Indira Gandhi’s Role Conception

Abstract

This chapter reconstructs Indira Gandhi’s role conception by analysing the Prime Minister and her core advisors’ public and private communication record. Indira Gandhi’s regional role conception of India as a security seeker, it is contended, was shaped by three core inter-related beliefs: a definition of India’s interests in more narrow terms compared to Nehru’s beliefs, and, a regional image centred on the subcontinent rather than on an extended Asian space that lay at the heart of Nehru’s image; a divisible conception of security rather than an indivisible one, and an inclination to leverage the balance of power for geopolitical advantage rather than to reform Asia’s interaction culture as per Nehru’s role conception; and, an inclination to employ coercive means to solve disputes or to pursue geopolitical ends in South Asia rather than a preference for ethical statecraft and strategic restraint embodied in Nehru’s worldview.