With a somewhat unusual title for his latest book, Pax Indica: India and the World of the 21st Century, it was but natural for its author, former minister of state for external affairs Shashi Tharoor, to explain to a packed hall on Wednesday evening why he had chosen this title.
The MP from Thiruvananthapuram was speaking at the launch of his latest work by vice president Hamid Ansari in the swanky environs of a luxury hotel. The hall was overflowing with people — diplomats, both from here and abroad, a sprinkling of politicians and many others, including the chatterati made up the substantial audience.
Speaking about why the title Pax Indica was chosen, the diplomat-turned politician said that usually it’s Pax Romana and Pax Britannica that people think of.
However, he said that in choosing his title he was “not suggesting anything remotely like the world domination that those paxes were supposed to represent.” He added, “What I’m suggesting is a system as it were for which the best metaphor would be that of today’s 21st-century Internet and the World Wide Web. A networked world in which we would, without abandoning any of our cherished principles, including non-alignment, move to the era of multi-alignment.”
He further explained, “Where we will, in fact, essentially have a series of networked relationships with countries, often some of the same countries in different configurations, often overlapping for different purposes and in different formulae. And we would do it to pursue specific purposes each of which is not necessarily incompatible with the other.”
He said, “The old paradigms forged during the binary world of the cold war era no longer really apply in this networked world of the 21st century and that is vision in the book.”
He further said that a fundamental argument that he makes in his latest book is that “we must move beyond the time when sometimes we undertook policies because we believed they were right. We must now focus very much on foreign policy as an instrument to promote the security and well-being of the Indian people.”
He added, “We must also play a responsible role on the world stage which we are equipped to do nd are capable of doing.”
He noted it means equipping the Indian foreign service adequately. He explained, “In one of my chapters on the domestic underpinnings of foreign policy, including on the work of MEA, I strongly argue this ministry has been starved for too long of the resources it truly needs — we have about 800
foreign service officers.
China has 4,200. Singapore has 867. In terms of budget, resources staffing, there is a great deal that needs to be done.”