China’s Military Rise And Indian Discursive Interpretations

This thesis examines China’s military rise since 2013 and the Indian strategic community’s discursive interpretations. This thesis furthers our understanding of Indian security and foreign policy, by highlighting the working of non-security imperatives or ideational elements within the Indian strategic community’s discursive representations of the Chinese military actions. The thesis analyses the discursive strategies used to construct the China identity, and concurrently the binary opposite Indian identity. By employing critical discourse analysis and a constructivist framework, it explains how constituent groups within the Indian strategic community represent the Chinese military actions. The primary argument of the thesis is that ideational elements are far more influential in shaping or constructing the Indian strategic community’s discursive interpretations and recommendations for response to China, than previously acknowledged. Secondly, it argues that the Indian strategic elite’s discursive constructions facilitate the Indian government’s policy choices – for example, deliberate strategic ambiguity (especially in nuclear policy) and multialignment (i.e. the discourse supports the Indian government’s foreign policy approach of pursuing multiple policy practices and multi-directional engagement). A secondary, but related finding of the thesis is that the discursive presence of ideational elements is more prominent in areas where India’s power ambitions lie.