It is common to hear from both extreme left and right that contemporary Indian foreign policy is adrift of its moorings. Ninan Koshy’s book attempts to put forward the left basis for this claim. He believes a desire among India’s foreign policy establishment to attach itself to the coattails of the United States is the main cause of India’s heresy. This is not an original theme. But Koshy’s greater sin is to make a shoddy job of presenting his case. Koshy places nonalignment – ‘in essence…the principle of independence in thought and action in foreign policy’ – on a pedestal and tries to show how Indian foreign policy under both the National Democratic Alliance and United Progressive Alliance governments have turned their back on this deity.
February 2007, volume 31, No 2