ISAS Working Papers

The paper explores the logic of co ntinuity in independent India’s security policy from where the British Raj had left off . Much like the Raj, Nehru’s India sought to provide security to its smaller neighbours. Although the British Raj and the newly independent Republic of India were differ ent political regimes, they were responding to the enduring geographic imperatives and the burdens that c a me with being a large entity with significant military capabilities. Newly i ndependent India was indeed less powerful than the Raj thanks to a much we aker economic base, the partition of the Subcontinent, and a geopolitical environment shaped by the Cold War. Yet the first decade after independence saw Nehru sustain the Raj legacy as the provider of security in India’s neighbourhood. As India becomes on e of the leading economies of the world and a significant military power, that tradition is gaining a fresh lease of life and a broader sphere of application than its immediate neighbourhood.