Conclusion

The collection of chapters in this volume has sought to produce diversity in readings of India’s contemporary global role by exploring a range of influential ‘non-Western’ state perspectives. By locating India-related interests and values within country perspectives themselves, we have sought to produce a range of contingent, rather than ‘objective’, visions of India. Taken together, these readings provide a critical evaluation, though necessarily limited in scope, of India’s success at maintaining relations of solidarity with certain other non-Western states in the post-Cold War era, despite India’s contemporaneous pursuit of recognition in accordance with key characteristics and behaviours of the established powers. This concluding discussion aims to reflect on the key questions introduced at the outset of this book: How is India’s rise being imagined by different global stakeholders? How do such assessments compare to India’s self-understandings of its changing global role? What might diverse readings of single actors in world politics contribute to the discipline of International Relations?