Liberal, Liminal and Lost: India’s First Diplomats and the Narrative of Foreign Policy

Thakur, Vineet

Abstract

Indian historiography has largely overlooked the contribution of Indian Liberals in the pre-independence era. It is worse in Indian diplomatic history where studies on pre-independence are few and far between. Responding to this double excision, this article traces the emergence of a new Indian narrative of foreign policy around the issues of equality and justice in the immediate aftermath of the First World War. Anchoring their argumentativeness in diplomatic finesse, Indian Liberals such as Satyendra Prasanno Sinha, V. S. Srinivasa Sastri and Tej Bahadur Sapru relentlessly campaigned for racial equality and predominance of the rights of people over the rights of states at the Imperial Conferences. In the articulation of these views, South Africa, a country where ideas about the status of Indians and Indian civilisation were most contested, emerged as the singular foreign policy ‘other’ around which India’s foreign policy narrative was constructed.

Citation

Thakur, V. (2017). Liberal, Liminal and Lost: India’s First Diplomats and the Narrative of Foreign Policy. The Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, 45(2), 232-258. https://doi.org/10.1080/03086534.2017.1294283

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: Jan 28, 2017
• Online Publication Date: Feb 28, 2017
• Publication Date: Feb 28, 2017
• Deposit Date: May 21, 2017
• Publicly Available Date: May 21, 2017
• Journal: The Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History
• Print ISSN: 0308-6534
• Electronic ISSN: 1743-9329
• Publisher: Taylor and Francis Group
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 45
• Issue: 2
• Pages: 232-258
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/03086534.2017.1294283
• Keywords: Indian historiography, foreign policy, Jan Smuts, Indian diplomats, Liberals