Regional Multilateralism in South Asia

Abstract

Having analysed India’s foreign policy cognitive prior in Chapter 2, the focus will now be narrowed down to India’s stance towards regional multilateralism and the developments taking place prior to the founding of the first genuine South Asian regional organization in 1978. Consequently, it is first necessary to analyse regional conferences that took place with India’s participation and examine India’s behaviour in those conferences. This chapter then charts the genesis, evolution, and achievements of the SAARC as the only genuine pan-South Asian organization. The analysis will attempt to ascertain how Indian foreign policy reconciled her normative and ideational traditions and convictions with normative ‘pull factors’ in the regional context and examine if the preconditions for norm localization and norm sublimation as enumerated in Chapter 1 have been fulfilled.