What is the need for ideological politics in the Indian context? Derived from the Indian experience of nationalism, this need can be understood to shape strategic culture in such ways as to create an inflection in Indian foreign policy (compare, Figure 1.2). The more precarious (i.e. the less natural) the Indian national identity is, the more acute is the need for a compensating ideological politics. The more the national identity relies on ideological politics, the more the process of national identity formation can be expected to have an impact on foreign policy. This will be discussed in Chapters 6 to 8. Since the challenges and choices of the Indian national project are taken as the origin of the dynamic that is responsible for the inflection, in impetus and direction, they need to be thoroughly understood.

In 1917, Rabindranath Tagore wrote that India is a ‘no-nation’ that never had a real sense of national unity. As a political entity, however, it was faced with the challenge of ‘welding together into one body various races’. ‘In my country’, he continues, ‘we have been seeking to find out something common to all races, which will prove their real unity’.