These were soon joined by direct recruits, chosen by the Union Public Service Commission. Three officials especially marked out by the author for their contributions are K Natwar Singh, Brajesh Mishra and JN Dixit. MK Rasgotra and Muchkund Dubey were among the several other stalwarts who significantly contributed to India’s conduct of its foreign relations.
During the initial years of the People’s Republic of China (PRC), an important task for the Foreign Ministry was to implement a united front strategy in the countries that had kept their recognition of Chiang Kai-Shek’s Kuomintang regime. Emerged from CPC’s experiences during the war against Japanese imperialists, the united front strategy sought to establish relations beyond the formal governmental level with political parties, civil society organizations and individuals.
Each of the chapters tries to focus on the BRI and its effects across the Indian and Pacific Ocean. Chapter one dwells on the various theories on ‘Silk Road’. The Chinese have tried to revive the idea of the ‘Silk Road’ by initially calling the overland route ‘Silk Road Economic Belt’ and by water as ‘Maritime Silk Road’. The purpose was to make China ‘great again’ and to dethrone the US as ‘the world’s leading superpower’ (p. 2). Lintner views China’s initiatives and particularly the BRI from the prism of a new ‘Cold War’.
Warikoo refers to Kashmir as the undivided State of Jammu and Kashmir including Ladakh, Hunza, Gilgit, Baltistan and adjoining frontier territories. Following the Independence of India, when the Gilgit agency was restored to the Maharaja of Kashmir, the British launched a secret mission called Operation Datta Khel, employing their officers posted in Pakistan, Peshawar, and Gilgit to physically occupy Gilgit and hand over to Pakistan.
The book cogently touches upon the dichotomies that beset the nation during its nascent stage and some of which continue to haunt its path. Kamran argues that an inherent religious bias prevented democracy from flourishing in Pakistan. This was despite the nation’s conceptualization on lines of the western modern construct. The religious ‘rationale’ conflicted with ideas of democracy as interpreted and propagated by the West and instead an ‘establishmentarian democracy’ started taking shape.
The concept of the Indo-Pacific itself is a debated one and is seen differently by various theorists, as pointed out by Shubhrajeet Konwer (p.105). It is seen either as a balancing strategy by the realists, or as a new institutional setting of cooperation among the countries of the Pacific and the Indian Ocean by the liberalists, or as an ideational construct of shared values to face a common enemy by the constructivists.