The social structure of a country influences its foreign policy-making. How does the social structure of India impact the course and direction of its foreign policy? (2015, 10 Marks)
For constructivists such as Alexander Wendt (Social Theory of International Politics, 1999), identities constitute interests, so a society’s make-up shapes its external aims; Priya Chacko (2012) reads Indian foreign policy as the working-out of a postcolonial identity. India has two social structures at once: a lived one of deep religious, linguistic, caste and regional diversity, and an aspired one of secular, democratic and liberal citizenship. Both reach foreign policy.
Pluralism as disposition and soft power
- A polity whose daily business is accommodating difference prefers negotiated middle positions to exclusive commitments, one root of non-alignment and today’s strategic autonomy.
- Democratic and liberal values counsel restraint: India has avoided territorial conquest and exporting its model, preferring persuasion to pressure.
- Diversity is also soft power: yoga, cinema, a religiously plural democracy and a diaspora of about 35.4 million overseas Indians.
Cross-border kinship: foreign questions become domestic
Linguistic states make the federation a channel for social ties, producing what Robert D. Putnam called a two-level game:
- Tamil Nadu and Sri Lanka: support for Tamil groups, the 1987 accord and the IPKF, and India’s votes for the UNHRC resolutions on Sri Lanka in 2012 and 2013 under Tamil parties’ pressure.
- Bihar, Uttar Pradesh and Nepal’s Madhes: kinship ties made the Madhesi grievance over Nepal’s 2015 constitution an Indian concern, and the border obstruction that followed pushed Kathmandu towards Beijing.
- West Bengal, Assam and Bangladesh: language and partition memory turn migration and river-sharing into electoral issues; the Teesta agreement has stalled since 2011, a test now for a BJP government in Kolkata (May 2026) and the BNP in Dhaka.
- The north-east and Myanmar: communities straddling the border make insurgency and refugee flows security questions with a foreign-policy face.
Religion, caste and the elite
- India’s large Muslim population long tempered West Asia policy: Israel, recognised in 1950, got full relations only in 1992; today ties with Israel are de-hyphenated from support for Palestine and the Gulf partnerships.
- Domestic communal controversy travels abroad: Bangladesh’s foreign minister called off a Delhi visit as the Citizenship (Amendment) Act, 2019 passed, a reminder that the aspired secular structure is itself a diplomatic asset.
- India resisted equating caste with race at the 2001 Durban conference, keeping a constitutional matter domestic.
- Policy is made by a narrow elite: of 954 IFS officers (December 2025), 263 are women and 200 SC/ST.
Conclusion
Social structure seldom sets India’s goals, which geography, economy and security dictate. It acts as a filter: a disposition towards accommodation, a source of soft power, and a veto on specific neighbours, decisive on Sri Lanka and Teesta, marginal on China or the United States.