Postscripts on Independence

Description

India and South Africa, two states that bookended the process of twentieth-century decolonization, punched above their weight in global politics in their initial years of liberation. Postscripts on Independence analyses and compares the making of foreign policy ideas, identities, and institutions of postcolonial India and South Africa. It shows how both countries have responded to the contradictory demands of their freedom struggles against colonialism and pragmatic challenges of international politics. Vineet Thakur argues that the countries’ geopolitical positioning in South Asia and southern Africa make them regional powers, with similar sets of problems and prospects, as both continue to grapple with the idea of maintaining regional and/or continental hegemony. By undertaking a comparative analysis, Thakur explores a framework to understand the foreign policymaking fears, aspirations, and international behaviour of these two nation states.

About the Author
Vineet Thakur teaches international relations at the Institute for History, Leiden University, The Netherlands, and is a research associate at the Johannesburg Institute for Advanced Study, University of Johannesburg, South Africa.

Reviews

‘In this theoretically-informed and empirically rich study on post-independence foreign policy of India and South Africa, Vineet Thakur breaks down several walls. This is IR from the Global South as its very best—critical, comparative and concerned with everyday life.’

— Peter Vale, Director of the Johannesburg Institute for Advanced Study; Nelson Mandela Professor Emeritus and Professor of Humanities, University of Johannesburg

‘This meticulously researched, theoretically provocative and cogently argued book is a significant contribution to burgeoning literature on non-Eurocentric or “Global” IR. Vineet Thakur provides refreshing insights on the question of why and how diversely located, newly independent post-Colonial India and South Africa sought an alternative normative-pragmatic reading of the “world order” through an emphatic assertion of their own location, agency and autonomy in it. Deploying an illuminating comparative perspective, this brilliant study graphically reveals how foreign policy also acts as a discursive site where nation and national identity are simultaneously represented and constructed, sought and sighted, revealed and reimagined.’

— Sanjay Chaturvedi, Professor of Political Science Centre for the Study of Geopolitics, Panjab University, Chandigarh, India

‘This welcome addition to our understanding of foreign policy from a Global South perspective not only provides a rich comparative study on India and South Africa, but also engages with alternative interpretations of power, agency and world order, and interrogates foreign policy as a site of national identity construction. Thakur is undoubtedly one of the most exciting new voices to emerge in the field of IR.’
— Karen Smith, Associate Professor, University of Cape Town, South Africa

Table of contents

Acknowledgements
Introduction
List of Abbreviations

Part One: Ideas and Identities

1. Indian Foreign Policy: The Discourse of Civilizational Pacifism
2. South African Foreign Policy: A Contest for African Identity

Part Two: Institutions

3. ‘Panditji Knows Best’: Bureaucratic Culture and the Making of the Ministry of External Affairs
4. From Pigmentocracy to Representocracy: The Transformation of the Department of Foreign Affairs

Conclusion
Bibliography
Index
About the Author