India's anticipated rise to prominence in what has been termed the 'Asian 21st century' will have a significant impact upon geopolitics in the coming decades. As India's stature continues to increase across Asia and the world, appreciating which interests and principles structure the country's international interaction has never been more important. Central to these dynamics is how India's identity – and the longstanding values, principles and practices underpinning it – acts as the paramount factor that deeply structures the conduct of its international affairs. Acknowledging this centrality, this edited volume uses this factor as its foremost theme of analysis through which to understand and analyse India's most important regional, great power and diplomatic interactions. Not only providing a mechanism better to appreciate the historical foundations of these relationships, the focus on identity is also necessary to appreciate how the Hindu nationalism of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) under the leadership of Narendra Modi is now permeating Indian diplomacy. For the BJP, the pursuit – and attainment – of global influence and heightened status is the driving imperative of the BJP with regard to India's contemporary international affairs.

Chapter 6 of this book is available for free in PDF format as Open Access from the individual product page at www.taylorfrancis.com. It has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license.