India and the Non-Western Space: Mapping India’s Potential and Possibilities in South Asia and beyond

With the dismantling of the Berlin Wall there was a subsequent vocalisation of the end of history thesis, which marked a turning-point in the study of world politics. However, with a gradual transition from a unipolar to an increasingly oligo-polar order, such transformation reconfigured the conventional west-centric conceptions of diplomacy and power balancing within politics amongst nations. Eventually, this generated an alternative discourse in world politics that not only challenges the Eurocentric epistemic within IR, but profoundly foregrounds ways for a normatively oriented, non-western frameworks. In South Asia, India, by virtue of its geostrategic location and enduring civilizational heritage, emerges as a vibrant actor that well aligns within this evolving framework. To substantiate this claim, the paper uses a case-study approach across three distinct non-western spaces, and make an attempt to evaluate three non-security lexicons (cultural & civilizational capital, postcolonial sub-regional engagements, and value-based humanitarian diplomacy) to demonstrate how India is positioned to substantiate its claim for the broader non-Western space.