From Third World to Global South: Indian Re-imaginings of Africa

Paper Abstract: After neoliberal reforms in the 1990s, India came to rebrand its position in the Third World turned Global South. This exercise coincided with other significant geopolitical shifts: the fall of the Soviet Union; India’s entry into the nuclear club; the rise of China, and the beginnings of the ‘War on Terror’. Internal events in India – such as the gradual rise of the political right – also fed significantly into India’s ambitions to play a greater role on the world stage. India has since launched an ambitious global developmental outreach, targeting its neighbourhood and African nations. India’s Africa outreach, which includes educational, commercial, and military support, continues to be articulated in the language of southern solidarity, evoking memories of Bandung, the Non-Aligned movement, and the idea of the Third World as an anti-imperialist political project. Indian stakeholders present their Africa outreach as a benevolent exercise and an equal partnership, and consider themselves to be unlike China and Global North powers, which they accuse of neo-colonialism. This paper aims to trace how the idea of Africa has evolved in India’s external engagements, from the 1940s onwards, showing that the politics of southern solidarity has been replaced by the notion of Indian Exceptionalism – which draws from civilizational discourses as well as notions of modern neoliberal techno-economic success. I argue that Africa occupies a special place in Indian developmental discourse, as it alone is considered more ‘underdeveloped’ than India, and could serve as a laboratory for the internationalization of Indian developmental models.