IAN HALL |

Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s energetic conduct of India’s foreign policy has attracted much public and academic attention. Yet his desire to see India become what he calls a vishwa guru — which loosely translates as ‘world guru’ — has received relatively little attention. This is in spite of its prominence in high profile speeches like the one he gave in Sydney in November 2014.

For Modi, India as a vishwa guru is an India that draws deeply from its extraordinary cultural, religious and philosophical inheritance to tackle pressing transnational challenges. These include issues like climate change, sustainable development, terrorism and helping to rewrite the now fraying rules of the international order. It implies an India that introduces people to the wisdom found in aspects of Hindu thought, and brings about lasting social and political change.

The notion that India should be more than just a regular power — pursuing its interests and securing sufficient wealth, heft and influence — is not new. India’s first prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, argued that despite its economic and military weakness, the country could and should aspire to be a ‘normative power’. In other words, India should be a state that sets the norms and rules of international relations in line with its values. To that end, Nehru campaigned for cooperative multilateralism, an end to colonialism and racism, and both conventional and nuclear disarmament, while grounding his arguments in Buddhist, Hindu and Gandhian ideas.

To read the full “Modi’s vision for India as a normative power” article by Griffith Asia Institute Acting Director and Centre for Governance and Public Policy Professor, Ian Hall, please visit East Asia Forum.