Beyond Eurocentrism: Kautilya’s realism and India’s regional diplomacy

Abstract

Abstract The article is a modest attempt to deparochialize Eurocentrism embedded within the discipline of International Relations by examining Kautilya and his Arthashastra. Kautilya’s text serves as a potent non-Western theoretical and conceptual reservoir to engage with and thereby to interrogate the Eurocentric realist tradition. The subject matter of Arthashastra precisely earns him the title of ‘first great political realist’ because much of the bedrock assumptions of realism that Europe came to know very late, Kautilya had in ancient India grasped them. Therefore, his Arthasastran realism offers an indigenous theoretical toolkit to examine India’s strategic culture. In fact, Kautilya’s realism is there in the DNA of India’s strategic culture and has been the default strategy for South Asia as India still perceives the region through the historical sub-continental prism. Nevertheless, its application varied across leadership. However, the rise of Modi had revitalized the dynamic of Arthashastra by openly and boldly embracing Kautilya as vividly underscored by his ‘Neighborhood First’ diplomacy in South Asia. Thus Kautilya apart from being a non-Western begetter of the realist tradition offers a reliable understanding of India’s regional diplomacy in the subcontinent.