Abstract

This thesis examines the political, economic, and strategic reconfiguration of India under Prime Minister Narendra Modi, explaining how nationalism, economic statecraft, and external engagement have been re‑articulated to elevate India’s global role. It advances the argument that Modi’s project constitutes a novel synthesis of Hindutva and neoliberal reform that reshapes India’s strategic culture and underwrites an assertive, multi‑aligned foreign policy. The analysis situates contemporary developments within longer historical trajectories, tracing the movement from Nehruvian non‑alignment and a mixed‑economy model through the liberalisation of the 1990s to the consolidation of Hindu nationalism and strategic autonomy in the 2014–2024 period.

Methodologically, the study is grounded in critical realism as its ontological position, combining ontological realism with epistemological relativism and employing retroduction to move iteratively between theory and evidence. A qualitative, retroductive design organises analysis thematically and through emblematic cases, allowing engagement with stratified social reality at empirical, actual, and real levels. Primary materials policy documents and official strategies, international agreements and foundational arrangements (for example, LEMOA and subsequent accords), parliamentary debates, official speeches, and statistical releases are complemented by secondary scholarship, specialist reports, and expert interviews. Triangulation, multi‑level coding (descriptive, analytical, and mechanism‑seeking), and attention to negative cases are used to enhance validity. While the empirical focus is 2014–2024, historical backfilling is employed where required to identify continuities and change.

The findings show that domestic consolidation around a Hindu majoritarian narrative has provided ideological coherence and political capacity for strategic autonomy abroad. ‘Act East’ is transformed from economic outreach to a wider Indo‑Pacific strategy centred on maritime security and connectivity, including projects such as Sagarmala and initiatives linked to the Indian Ocean Region. India deepens defence and technology ties with the United States through logistics, communications, and geospatial arrangements while maintaining

legacy dependence and selective alignment with Russia and broadening functional cooperation with Israel. Economic diplomacy, through the ‘Make in India’ and ‘Digital India’ programmes, operates as foreign policy by attracting investment, building capabilities, and projecting competence; diaspora engagement augments soft power and opens political channels beyond traditional diplomacy. Read through a Gramscian lens, this domestic–external fusion constitutes a ‘passive revolution’: rapid economic and geopolitical repositioning without a commensurate egalitarian social transformation.

The thesis contributes empirically by providing a comprehensive, source‑based account of India’s policy reorientation across security, economic, and ideational domains, and theoretically by demonstrating, via a critical realist framework, the generative mechanisms linking civilisational nationalism to multi‑alignment and strategic autonomy. It clarifies the central paradox of contemporary India, the co‑movement of globalisation and protection, and of neoliberalisation and nationalism, while identifying its limits: democratic strain, social polarisation, and credibility challenges in balancing among major partners. The analysis offers implications for scholars and policymakers engaging with India’s rise and for comparative work on civilisational statecraft in a multipolar order.