Shaping the Emerging World: India and the Multilateral Order

9. Dilemmas of Sovereignty and Order: India and the UN Security Council

157 Introduction This chapter examines India’s participation within and attitudes toward the United Nations Security Council (UNSC). In so doing, it confronts two empirical puzzles. First, contrary to what one might expect of a rising power, India’s willingness to countenance violations of state sovereignty (through, say, multilaterally authorized intervention) as an international norm has diminished, rather than increased, as its power has grown—we call this India’s sovereignty paradox. Second, contrary to what one might expect of a rising power that has benefited from the existing international order, India’s commitment to maintaining this order has diminished as its position has improved—we call this India’s order paradox. These two paradoxes offer intriguing insights relevant to the central concerns of this volume: the drivers of India’s multilateral policies; India’s orientation toward the existing rule-based international order; the balance between Delhi’s conduct of regional and bilateral relations, on the one hand, and its multilateral engagement , on the other; and India’s current—not necessarily fully coherent or cohesive—conceptions of a future world order. The key argument we advance to explain the two paradoxes is that since the end of the cold war, India’s multilateral engagements have increased in number and intensity on the global scale, but its security challenges have remained overwhelmingly internal and regional, in effect constraining India’s ability to maneuver at the multilateral level. Moreover, although India’s power and influence in world affairs have increased, the international order has not accorded India the status (most notably as a permanent member of the UNSC) to match 9 Dilemmas of Sovereignty and Order: India and the UN Security Council david m. malone and rohan mukherjee 158 david m. malone and rohan mukherjee the growing stature that some of its leading citizens desire. Therefore, due to concerns of national security and international representation, India has been more supportive of sovereignty and nonintervention in the internal affairs of states and less committed to an international order that, in the official Indian view, does not accommodate Indian interests or aspirations. This chapter begins with a historical overview of India’s relationship with the UNSC, discusses and analyzes two major vectors in official Indian views—on sovereignty and order—and reconnects with the core questions of this volume. Historical Overview India was among the fifty-one original members of the United Nations when the organization was formed in 1945, two years before the country’s independence (mirroring an arrangement whereby India held membership in the League of Nations, albeit a membership controlled by the colonial power). Delhi’s first major brush with the UNSC occurred in 1948 over what came to be known as the“India-Pakistan question,”which arose as a result of the partition that attended the independence of both countries. Early Lessons and Conflicts The dispute centered on the status of the Princely State of Jammu and Kashmir (J&K), which both India and Pakistan claimed as integral to their territory and nationhood. Following an invasion by tribal forces backed by the Pakistani military, the ruler of Kashmir acceded to India, legally empowering India’s military to fight the invaders. India’s prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, referred the matter to the UNSC, hoping for a favorable outcome. He was soon disappointed, particularly by the Western great powers, which treated the matter as a dispute between two states rather than as the invasion of one territory by another. Indian leaders concluded from this painful experience,“The Security Council was a strictly political body and . . . decisions were taken by its members on the basis of their perspective of their national interest and not on the merits of any particular case.”1 In 1950 India joined the UNSC in its first of seven terms to date through election as a nonpermanent member. During the following two years, the council focused mainly on the outbreak of the Korean War and the continuation of the India-Pakistan tussle over Kashmir. With regard to the former, India emphasized through its votes and statements the need for the UN to bring about a peaceful—that is, a nonmilitary—resolution to the conflict. In the event, the UNSC voted for armed intervention under a unified command led by the United States. Instead of troops, Delhi contributed a field ambulance unit to the UN effort. Following the war, India was instrumental in the repatriation of prisoners of war and...