7/21/2019 Sanjay Chaturvedi Symposium

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Indian Foreign Policy and Antarctica: Towards Post-Colonial Engagement?

Sanjay Chaturvedi

Panjab University

India

India remains committed to scientific research and technical cooperation in the Polar

Regions. Antarctica being a common heritage of mankind and the foremost symbol of

peaceful use and cooperation needs to be protected for posterity. This is how Indias

External Affairs Minister chose to describe in a nutshell Indias engagement withAntarctica at the closing session of the XXX Antarctic Treaty Consultative Meeting

(ATCM), held in New Delhi, in May 2007. The reference to Common Heritage of

Mankind probably evoked a mixed response. On the one hand, it might have revived,

with some measure of anxiety, memories of Indias proposal to raise the AntarcticQuestion at the United Nations in the mid-1950s, and the resistance to it. On the other

hand, it might have sounded rather reassuring to those who would like to see India act asa catalyst for critical post-colonial engagement with the Southern Polar Region, leading

to greater democratization of the Antarctic Treaty System (ATS), including its

knowledge-power interface, in the best interest of entire mankind.

Indias foreign policy today is characterized by unprecedented pragmatism as well as

cautious idealism. The pragmatism is rather visible in the growing realization that as arising power in Asia and beyond, Indias world view and self-image are due for a

thorough revision. Whereas the normative thrust relates to a critical reassessment of

countrys geopolitical location in the Indian Ocean Region and rethinking of theconventional categorization and compartmentalization of the global geopolitical space. It

seems that the much overdue process of decolonizing the geographical imaginationsinherited from the colonial era as well as the Cold War can neither be arrested nor

reversed.

It is against the backdrop outlined above, and with special reference to emerging issue-

areas of biological prospecting, climate change and ecological security, that this paper

intends to critically examine the potential and promise of Indias post-colonialengagement with Southern Polar Region as a consultative member of the Antarctic Treaty

System (ATS). Through the medium of this case study, I hope to further broaden anddeepen the discussion on post-colonial engagement with Antarctica as global knowledgecommons, so insightfully initiated by Klaus John Dodds in his seminal contribution to

Polar Record(2006).