Religious Nationalism and India’s Policy toward the US and China: A Second Image Analysis of India’s Hedging Policy

초록

Under the leadership of Narendra Modi, India has pursued a hedging policy against China by seeking much closer alignment with the United States and at the same time maintaining stable bilateral diplomatic relations with China. Such policy behavior of Modi’s government is considered deviant from the past foreign policy decisions conducted by the previous Prime Minister, Manmohan Singh. This paper argues that one of the key determinants to India’s hedging against China is the political ideology of Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party. The underpinning ideology of Hindu nationalism led the policy decision makers to depart from previous Nehruvian principle and to react more sensitively to India’s security challenges

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