The Unfinished Quest: India’s Search for Major Power Status from Nehru to Modi

Along with the meteoric rise of China, there has been much interest in the emergence of India as a rising power. The rapidly developing US-China rivalry gives India an added importance in world politics today. Further, the strengthening of Hindu nationalism under Narendra Modi includes using international status enhancement as a tool in domestic political contestation. This talk, based on a forthcoming book, draws on three decades of data on India’s economic and military growth to assess India’s achievements and shortcomings in comparison with others, especially China. The research pays particular attention to a status perspective, which is often missing in many popular books on India’s rise. While in its 75-year existence as an independent state, India has achieved much in fulfilling the dreams of Nehru and his successors in obtaining global status, the quest is still unfinished. Why have India and its leadership believed that the country has a destiny to rise as a global power? What does the future hold for India’s status elevation?

T.V. Paul is a James McGill Professor of International Relations in the Department of Political Science at McGill University, Montreal, Canada, and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada. He is a former President of International Studies Association (ISA) and the Founding Director of the Global Research Network on Peaceful Change (GRENPEC). Paul is the author or editor of 23 books and over 80 scholarly articles/book chapters in the fields of International Relations, International Security, and South Asia, including The Unfinished Quest: India’s Search for Major Power Status from Nehru to Modi (Oxford University Press, forthcoming, 2024).

Chapters
00:00 Introduction by the moderator, Sharad Joshi, Associate Professor, Nonproliferation and Terrorism Studies, Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey
03:19 Presentation by T.V. Paul, James McGill Professor of International Relations in the Department of Political Science at McGill University, Montreal, Canada
52:08 Q&A