Modi’s construction of national identity: how to engage with the Belt &amp; Road Initiative?

India’s ambivalent engagement with China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) is often explained via the same dichotomy as the overall Sino-Indian relationship: either realist scepticism or liberal optimism. Academic literature on the topic demonstrates the inadequacy of these paradigms in explaining India’s ambivalence towards engagement with the BRI. This thesis goes beyond the dichotomy of Realism and Idealism and incorporates the significance of the constructions of discourse and identity. The analysis employs a Post-structuralist discourse analysis based on the work of Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe, whose framework can be used to analyse both how discourses of national identity are constructed, and how they are connected to foreign policy choices. In this thesis, Laclau and Mouffe’s framework is applied to the discourse surrounding national identity constructed by the Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, and its relation to the Indian engagement with the BRI. Modi’s speeches as...Show moreIndia’s ambivalent engagement with China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) is often explained via the same dichotomy as the overall Sino-Indian relationship: either realist scepticism or liberal optimism. Academic literature on the topic demonstrates the inadequacy of these paradigms in explaining India’s ambivalence towards engagement with the BRI. This thesis goes beyond the dichotomy of Realism and Idealism and incorporates the significance of the constructions of discourse and identity. The analysis employs a Post-structuralist discourse analysis based on the work of Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe, whose framework can be used to analyse both how discourses of national identity are constructed, and how they are connected to foreign policy choices. In this thesis, Laclau and Mouffe’s framework is applied to the discourse surrounding national identity constructed by the Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, and its relation to the Indian engagement with the BRI. Modi’s speeches as Prime Minister will be analysed to evince three discursive channels that together construct India’s identity: ‘Multipolarity’, ‘Great Power Recognition’, and ‘Rule of Law’. Together these three discourses construct an image of India as a state that recently achieved great power status, a state adhering to the existing international norms and rules, a champion of the liberal international order, and a promoter of multilateral connectivity initiatives. Within these discourses, BRI is projected as an initiative that does not follow international rules and norms, has the potential to convert the region into a Chinese unipolar Asia, forms a threat to India’s great power recognition, and is constructed along the exact opposite values that India adheres to. The argument highlights the temporal, ethical, and spatial contradictions in the construction of this identity. Because of these discordant dimensions India employs a conflicting rationale behind its engagement with BRI. Thus far, its engagement has been marked by hesitance and can thus be interpreted by both realists and liberal thinkers as a form of competition or cooperation. The heart of Indian foreign policy is not a realist security nor liberal economic dilemma, but a Post-structural ‘identity dilemma’: who is India, and how does it see the world?Show less

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Modi’s construction of national identity: how to engage with the Belt & Road Initiative?