India’s Multilateralism and the Liberal International Order: Discerning Trends

Bifocal Multilateralism: India’s Divergent Stances

The contemporary liberal order is deeply contested. Amitav Acharya observes that in the days of the Cold War, this led postcolonial states (like India) to evolve subsidiary norms for two reasons (Acharya 2011: 95–123). First was exclusion from participation in global norm creation that also resulted in the excision of their ideas, interests, and ontologies. Secondly, some of the global norms were routinely violated by the Western powers. Hence, norm-making was a way of standing up to their tyranny and exposing great power hypocrisy. In contemporary times, the contestation has revolved around the drift of the liberal order to illiberality, which has been sourced in the crucible of the order itself. Liberalism developed as a resistance to the entrenched benefits of a feudal order and its attendant maladies. Yet, once ensconced, it lost its radical élan and became increasingly status-quoist. In the international liberal order, the commitment to rules does not allow a critical and discursive transformation of structures which prevent genuine universalization of its norms.

India’s approach to multilateralism remains time-adjusted, much evolved, and, most critically, neither explained by norms nor by narrow power calculations (Raja Mohan 2013: 25–41). All states navigate norms and power in their own ways, and India is no exception (Bajpai 1998: 157–97). Yet there is enough evidence to argue that India is sensitive to global concerns and the need for urgent collective action to mitigate them through the available multilateral architecture (Mattoo and Narlikar 2020). The rise of right-wing populism, de-globalization, and the increasing trend toward protectionism, closed borders, xenophobic nationalism, anti-migration sentiments, and the systemic power transition underway within the international system, along with more protracted global threats over climate and biodiversity, a deep economic crisis across the world, and the negative externalities that civilizations uncritically committed to modernization produce, shifts the ground from under the feet of the present multilateral order. ² Unsurprisingly, therefore, India’s multilateralism has been compelled to react and adapt to these massive tectonic shifts.

The liberal international order in place is the result of a gradual but expansive socialization of five major values across the world that took many centuries to materialize. These values are modernity and industrial society, its functional derivate; nationalism; the market as a way of organizing economic activities; territoriality as the organizing principle of sovereign spaces; and democracy understood in the minimalist sense of a government resting on the sovereign will of the people that guaranteed the fundamental rights of the people. The post-1945 order concretized these commitments by way of devising a series of institutions at the global level. Accordingly, the liberal international order upheld several key commitments that constitute the baseline to make any judgment on how states adapted and responded to it. These include devising a liberal trading and financial system that allows transactions of various factors of production amongst states and non-state actors; a rule-based multilateral order that makes interactions among diverse states possible and largely peaceful; a global commitment to human rights; and an endorsement of the possibility of progressive change and evolution as both necessary and inevitable (Ikenberry 2018: 7–23). While India did not have any serious disagreement with these overarching values or commitments, and its colonial experience strengthened its zeal to fashion a democratic order despite many challenges, India ‘has been ambivalent about support for liberal/democratic principles and institutions abroad’ (Ganguly 2013).

Despite India’s own commitment to democracy, industrialization, normalization of ties with the erstwhile colonial powers, and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and an approach to international relations that certainly did not embrace an alliance-based balance of power realism, its colonial experience made it extraordinarily sensitive about its territorial sovereignty, critical of Western (US) interventionism, and suspicious of the institutions that the United States created to set up the liberal world order (Ganguly 2013: 2–3; Ollapally 2018: 61–74). Its chosen economic path militated against some of the fundamental norms of the liberal multilateral order that emphasized free trade, export-led growth, a free market economy, and foreign direct investments. India, in contrast, fell for import substitution-led growth, largely shunned free trade and foreign direct investments, and was committed to creating a mixed economy where the commanding heights would be in the hands of the state and use both development planning and market forces to transform its economy from a state of poverty and underdevelopment to prosperity and high growth (Basu 2004: 3–32). It also found the United States and the West European states unsympathetic to its interpretation of the Kashmir situation and insensitive to its security concerns, especially vis-à-vis Pakistan (Hagerty 2003: 89–116). This would gradually push it toward the Soviet camp although Nehru’s own socialistic sympathies were also responsible for that decision. These political compulsions and choices implied that India’s multilateralism would be automatically ambivalent and occasionally display conflicting patterns. While it remained committed to the United Nations and the idea of peace and enthusiastically participated in the UN-guided peace-keeping operations, it would be highly critical of great power entanglements in general (Raja Mohan 2007: 99–115). The empirical record of the United States and the Soviet Union frequently interfering in the internal affairs of states only reinforced its skepticism. Yet Nehru committed India to the liberal order in normative terms. India accepted the larger commitments to human rights, democracy, a rule-based order, peaceful change, and the existing multilateral institutions.

With time, India’s attitude evolved. It became clear that although India had a principled opposition to interventionism, it deviated from the norm in its immediate vicinity. It intervened in the 1971 War that liberated Bangladesh on the legitimate ground of a genocide-induced refugee crisis that threatened India’s overall security. It intervened in Sri Lanka to aid to diffuse the ethnic violence in the island nation in the late 1980s. It also supported Vietnam’s military intervention in Cambodia to oust the barbaric Pol Pot regime in the 1970s (Ganguly 2013: 1). It was in the forefront of the demand for a radical transformation of the international economic and the information orders, much to the displeasure of the West (Lall 1978: 435–61). ³ These initiatives, however, did not matter much since they broadly coincided with a time when India had contracted its international economic interactions and was not open to global media broadcasts. In other words, India indulged in criticizing the West-dominated international order mindful of the fact that its own participation in it was limited and, hence, such criticisms would not materially hurt India. Most crucially, India had to be mindful of a rapidly deteriorating security environment since the 1960s, which made China its long-term security threat in addition to its structural enmity with Pakistan (Singh, 2021). Since the West remained largely noncommittal, given India’s refusal to be a part of the security architecture spawned by the United States, it had little option but to move closer to the Soviet Union (Chari 1979: 230–44). This explains India’s apparent inconsistency when it came to its angry repudiation of the Suez Crisis and the US War in Vietnam on the one hand, and its stolid indifference to the crises in Hungary and Czechoslovakia on the other (Kapur and Ganguly 2007: 642–56). ⁴

The post–Cold War period significantly altered India’s approach since it had to come to terms with the loss of its most valued security partner in the Soviet Union. This was compounded by India’s severe economic crisis that forced it to finally abandon the planned model in favor of economic liberalization. The onset of globalization further tied its hands (Gupta and Chatterjee 2014: 11640). Yet, the ambivalent nature of India’s multilateralism and its predilection to adopt divergent stances for serving foreign policy goals survived these massive changes. To begin with, the new epoch put extraordinary security burdens on India. Though New Delhi started to reprioritize its foreign policy goals, it was not easy to befriend the West on India’s terms. India prevaricated in its responses to the first Gulf War that led the West to suspect India’s motivations. Secondly, the West started to push for a much more intrusive approach to humanitarian intervention and emphasize the legitimacy of rule and administrative performance, in addition to territorial control, as criteria for assessing claims of sovereignty. The postcolonial anxieties returned to haunt Indian foreign policy, and it found in ambivalence a potent weapon to stand up to the West (Muni 1991: 862–74; Wojczewski 2019: 180–98). Thirdly, while India acceded to the WTO order, its economic situation ruled out a wholesale turnaround (Efstathopoulos 2012: 269–93; Narlikar 2010: 717–28). It participated in the new institutions of global economic governance but opposed the West on issues where their interests did not coincide. India, however, changed its strategy of resistance. Rather than working through the largely irrelevant G-77 and the NAM, it invested in new groupings like the BRICS and the IBSA and emphasized the need to frontload the G-20 instead of the G-7 to put lateral pressure on global multilateral institutions like the WTO, the World Bank, and the IMF. It remained steadfast to its call for reform and internal democratization and called attention to the manifest legitimacy deficit that these bodies suffered from. It likewise resisted the Western insistence for a rapid and tous azimuts economic transformation. Rather, it stuck to its time-tested policy of incremental reform by stealth that would allow the state to retain significant regulatory capacity in its hands. For example, the state controlled an array of vital domestic economic activities, including the system of public distribution of essential commodities and the system of administered prices for a variety of goods, like petroleum and petroleum products. Their prices were revised from time to time, especially before the presentation of the annual budget, to keep parity with the movement of world oil prices (Raj Nayar 2001: 200).

Finally, in the domain of nuclear security, India did not sign the global nuclear regimes like the NPT, the CTBT, and the FMCT. The 1998 nuclear explosions led to sanctions and fresh challenges. Yet, India did not buckle under international pressure, and by 2010 the global nuclear multilateral order came around to accommodate India as an exceptional case (Kugiel 2021: 266–67). India has also found it useful to work through groupings such as BRICS in order to shore up the deficiencies of the West-led multilateral order and status considerations. BRICS remains committed to create alternative trading and currency or banking arrangements in the face of sustained hostility by the West. Yet, three major shortcomings seem insuperable. First, it lacks a full-fledged alterative imagination of a world order; second, the geopolitical and strategic imperatives of India, China, and Russia move in different directions; and third, serious normative and political differences frustrate the group. Hence, beyond furnishing a platform for critique and coordination of collective action against Western hegemony in the sharing of global public goods, it has very little political viability (Nuruzzaman 2020: 51–66). This illustrates India’s multilateralism via engage and critique. While India’s involvement remains unwavering, the critique has been mostly against what India considers Western hypocrisy over normative principles and the scope to indulge in selective and often discriminatory practices. Much of the critique was sincere yet rhetorical in nature. But it had value in making the point that a general set of rules applying to a state caught up in unequal circumstances would always produce unequal results. It mirrored in our view the distinction between liberty and the fair value of the liberty argument. ⁵ The benefits of rule-based transactions were asymmetrical as long as the world was structurally unequal. From the demands of fair shares for the developing world to reforming the discriminatory nature of the Security Council and regimes like the NPT, this critique was not about jettisoning the liberal international order but plugging its structural loopholes. Hence, on balance, the nature of India’s engagement with the liberal international order since 1945 has always been bifocal. ⁶

Despite being ruled by a Hindu nationalist government since 2014, India’s official vision of the world order has remained reformist and cosmopolitan in nature. For instance, India’s then External Affairs Minister, Ms Sushma Swaraj, outlined five key principles that have defined India’s global engagement in 2019. First, India has rebuilt bridges with its immediate neighborhood. Second, India is shaping its relationship in a manner that synchronizes with its economic and development priorities. Third, India seeks to become a human resources power by connecting its youth to global opportunities. Fourth, India is building sustainable development partnerships based on universally recognized international norms and good governance. Finally, India is reinvigorating global institutions and organizations (ORF 2019). Despite occasionally invoking the idiom of the civilizational state and the idea of India as a global master [viswaguru], the material compulsions of a rising power in a globalized world do not afford much flexibility to experiment with the idea of a multilateral order. The deliberately ambivalent scripts of critique and acceptance produce a peculiar bifocal conception of order in an effort to transcend the manifest contradictions of normative legitimation and functional gains.

Justice and Multilateralism

In its foreign policy, India has always recognized that it needs to strike a balance between its national interests and global concerns. The dominant strand in India’s approach to multilateralism has always been the idea of justice as non-domination accompanied by the recognition that states have responsibilities beyond their own borders. ⁷ While crusading for moral causes and politico-economic transformation of the global order during most of the Cold War period, India remained firmly committed to the principle of sovereign territoriality. ⁸ Indian policymakers believed that states needed to be insulated against arbitrary effects of power and domination and yet not close themselves off to the possibilities of wider cosmopolitan attachments—an approach reflected most dramatically in India’s decision to remain within the British Commonwealth. ⁹ However, in terms of priorities, the claims of the state would trump supranational calls in the event of a possible collision between the two. Simultaneously, India’s approach to multilateralism had emphasized the values of civilizational heritage and uniqueness—factors that could not be accommodated within Western collaborative structures that were quintessentially neutralist or difference blind. For India, justice would entail guaranteeing freedom against domination by other powers, flourishing of global responsibilities till they encroached on the demands of enlightened national self-interest, and recognizing India’s inherent genius despite centuries of colonial humiliation. India’s definitive turn toward achieving great power status in the new millennium and building material capabilities has not altered this essence. Resisting unfair domination, establishing an equitable world order, and claiming its rightful place among the great powers remain the principal ingredients of India’s foreign policy, where no clear international authority exists to implement justice for all.

India’s commitment to shared responsibilities and cultural cosmopolitanism is balanced by its support for the principle of sovereign territoriality (Chacko 2015: 27–33; Chatterjee 2018). This explains India’s difficulties with the norms of humanitarian intervention and democracy promotion that had been central ideas of the liberal international order (Raja Mohan 2007: 99–115). India’s position can be interrogating India’s postcolonial identity and differences that serve as the primary ideational prisms. Prime Minister Nehru fervently promoted the idea of a postcolonial, modern, industrial India that embraced secularism and a broadly liberal outlook on life (Parekh 1991: 35–48). This was opposed to colonialism and imperialism, and invested in ideas of fraternity and a silent self-confidence that came from its civilizational and ethical lineage, as well as its commitment to a functional democratic political system. Varshney claims that instead of using India’s past as the foundation for its postcolonial identity, Nehru wanted to make economic growth and modernization the cornerstones of this identity. According to this interpretation, national identity may detach itself from shared roots or a common past and instead gravitate toward a shared purpose or future (Varshney 1993: 247). This has led to many framings, of which we find two to be relevant here. Manjari Miller, in her own work and in collaboration with Kate Sullivan invokes post-imperial ideology that arises from the historical legacy of colonialism and India’s response to it as colonial trauma. She postulates that countries like India and China that have undergone the ‘transformative historical event’ of ‘extractive colonialism’ find it exceedingly difficult to erase the historical memory of victimhood that also simultaneously creates a sense of entitlement. Consequently, there is a natural tendency for such states to side with the weak within the global order. This post-imperial ideology gets activated whenever issues of sovereignty and prestige are involved not only for the state concerned (be it India or China) but for any state considered a victim of past colonial practices (Chatterjee Miller 2013; Chatterjee Miller and Estrada 2017: 27–49).

The second ideational framework is about India’s exceptionalism. There are politicized attempts to differentiate India from other nations and civilizations and position it as a unique civilization-state. Sullivan identifies two substantive dimensions of Indian exceptionalism: a belief that the Indian approach to international affairs is morally and spiritually distinctive (and superior) because it prioritizes peaceful coexistence between nations over coercive, aggressive, or violent interactions; and a related belief that India can be emulated as a model of a plural society living in peaceful coexistence and modalities of Indian exceptionalism (Sullivan 2014: 640–55). These convictions of exceptionalism have provided the basis for Indian leaders to claim that what they seek for India is a distinctive global leadership role compared to the great powers of the twentieth century—a role that is morally and spiritually superior. Writing more directly on India’s conception of the world order in terms of its identity, Wojczewski argues, ‘India’s dominant foreign policy discourse takes polycentrism as the essential feature of world order and represents India as pluralist, multi-aligned actor that can and should engage all major powers’ (Wojczewski 2019: 180–98).Wojczewski argues that India here successfully mirrors the West in using its experiences to build the foundations of a global order.

For postcolonial states, the loss of state territory may be akin to losing power after territorial sovereignty was established as the solution to the impasse of the one land, people, and state trifecta. Postcolonial India therefore absolutized the concept of territoriality, which was much more than just the physical land: it became a terrain of political legitimacy for the new state. For India, status consciousness is a remarkably consistent trait in foreign policy, although the chosen pathways for achieving status have altered with the evolution of power distribution within the international order. Status is fundamentally about positional difference ¹⁰ and therefore invariably relative. It is a function of power and wealth. Yet, these may not guarantee commensurate status because it is also a function of recognition by peers. Since status is a hierarchical and positional good, and India has always been committed to an egalitarian international order, it is therefore difficult to reconcile between the espousal of a non-hierarchical order and justifying high status at the same time. Status can be claimed on many grounds—material and ideational. Yet, it invariably points to a form of stratification that problematizes the idea of an egalitarian order. India’s insistence that it claims status as a pacific civilization committed to the making of an egalitarian world order is evidently tenuous. It strangely mirrors India’s fraught internal social dynamics based on the status hierarchy of castes and its political commitment to social equality (Mosse 2018: 422–36; Ruparelia 2008: 39–56).

India and the EU ¹¹

India’s potential role as a key partner of the European Union in reimagining or reinventing the liberal international order is central to the future of global multilateralism. ¹² India’s potential for engagement with the EU is robust and holds promise in negotiating the challenges to solidify the tenets of multilateralism. India can act as a key ally with the EU in reinforcing alternate, institutionalized meanings of global justice in a revised world order. The terms of engagement for new centers of power across the globe, a la multilateralism, can then be reinvented (Chandra 2018: 420–37). It will involve compromises on both sides and recognize that their options are limited. The EU would have to accommodate cases that are exceptional, while India needs to revisit its kneejerk reaction to every case involving an apparent compromise of sovereignty. There remain deep differences in human rights, intellectual property rules, treatment of minorities, and India’s recent tendencies in curbing religious freedom and non-governmental organizations that do various social and political audits. ¹³ Yet, the present nature of the international order—one that sees the reluctance of the United States to play the role of the leading provider of global collective goods and the ascension of China that has the potential of challenging, if not altering, some of the fundamental tenets underlying the liberal order—has the potential to encourage a more balanced relationship between India and the EU despite these differences. Certain key issue areas where convergences could be actively sought would be to strengthen global action on climate change and the environment, alternative fuels and cleaner energy, migration-induced challenges, post-COVID economic recovery, sustainable digital infrastructure, and promotion of secure cyberspace and reconvening the Human Rights Dialogue (EU–India Factsheet 2020–07).

It would be prudent and pragmatic to remain flexible, evolve through the tides of realpolitik, and adapt and learn from each other, their normative commitment to parity and a level-playing field remaining the moot point of mutual assurance. In other words, the costs of a less balanced relationship would be too high for both parties, so although they might continue to oppose each other on core issues they might still prefer to forge the makings of a closer partnership.

The exigencies of a turbulent and rapidly changing world threaten to undermine the positive externalities that have largely benefited the EU and India in the last twenty-five years. The irresponsible unilateralism of Trump, which saw the United States leave many international agreements that grievously hurt the interests of an open and multilateral world order, the spectacular rise of China, the spread of authoritarianism, right-wing populism, rapid and xenophobic nationalism, and an unprecedented refugee crisis amidst a global economic downturn, enormously complicated by the COVID-19 pandemic, have reinvigorated EU–India relations substantially. Even in the protracted war being fought between Russia and Ukraine, India and the EU have evolved from the EU being deeply disappointed with India’s stance to a position of agreeing to disagree; the EU could not coax India to openly condemn Russia for its actions. But the EU has come around to accepting India’s dilemma, an appreciation of its ‘distinct’ relations with Russia, which involve the supply of arms, and the pragmatism to not allow these differences to risk deterioration in relations between the EU and India. They are moving ahead in their partnership, using all strategic instruments, including free trade negotiations (Grare 2022). The further detailed empirics of this fledging partnership are beyond the scope of this article (Factsheet EU–India Relations 2022). What is needed, instead, is to come to terms with the synergies and challenges in an altered geopolitical scenario. The differences are well known. While India and the EU share a commitment to the rule-based multilateral order, their understandings and expectations of the system of rules do not necessarily coincide.

We read this dissonance in three factors. First, their strategic needs are distinctive, and the required nostrums to alleviate these threats therefore create friction. For India, the colonial legacy largely conditioned the identification of friends and foes in its international dealings. While the post–Cold War certainly forced changes, the inherited security disorder did not vanish. The rise of China, for example, has different connotations for India and the EU. While India moved closer to the United States in the post–Cold War period, which helped smoothen its ties with Europe considerably, their strategic underpinnings do not converge. The security logic, in brief, works rather differently for the EU and India, and despite the call for a strategic partnership, the impetus has not gathered the required momentum.

Second, both suffer from the excess of moralism and a culture of misrepresenting the other. In the case of India, the cultural relations with Europe are problematic because of Orientalism that had produced and perpetuated unfortunate stereotypes on both sides. India’s postcolonial identity also induces moralism and a civilizational consciousness that irritates Western sensibilities (Wojczewski 2019: 180–98). Europe’s historical racism and appropriation of cultural modernity likewise harden Indian attitudes. ¹⁴ While circumstantial compulsions have invested much-needed pragmatism in their views, moral posturing and inconsistencies continue to divide them (Chand 2021, 173–89). Two additional factors continue to complicate relations. First, the EU remains committed to the idea of justice as non-domination, accompanied by the recognition that states have responsibilities beyond their own borders, India would find it difficult to cut the slack in their ties. On India’s part, the overemphasis on claims of exceptionalism as a form of communitarian justice has been counterproductive in making a strong case for a rule-based order. Second, Europe’s post-sovereign spatial experiment through the Union is at variance with India’s Westphalian commitments.

Finally, the social and political bases of their imaginations of a rule-based multilateral order are historically divergent. A brief excursus into democracy and liberalism would allow us to appreciate these divergences better. First, the pathways of democratization between the two entities are different. Europe’s democratization mostly followed industrial modernization and was stewarded by strong capitalists who effected a moderately successful transition from an agrarian to an industrial economy with attendant values. ¹⁵ Unlike most postcolonial states, India democratized before it fully industrialized, which led to political problems that seriously implicate its democratic project. Moreover, its indigenous capitalism could not entirely supersede the older feudal relations that led to awkward class configurations and difficult compromises (Corbridge and Harris 2006). This means that India and the EU face rather different domestic preference structures that complicate bargaining and negotiation processes between them.

More critically, India and the EU do not share similar views on rights, secularism, and liberalism, which are the normative foundations of a democratic order. The EU remains committed primarily to autonomy based or political liberalism that prioritizes individual rights, urges principled separation between faith and politics, and has largely remained committed to a culture of openness that enables individuals to question received social norms and practices without the fear of inviting institutionalized sanctions. India, on the other hand, is deeply communitarian; the state is invested in religion despite its constitutional commitment to secularism, and there are palpable restrictions to freedom of expression that often source in religious and social customs or practices (Sharma 2015: 66–71). These differences often trigger unjustified expectations on both sides and lead to misunderstandings on the meanings of democracy, rights, secularism, and a liberal order. While India is certainly far more accepting of the primary functionalities of a liberal order, namely, market and security community, normative differences induce diffidence and fuzziness to the overall trajectory and health of India-EU relations. This also explains the misunderstanding over the norm of democracy promotion, which has often been used as an indicator of India’s insipid commitment to a democratic world order. India had consistently held on to the view that harping on ideological differences produces more divisions than fosters peace (Mishra 2012: 49–61). Moreover, postcolonial states understand better the difficulties of political grafting (Ganguly, 2013). And, finally, talking of democracy can invite deeper and too intimate exposure of domestic politics that can make it difficult to find meaningful solutions to social and political problems (see Mishra 2012: 33–59).

India’s conservatism to use democracy promotion as a form of soft power is not a function of postcolonial guilt or the fear of international opprobrium. Rather, it is the inconvenience of working out politically viable tradeoffs in complex and polarized settings. Democracies are political systems with varied delivery capacities (Hanson 2015: 304–30). The logic of India’s democracy is inherently inclusive. But as more and more disadvantaged groups clamor for benefits, the prospects of legitimizing mass scale through governmental schemes become structurally counterproductive for any political party. While it is factually observed that discrimination and selected violence against some groups have definitely increased in India, a close analysis of the democratic process itself reveals a far more complicated game. All democracies exclude and discriminate; these messy violations of democratic norms and practices for surviving the realpolitik do not hold back India from playing a crusading role in promoting democracy in its neighborhood and beyond.

Our argument is that differences between R2P and the ideas of sovereignty and solidarity are mostly overstretched (Newman and Stefan 2020: 472–90). Careful empirical studies have revealed that there is no cast-iron commitment to these norms. So far as the EU is concerned, individual member states often deviate from the views of the Union Parliament, and the underlying geopolitical and economic considerations are overriding (Nogues et al., 2020: 1–15). In other words, the materiality of world politics is evidently forging a closer partnership despite these ideational disagreements. This is clearly reflected in the policy statements and actions on both sides. Volatile international politics, the rise of China, and a belligerent Russia, who would never play by the liberal playbook, and the retreat of the liberal order in the face of the rising tide of authoritarianism leave little option before India and the EU than to cooperate on a wide spectrum of issues, despite their differences in the understanding of and expectations from a liberal multilateral order. Finally, India’s turn toward right-wing populism may not be a major distraction in its partnership with the EU, as many states in Europe are also fellow travelers. The EU has not taken up a uniform policy toward members that are now ruled by the right-wing forces. Individual member states may have their own compulsions in creating a partnership with India. However, at the level of the organization, the difficulties are less because both India and the EU understand the priority of pursuing common goals over rigid ideological formulations. Human rights and political dissent would remain difficult topics for both. Admittedly, the EU has a sterner approach to rule breakers than India. However, there is already a certain maturity on both sides to understand the limits of their agreement. The EU would continue to scrutinize India’s human rights record and criticize its shortcomings. What is essential here is to note that such critique is in tandem with the deep displeasure expressed by India’s civil society groups who are often silenced and punished by the Indian state.

Conclusion

In conclusion, we make four observations about India’s multilateralism. First, as a part of its wider foreign policy, India’s multilateralism has always recognized the need to balance national interest with global concerns, be it material issues of development and inequality between the developed and the developing world or the need to fashion a just world order, which would be a non-discriminatory and allow states to realize their destiny according to their own designs. Second, in the current liberal order, power-seeking through multilateralism has remained delicate for India; it seeks to engage the support of the Western powers where their vital interests converge and explores alternative modes to push its interests where they clash. Third, India rejects any universalist standard as a defining norm of the global or regional multilateral orders. Its rejection of moral universalism results from its colonial legacy, which makes it inherently suspicious of global institutions and schemes proposed by the West. Finally, India remains firmly committed to the priority of state rights over those of supra-state and multilateral organizations or individuals. India’s uncompromising position on sovereignty as an inviolable state prerogative translates into weak multilateralist commitments that explain India’s critical positions on economic, climate, and security issues at various multilateral forums. India, therefore, remains wedded to a pluralist international order where states recognize the need to come together to solve collective problems but are not bound by any rigid formulaic commitments. India’s multilateralism is thin and functional, endorses a communitarian perspective on justice and ethics, and has a complex relationship with the idea of a liberal international order. Their different understandings of the desirable multilateral architecture essentially explained India’s mixed relationship vis-à-vis the European Union, which involves both partnerships and irritants that would enable the fulfillment of the claims of global justice. India’s conception of multilateralism is sui generis; it combines a statist perspective and a relativist ethics that differs significantly from the perspectives of most other states, including the EU.

While India has historically sought to work through the liberal international order and its multilateral framework, it has been and remains a classic reformist state. Its critique of the order for its representational deficits is both real and legitimate; it is plain egregious to derive special privileges within an order that is normatively committed to principles of non-domination and equality. The Indian critique has essentially exposed the thinness of the liberal veneer. To anoint an order as liberal and universal that only extolled the removal of obstacles from the path of a market economy and paid scant regard to the compensatory demands of the undeveloped states was historically wrong since its universality was proclaimed and not dialogic. The claim to the universal was also problematic since it did not care to even interrogate the localized norms of the postcolonial world. Yet corrigibility and questioning are built into liberalism, making it possible to amend the present incongruities and fashion a genuinely balanced order, sincere in its equality of representation, opportunities, and other guidelines of normativism. Such a revival of the liberal order would necessarily involve taking care of the structural shortcomings so as not to reproduce its historical guilt. The refurbished liberal order must be one that can stand up to and disable the tyranny of the entrenched (see Mukherjee 2018; Ober 2017). ¹⁶ Needless to say, this remains the classical predicament of any liberal order. A liberal order would need to sustain its generic commitments to individualism, freedom, markets, corrigibility, modernity, and progress. Unless the order becomes hospitable to radical change so that its own promise of justice is delivered effectively and equally, its representational deficits cannot be adequately overcome. But these values need to be shaped in conditions of dialogic reflexivity so that it can identify sources of oppression within itself and defuse them (Seth 2001: 321–33).

Hence, unless repaired to enable global resource transfers, the contemporary multilateral order will remain an iniquitous one. Further, liberal cosmopolitanism can mean a liberal order committed to ‘culture blind’ liberalism or a plural liberalism in which many/all cultures can see themselves reflected. The charge that this liberalism is so suffused in Western culture that it can never be genuinely representative of other cultural types is therefore valid. We have sought to highlight in this paper the reflexive function that the Indian critique serves to the liberal order. If that order is to qualify as espousing a form of internationalism blind to the hegemony of a liberal constellation, it can never shut itself off to scrutiny of its underlying premises. The liberal order like any other cannot be neutral. The test is whether it lives up to its own promises of justice as non-domination and toleration of difference.