ABSTRACT

Public histories are narratives straddling across space and time, challenging the inside/outside distinction. Indian foreign policy makers have engaged in a selective remembering of the past in an attempt to script the making of a postcolonial state. The study takes up three cases from India’s foreign policy in elucidating how different imaginations of India’s identity has been refashioned to legitimize its foreign policy. These three cases point to Nehru’s decision to join the Commonwealth, Vajpayee’s strides for nuclearization and Modi’s approach toward the diaspora. We argue that foreign policy makers in India have either refrained from engaging with ‘public history’ due to their uncritical positioning in structural realism or erected versions of the past that happily rationalize their contemporary practices. The deployment of public histories has taken place to invoke India rightful place in the international order and as instruments in shaping public consensus which advances the interests of the elites in validating their foreign policy choices. This elite-driven exercise is shot through the dominant Western imaginations and cognitive categories although these elites self- consciously took charge of the destiny of a nation that had to be refashioned as ‘post- colonial.’

摘要

公共历史是跨越时空的叙事，挑战内部/外部的区别。印度外交政策制定者有选择地回忆过去，试图描绘后殖民国家的形成。该研究从印度外交政策中选取了三个案例，阐明了对印度身份的不同想象是如何被重新塑造以使其外交政策合法化的。这三个案例指向尼赫鲁加入英联邦的决定、瓦杰帕伊核化的大步以及莫迪对侨民的态度。我们认为，印度的外交政策制定者要么因为他们在结构现实主义中的不加批判的定位而避免参与“公共历史”，要么建立过去的版本，使他们的当代实践愉快地合理化。公共历史的部署已经发生，以援引印度在国际秩序中的合法地位，并作为塑造公共共识的工具，促进精英在验证其外交政策选择方面的利益。尽管这些精英自觉地掌管了一个必须被重塑为“后殖民”的国家的命运，但这种精英驱动的运动是通过西方占主导地位的想象和认知类别进行的。