India and the ‘Anglosphere’: a postcolonial genealogy

Abstract

Policy-makers and commentators across the English-speaking world have recently become immensely enthusiastic about India. India has become known as ‘the world’s largest democracy’, a ‘natural ally’, the ‘democratic counterweight’ to China, a trading partner of ‘massive economic potential’, and sometimes as part of the ‘Anglosphere’. Much of this has been animated by deeply problematic colonial assumptions about India. This thesis mounts a three-fold argument. First, I argue that IR theory and the English-speaking world share the same ‘India Problem’, as both have consistently interpreted India on the basis of colonial assumptions. Second, I suggest that historically there have been two broad approaches to the idea of English-speaking unity: a racialized, exclusive narrative and a pluralist-yet-hierarchical narrative. Finally, I argue through four case studies on ideational politics between India and Anglosphere states, that India rejects outright the racialized narrative of English-speaking unity and resists the hierarchy inherent in the pluralist narrative.