Compare and contrast Non-alignment 1.0 with Non-alignment 2.0. (2019, 10 Marks)
Non-alignment 1.0 is the doctrine Jawaharlal Nehru announced in his broadcast of 7 September 1946: keeping India out of rival power blocs. A poor, newly free state, wary of power politics after colonial rule, chose independence of judgement. Non-alignment 2.0 is the report of February 2012 by eight analysts and practitioners, among them Sunil Khilnani, Srinath Raghavan and Shyam Saran, issued by the Centre for Policy Research and the National Defence College. It set out to map India’s opportunities and threats and to define an approach that would widen strategic autonomy.
Points of contrast
| Criterion | Non-alignment 1.0 | Non-alignment 2.0 |
|---|---|---|
| System assumed | Bipolar, two blocs | Multipolar, China as the central challenge |
| India’s capability | Weak, aid-dependent | Large economy, nuclear power |
| Method | Staying out of blocs | Engaging all, allying with none |
| Economics | Planned self-reliance; later the NIEO | Central: markets, capital, technology |
| Hard power | Subordinate to diplomacy until 1962 | A full chapter: capability is necessary |
| Constituency | The Third World, through a movement | India’s development; issue coalitions |
| Justification | Normative: anti-colonialism, disarmament | Instrumental: “maximum options” abroad for growth at home |
| Authority | A Prime Minister’s doctrine | A report with no official status |
Points of continuity
- The goal is shared. The report opens by calling strategic autonomy India’s “defining value and continuous goal” since the Republic began, first expressed as non-alignment.
- No alliances. Both refuse binding commitments while allowing close partnership: the 1971 Indo-Soviet treaty then, the Quad now.
- Foreign policy serves development. Nehru wanted time and space to build the nation; the report wants external options to widen internal ones.
- A normative streak. The report’s hope that India could be a site for an alternative universality, resting on “the power of its example”, echoes Nehru’s claim to a moral voice.
What the comparison shows
Little of the content changed; the reason for holding it did. Version 1.0 was the refusal of a state with no leverage; version 2.0 is the bargaining of a state with leverage. Realists attacked the report: Rajesh Rajagopalan (2012) said norms follow power, not example, and he and Ashley J. Tellis (2012) both wanted closer strategic partnership with the United States. Practice became S. Jaishankar‘s “issue-based arrangements” (2019).
Conclusion
Non-alignment 2.0 is a renovation, not a restoration: it keeps 1.0’s aim of decisional freedom, discards its bloc frame and much of its moral programme, and adds hard power and economics. That is why later governments adopted its thesis while Jaishankar retired its name as “a term of a particular era” (2020).