9. India’s Grand Strategy and Exceptionalism

Fissiparous politics had been endemic in Indian political tapestry that made the early Western observers to predict the country’s incipient demise. But the unique and inclusive Indian Constitution gave the country its initial binding force. Even though the concentration of capital in the hands of the few created grave iniquities, the infusion of public spending creating a vast public sector distributed income without redistributing wealth. Amidst all this, inexorable progression of history created both threats and opportunities. If the country’s early saviour was the Soviet bloc, the natural tendency of the Anglophile elite was to tilt to the West. That manifested itself as relative prosperity created a newly empowered middle class—all English educated and with marketable skills, created by overly top-heavy education system. So naturally, post-Cold War world view of the country moved away from the NAM mantra, yet the natural decline of the West that set in the second decade of the new millennium returned the argument to a reinvention of the early ‘grand strategy’ of autonomous decision-making and ideational spatial expansion. That was also fuelled by a search for Indian ‘exceptionalism’ based on knowledge over capital by the new generation of modernists. This is the defining moment of the country.