The Middle East in India’s Quest for Status

The temptation to explain India’s foreign policy behaviour in the Middle East through the lens of power alone has obscured a rich history of Indian diplomacy in the region that escapes power-centric explanations. India’s relentless advocacy for Palestinian statehood, its diplomatic support for the weaker Arab states against Israel and Western powers and its role in UN mediation and peacekeeping missions in the region are difficult to explain using a structural realist framework that privileges power alone. Challenging the dominant historiographies, this article introduces the concept of status into the study of India’s behaviour in the Middle East. Based on a re-reading of secondary sources, it argues that status and power have been articulated in various ways in India’s behaviour in the Middle East. Under prime ministers Jawaharlal Nehru and Indira Gandhi, India pursued status without power, following a primarily normative strategy of status-seeking in the region that afforded India considerable deference at the United Nations and the Non-Aligned Movement. Following India’s nuclear tests of 1998 and a decade of economic growth, however, power and status converged in India’s behaviour in the Middle East through further alignment with US interests in the region and greater use of naval power projection. By shedding light on the various possible ways in which status and power articulate, this article attempts to step away from the artificial opposition between morals and self-interest as guiding principles of foreign policy. The inquiry into status challenges the prevalent historiographies and analytical frameworks that have dominated the discussion on India’s foreign policy in the Middle East, generating productive openings for reconceptualising and reimagining the field.