For more than seven and a half decades, India has enjoyed the moniker of “world’s largest democracy.” In addition to this distinction, the country is the most enduring democracy in the developing world. India adopted universal suffrage in 1947, despite an extremely low per capita income. Since then, the country has sustained its commitment to democratic governance despite poverty, inequality, unprecedented diversity, and sprawling geography (Varshney 2013). This makes India both an important outlier as well as an exemplar for poor, multiethnic democracies the world over (Stepan, Linz, and Yadav 2011).

This chapter is a study of India’s involvement in the Korean War, particularly in the later stages of that war and in bringing it to a close through the successful negotiation of an armistice agreement. The period under review is 1950–1953. The Korean War is an insightful case study because it combines a study of the beginnings of Indian diplomacy at the UN with Nehru’s idea of Asia.

This book is a study of non-alignment as it was conceptualised and developed in the context of modern India, particularly in the period immediately after independence. The main architect of India’s external affairs at this juncture was the first Prime Minister and Foreign Minister, Jawaharlal Nehru. The book is restricted to events that took place during the time he held office, between the years 1947 and 1964. In particular, this study aims to study non-alignment as an approach to security and as an approach to politics. There are three themes along which the book proceeds. First, the book contends that non-alignment is understood vaguely and inaccurately, leading to protracted debates about its past relevance and continued significance; secondly, that non-alignment frames politics innovatively; and thirdly, that this is an immensely precarious wager that encounters many points of resistance, which are not adequately engaged with in a sustained theoretical manner in literature on non-alignment. Thus, the book will argue that there has yet to emerge a serious critique of the political nature of non-alignment.

Chapter 5 discusses the Congo Crisis, one where India was involved between 1960 and 1963. The contention in this chapter is that India’s involvement in the crisis, particularly in the form of heavy military support to the UN, was rooted in Nehru’s idea of Africa. The advent of peacekeeping and the UN’s reliance on India’s troop contribution for its continued survival and success in the Congo exposed India to rapid alienation from African member-states and cost Indian lives on the ground. In turn, this exposed Nehru’s administration and foreign policy to criticism from within the domestic realm in India. The crisis was soon overshadowed by border problems with the Chinese and the eventual Sino-Indian War of 1962, but the Congo Crisis shows how India chose to strengthen the UN by military means, in complete contradiction of its stated position a decade earlier.

Chapter 4 discusses the year 1956 as bringing together two crises that coincided in time almost to the hour but were starkly different in their causes and consequences. These are the Suez Canal Crisis and the Hungarian Revolution. India was intimately involved with both in very different ways. On the one hand, in the Suez Canal Crisis, India assumed again the mediatory role so well constructed during the Korean War. The anti-colonial fervour of the crisis and India’s support of the Egyptian cause did not impede India from mediating with both sides and contributing substantially to the closing of the crisis. On the other hand, in the case of Hungary, Nehru exposed himself to severe criticism, both international and domestic, for his delayed and ambiguous response to Soviet actions in suppressing the revolution. Both these events are discussed in conjunction as an attempt to read them as a discursive moment in which non-alignment as an approach to world politics encountered its first challenge and Nehru responded through an ambiguously constructed idea of Europe.

This chapter begins by discussing Gandhi and Tagore’s perspectives on politics and uses those and other ideas to substantiate Nehru’s international political thought. It then goes on to suggest that in order to successfully theorise non-alignment, it is necessary to historicise it. The main argument in this chapter is that non-alignment is best understood not only as an approach to India’s international relations, but also to International Relations in general. Therefore, the case studies chosen are all instances of the breakdown of political processes where India’s national and territorial interests were not threatened, but where India chose to mediate nevertheless.

The accession of six British Empire member states to the League of Nations questioned the Empire’s constitutional structure, and whether it was one entity or many. The resulting debate would form the doctrine of ‘inter se’ that attempted to rationalise the Empire’s new situation. Chapter Three delves into the frictions caused by separating the Empire’s international personality, as imperial federalists attempted to control and harmonise the foreign relations of the Empire, whilst Dominion leaders sought to use their newfound seat in Geneva to pursue their distinct foreign policies. As the Dominions began to gain full statehood, the chapter examines how the gulf between their membership at the League and that of India’s began to widen.

Before the summer of 1914, there were seemingly few indicators that British colonies would be represented on the international stage as nominally separate entities, as they would be five years later. Chapter One charts the changing patterns of British rule that constituted the ‘Third British Empire’, and how new patterns of imperial governance were beginning to emerge in the newly formed Dominion of South Africa, that would put the Empire on a trajectory towards separating its international personality. This chapter will also examine how India, a colony with comparatively fewer of the self-governing institutions of the Dominions, would also accede to the Imperial Conference alongside the Dominions, a significant step towards membership of the embryonic League. Finally, this chapter will assess to what extent the participation of colonies at international organisations and conferences was normalised, and what precedents were employed to justify the presence of colonies after the War ended.

The demise of the League of Nations did not lead to the end of colonial membership at international organisations. Chapter Six examines how the League’s legacy of colonial membership continued under the United Nations. Despite not being fully independent, the Indian National Congress would appoint India’s delegation at the first General Assembly in 1946, resulting in a very different international personality. No longer constrained and gagged by British appointees and the imperial conference, India would aggressively pursue its longstanding grievances against South Africa, destroying the ideal of inter se, and effectively ending the British ideal of colonial membership at international organisations. Instead, this chapter reveals how the end of the legacy of colonial membership went beyond the British Empire, and was replicated by the Soviet Union in the accession of Soviet Belorussia and Ukraine. Neither of these member states would become independent until 1991.

Having secured a seat at the Paris Peace Conference at the end of the First World War, British and Dominion officials pushed for the accession of British colonies to the new League of Nations. Chapter Two probes the legal bases, as well as the political arguments employed to convince United States’ President Woodrow Wilson, why the Dominions and India should be separate member states from Britain at the League. As Britain and the Dominions pushed Wilson for colonial accession to the League, this chapter also examines political pressures, both within the United States, as well as from anti-colonial nationalists from within British colonies, who wanted their own membership of the League, separate from the one proposed by Britain. In doing so, this chapter answers whether colonial membership came about through British imperial design, or through anti-colonial pressures of the ‘Wilsonian Moment’.

Personalized pricing is a form of pricing where different customers are charged different prices for the same product depending on their ability to pay, based on the information that the trader holds of a potential customer. Pricing plays a relevant role in the decision-making process by the consumers, and a firm’s performance can be determined by the ability of the business entities to execute a pricing strategy accordingly. Further, pricing also determines the quality, value, and willingness to buy. Usually the willingness of a consumer depends on transparency and fairness.

Technological developments have enabled online sellers to personalize prices of the goods and services.

This chapter develops an account of prolific Indian author and peace activist Wahiduddin Khan in terms of his approach to exegesis, his apologetics in relation to the natural sciences, his Islamocentric conception to historical teleology, his approach to political quietism, and his valorisation of the principle of strategic concession.

This chapter examines the politics of the negotiations surrounding the Investment Facilitation for Development (IFD) Agreement within the World Trade Organization (WTO). Historically, developing and emerging economies have opposed multilateral investment rules over concerns that they would favor developed countries and limit policy space. However, proposals for the IFD Agreement have gained momentum, thanks in part to Global South members such as Brazil and China, which have also advanced their preferences through bilateral and regional arrangements outside of the WTO. Despite promises to focus on technical aspects and avoid politically charged topics, negotiations continue to raise objections from other emerging economies such as India and South Africa over extending the WTO’s mandate and preserving policy space. The chapter compares the competing interests and strategies of India, Brazil, and China as they attempt to establish investment facilitation standards inside and outside of the WTO. While the standards they promote are similar, their political motivations may create obstacles to the consolidation of a final multilateral agreement.