealism much, for the sheer fact that it allowed his detractors to portray

him as someone who was not grounded in world realities. Still he argued, “Idealism is the

realism of tomorrow. It is the capacity to know what is good for the day after tomorrow and for

42

Ibid., p. 52. 43

Ibid., p.205. 44

Ibid. 45

Ibid., p.28.

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the next year and to fashion yourself accordingly. The practical person, the realist, looks at the

tip of his nose and sees little beyond; the result is that he is stumbling all the time”.46

Nehru”s Alternative Approach

Before we attempt to understand Nehru”s alternative approach to world politics, it would be

instructive to start with two caveats.

1. The terminology International Relations Theory was alien to him. He never claimed he

was trying a new theory of international relations. At best, what we could do is

extrapolate his arguments and delineate basic elements of what he would argue his

approach to world politics would be.

2. We need to look at his thinking about IRT at a little divorce from his foreign policy.

Much as his engagement with world politics was in form of a praxis. In day to day

foreign policy decisions, he himself often to have made compromises. In fact, later he

contemplated on some of his own policies and was self critical of being “self-righteous”.

However, broad contours of his foreign policy were still defined according to his thinking

about World Politics.

3. Finally, Nehru”s approach to theory was not merely to explain the world, but a rather

more pressing concern of transforming it. Theory making in that sense was also an ethical

project. But he would differentiate between an idealist project and an ethical project. A

theorist according to him should interpret the flow of history and what it tells us. History

according to him had always been changing and dynamic, just as human nature has been

changing and dynamic. The lessons of history are of change, not stasis. A theorist”s effort

should be at capturing that change and portend what is in store for future. He must pre-

empt change, and not be someone who precludes change. A theory of stasis was a false

theory. An ethical project thus was aimed at transforming the world in a way that the

flow of history would support. In theorizing about a subject such as war in which several

people were killed it was impossible not to look at it from a moral standpoint. For him,

war was just as much a moral question.47

46

Ibid., p. 51. 47

Ibid., p.203.

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Nehru differentiated between an “approach of Asia” and “approach of Europe”. For him, the

process of development of European nationhood which was thick with wars implied that history

had taught it the wrong lesson. The international anarchy, according to this view, had become a

structural condition not of the international system but of Europe. Four schools of thought,

according to him, had dominated thinking about international affairs. These were – School of

Strong Action (using coercion to settle disputes), School of Negotiation through Strength

(unfortunately, when you build your strength the other side does it too), School of learned

confusion (talking shops who are confused) and School of Ignorant Confusion (those who talk

about other nations without any knowledge of their conditions). These perspectives, he reckoned,

could not grasp that nation building in Asia was of a different type. The Asian countries were

concerned not with structural anarchy but with “immediate human problems”. There may be

some quarrels here and there between Asian countries, there was “no basic legacy of conflict”

such as in Europe. Foreign policy from this perspective, to paraphrase Zhou Enlai (who inverted

Clauzewitz) was not continuation of wars by other means but a tool to ensure progress of the

country, which was a more fundamental concern. Non-alignment, therefore, was a policy of

enlargement of the “area of peace” i.e. countries outside bloc politics, for development and also

an effort to think about the world not through Western idioms, but according to the needs of

Asia.48

His enunciation of the idea of “area of peace” was an intellectual novelty. Recent literature in IR

theory from constructivists to cognitivists to critical theorists has called attention to the social

and psychological construction of identities of states and how that shapes the international order.

The demarcation of the dangerous other, according to these approaches, rests on an ontological

fallacy of apriori “fear” structures. Nehru, to his credit, much before these perspectives have

opened up IR thinking, worked on a similar understanding of IR.

As argued earlier, he believed that war was made possible because it originated first in the

“minds of men”. The approach of “fear and anger” had a psychological genesis. It was a mindset

through which the actions of others are sifted. Under the psychological faculty of fear, any action

by other would seem threatening leading to what he called an “exhibition of mutual abuse”.49

A

48

Ibid., p. 55-70. 49

Ibid., p.59.

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state”s effort in international politics therefore should be to get out of this trap of fear based

realism. First, the mindset of fear and anger should be given up and in its stead a state should

make conscious, even unilateral efforts to gain friendship with the other state. Security, for him,

could be ensured in many ways of which military security is only one. A deliberate policy of

cultivating friendship, in his thinking, went much farther in ensuring security than military

security.50

As Priya Chacko argues, Nehru sought to construct an International Politics of

Friendship through rejection of fear complex.51

Second, a state should renounce any efforts

towards playing up power politics. It should avow not to be part of any military bloc. This would

preclude any threat to other states and convey its resolve to be friendly with other states. Some

minimal military potential should be built up which is good enough to defend the country. He

assumed that most of the Asian and African states did not want war as they had much more

important task in hand in form of nation-building and providing for humanitarian needs to their

own people. As states disavow to be part of any military camp, the area under their sovereignty

should be declared an area of peace. Such countries it should be stated do not pose any harm to

anyone neither outside the area neither inside. He was also not averse to some form of collective

security well within the UN charter provisions for that would strengthen the area. In this way, the

countries under this area of peace and continue to invest their resources in economic

development and not wasteful military expenditure.52

Not only did he chart out an alternative to

great power politics, he also enunciated a new language of solidarity as against the Balance of

Power logic.

The end of this vision was of course what he called “One World”. Kanti Bajpai argues that one

should not read much into it.53

However, just as Achebe argues “the truth of a (beneficent)

fiction is not like the canons of an orthodoxy or the irrationality of prejudice and superstition. It

begins as an adventure in self-discovery and ends in wisdom and human conscience”. This vision

of One World would take continuous efforts and might never be reached in perfection like a

50

Ibid., pp. 79. 51

Priya Chacko. Indian Foreign Policy: The Politics of Postcolonial Identity (London: Routledge,

forthcoming) 52

Nehru, Indian Foreign Policy, p. 65-70. 53

Kanti Bajpai. “Indian Strategic Culture and the Problem of Pakistan” in Security and South Asia: Ideas, Institutions and Initiatives, ed. Swarna Rajagopalan (New Delhi: Routledge, 2006).

15

fiction would never be intertwined with a fact. However, the fact that it has positive effects for

all, even in the process, would be the greatest reward.

Conclusion

Nehru”s fascination with history was unmistakable. Now, almost half a century after he is dead,

he is himself a subject of history that ought to pass judgments on him. Some judge him

favourably and others do not. In the light of the changing contours of international politics, and

therefore international theory,54

it is remarkable how Nehru pre-empted many of the current

flavours in IRT. His approach to IR theory, his interpretation of history and its uses for

international politics, his clamour for incorporating alternative perspectives from Asia and

Africa, his psychological reading of war, and his vision of “One World” in some ways make him

much more relevant today, both for theoreticians and practitioners. Given the expanded scope of

intellectual thinking in IRT and infusion of insurrectionist tendencies in form of widening critical

literature, Nehru”s ideas offer a great potential for a constructive, transformative thinking in IRT.

54

As Schmidt, opus cited, claims it is strange that IRT follows international politics, and not the other way around. This perhaps speaks of the inadequacy of theoretical thinking in IR.