India’s Democratic Role Conception (1998-2021): From the Vajpayee to the Modi Administration

This study explores the variations and similarities in the democratic self-role conceptions of the Vajpayee, Singh, and Modi governments in foreign policy. In addition, the three Indian administrations are scrutinized on three levels. Those are: Global Crises, UN forums, and the neighborhood. They have developed one master and eight auxiliary democratic self-role conceptions. This dissertation applied Role Theory, specifically the strand of Symbolic Interactionism (SI), to examine democratic self-role conceptions of the three Indian administrations. The Role Theory provided the flexibility to analyze different levels and also assisted in touching on ideational and structural aspects. In this dissertation, Discourse Analysis (DA) complements SI to analyze the discourse of the Indian administration. The discourse is examined based on more than 350 documents of the three Indian administrations in a textual form. Furthermore, to investigate how historical allusions influence current decision-making, the study also incorporates G.H. Mead's notion of Sociality. The analysis concludes that history has informed India's democratic self-role conceptions. In this process, Indian leaders have consistently reinterpreted historical experiences. Among others, civilizational roots and national movement legacies are interpreted in conceptualizing various self-roles. While Vajpayee and Modi’s administrations shared a broad ideological framework on democracy, the Singh administration diverged from those two administrations. In this regard, two self-roles, Liberal and Indian/Bhartiya, have pertinently emerged. Vajpayee and Modi have predominantly cited Sanskrit scriptures to emphasize the Bhartiya roots of democracy. On the other hand, Singh's administration focused on the Indian heritage and downplayed Sanskrit references. The Singh administration stressed secularism in its liberal stance. It was not visible dominantly in the BJP administrations. Still, those ideologically divergent administrations have shown an overarching resemblance and certain subtle diversity in expression concerning other self-role conceptions. Unlike predecessors, the language of the Modi administration appeared confident and assertive in its external engagements. The stance is linked to India's growing global stature and Modi’s parliamentary mandate. This study advances our understanding of India’s democracy-related foreign policy, based on the trait of independence. The dissertation, with the help of self-role conceptions, reveals that local conditions, historical experiences, and global positioning have shaped India's involvement with democracy in foreign policy.